Jason Cosper
Jason Cosper gets paid to nerd out over WordPress. No, really. It’s pretty nice work if you can get it. He also spends a ton of time with his wife Sarah and two chihuahuas, Rowdy & Gomez. Jason’s passions include hanging out in musty record stores, drinking whiskey, eating barbecue, and sampling craft beers.
WordCamp Session Title
The Minimal Dev
Why Is This Important?
While there’ve been plenty of Vagrant and Docker talks at WordCamps over the past few years, I haven’t seen a Valet talk at any WordCamps yet. Since I’ve got a big nerd crush on Valet, and use it for my local development workflow, I thought I’d help bring it to people’s attention.
How Did You Discover WordPress?
I found WordPress in 2005. At that point, I’d been using Blogger to manage my site for a few years. While I liked it alright, I had started to become uncomfortable with a 3rd party service having my site’s SFTP information saved on their servers, so I looked for alternatives.
While WordPress 1.5.x’s UX was rougher around the edges than I preferred at the time, I really liked the hackable nature of WordPress. I also was enamored with the fact that I didn’t have to depend on a developer to add a feature if I wanted it. Almost everything I was looking to do that wasn’t supported by core had a plugin — and that was beautiful.
How Do You Use WordPress?
Well, outside of not posting to my personal site very often, I’ve been running a filler text generator (Hipster Ipsum) built on top of WordPress and manage the site for a nonprofit in Bakersfield.
How Has WordPress Impacted You?
I’ve been paid, in one way or another, to work with WordPress for 11 years now. In that time I’ve managed to travel the US and meet some incredible people from around the world. The number of perspectives and ways of thinking I’ve been introduced to have helped make me a better, more well rounded person.
What Do You Do When Not Working?
Lately, I’ve enjoyed playing around with my PocketCHIP. It’s a single board computer (similar to a Raspberry Pi) with a touch screen and keyboard case and includes a “fantasy console” (see: exists in emulation only) called PICO-8.
When I bought the PocketCHIP a year ago, I swore that I would learn Lua and start making PICO-8 games. To be honest, I haven’t gotten as far as I wanted to, but I am having fun trying to make PICO-8 it to do stuff.
What Is Your Favorite Candy?
Peanut Butter M&M’s.