I know I say this a lot, but: Good news, everyone!!!!!!!
I recently started a new gig as a WordPress Tech Lead at the awesome and incredible Kanopi Studios! You all, I love this company so, sooooo much and I’m so excited to support the Kanopi organization, staff, clients and mission.
Kanopi is a web development agency that designs, builds and supports the full life cycle of a website. With a drive to affect the world in a positive way, Kanopi delivers solutions that gracefully blend data-driven software development with person-to-person inclusivity and warmth. In short, Kanopi is providing awesome custom website solutions to some very satisfied clients and I’m very happy to be part of that!
As a WordPress Tech Lead I’m helping guide technical solutions on web development projects for websites built with the WordPress CMS. As a super bonus, Kanopi is also sponsoring my contributions to WordPress.org! There are many more reasons in addition to that one and the other 9 below. Kanopi is like a treasure trove of goodness, folks! From genuine kindness to clean implementation of advanced technical solutions – Kanopi is doing all the things right. So let’s talk about this more…
Here are my Top 10 reasons I’m totally stoked to join the Kanopi Studios team!
- Kanopi is an open source contributor, contributing to Drupal.org, WordPress.org and Docksal! Three incredible softwares that bring value to millions of people around the globe. If you own a website, chances are that website lives on an Open Source Linux distribution. Point being – we all benefit from the existence of Open Source technology, which is why it’s awesome that Kanopi gives back to Open Source in so many forms – everything from code to camps! P.S. We’ll circle back to camps later on.
- Kanopi staff. The team at Kanopi is one of the most lovely groups of people I have ever met. I could not speak more highly of my new colleagues. Every single person on the team is invested, engaged, wildly intelligent, skilled beyond words, kind, passionate and all around incredible. Nuff said!
- Kanopi is driven by values and a mission that anyone with heart can get behind. One of my favorite Kanopi values is: We are #BetterTogether. Yassss! Every single team member brings something of value to the table that complements the team in a distinctive way. Another great one is: When something is complex, we #OwnIt. Accountability is key to success, of course, and do I need to point out the spooky correlation between this value and my ‘Own Your WordPress’ articles/talks? Just sayin’! Ok now back to Kanopi’s fabulous values, here’s another great one: We value contributing to our #Community. WootWoot!! Me too!! Here is another personal favorite: We value expressing #Gratitude. On that last one – I am super grateful that I have found this beautiful team and for their graciousness and warmth! By the way, these are just some of the Kanopi values – You can learn more about Kanopi values and mission here.
- Culture! Kanopi has an awesome culture that is fun, playful, very efficient and yet still very human. I don’t want to brag or anything but I’ve already earned “Taco Tenderfoot” status in heytaco. The entire company is remote (major bonus points!!!!) yet so in sync and healthy. Human connection is not lost in the slightest at Kanopi Studios.
- That is, first and foremost, because Anne Stefanyk is a true role model CEO. Anne has client and employee well being in the front of her mind. I know this for a fact because she’s been giving lectures and talks about it and you can check out some of her slides here. She’s is all about the well being of the organization and its people.
- On that note, Kanopi is owned and run by a team of amazing women! Anne started Kanopi with her sister, Jill in 2013. Now the company has grown to over 40+ people and counting (*waves*). Not only that but our CTO, Director of Experience, Director of Support, Director of Marketing, Open Source Community Ambassador and Senior Human Resources Manager are all intelligent, powerful, good natured and dedicated women! The truth is, though: every single person at Kanopi is awesome – and that starts with amazing management.
- Kanopi clients are also amazing! Kanopi genuinely cares about client care and as a result, Kanopi clients are all very happy! Also, they’re really great people! I’ve been front and center in many-a-hosting outage dealing with less-than-happy customers over the years – and believe me – a happy client is a wonderful thing. And you know, the fact that Kanopi clients are continually satisfied on an ongoing basis says everything about the organization’s contributions to this world. Think about it.
- Camps and MeetUps! I told you we’d circle back to this! BADCamp, DrupalCon, WordCamps, MeetUps and more. I’m really looking forward to contributing to this particular endeavor and I’m not gonna lie – part of that is because these events are all really fun and really valuable! I’ll let you in on a secret – I’m being brought on as a co-host of the West LA WordPress MeetUps (to be announced later this week) and I’m very happy to be able to represent Kanopi within the community. Let’s talk about the Bay Area Drupal Camp aka BadCamp for a sec, though. A) This tech conference in the beautiful San Francisco Bay area of California is free of charge for admission. Need I say more? B) Our own Kanopians help organize this camp and have been involved since day 1! C) This camp has been going strong for 13 years! This is a beautiful demonstration of Kanopi’s true dedication to community and technology.
- Speaking of technology – I get to play with fun toys!!!! Kanopi contributes code to Docksal, to start, which is a killer developer tool for container orchestration! In 20 minutes or less you can spin up a Docker container with preconfigured web, database and cli services. Its customizable, too – check it out here! Thats just ONE of the fun toys I get my hands on at Kanopi Studios. This is kid in a candy-shop status for me folks! Between coding custom themes/plugins to custom deployment solutions – I’m learning daily, and building skills … and having a blast while doing it.
- Kanopi’s hosting partners. Kanopi partners with Pantheon, Acquia and WP Engine. To be fair, I’ve been swimming in a deep sea of DreamHost’s hosting solutions for the past 5 years, so it’s refreshing to dive deeper into other host’s configurations, too. It’s especially valuable for me, actually, as it helps me understand WordPress hosts better – aiding my contributions to the WordPress.org hosting team. Side note – Pantheon is providing some incredible deployment solutions that I think are worth a shout out. For the record, that is not an affiliate link. I just think what they’re offering is rad.
So I’ve been wondering – Is it possible for an entire organization to be your soul mate?
Real talk though – Kanopi is an organization really worth supporting and I’m honored to invest my energies. I don’t think I could be happier about it, really.
Have something to say? Share in the comments below!
A special Thank You to my fact checker Sean Dietrich and editor Elana Fiske for the post reviews!