Engineering Happiness in Brazil: WordCamp Rio de Janeiro and beyond

Two Happiness Engineers visit Brazil and receive the most overwhelmingly warm welcome.

Karen Arnold and Erica Varlese work on the Happiness Hiring team at Automattic, where they hire new Happiness Engineers who support users on WordPress.com and Automattic products. They met with the Brazilian WordPress community last week and wanted to share their experiences.

On August 29th, 2015, we traveled to Brazil to attend WordCamp Rio de Janeiro and meet the Brazilian WordPress community. At Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, we’re working on localizing our support to those who speak Brazilian Portuguese. Since both of us are part of our Happiness Hiring team, which focuses on hiring new support engineers, or “Happiness Engineers,” we decided to travel to the WordPress community in Brazil to share our new Happiness Engineer (BR-PT) role and talk about our experience with support.

Jetpack booth

Jetpack booth

At WordCamp Rio de Janeiro, we gave a talk on “Engineering happiness: bridging the gap between developers and customers.” Our talk, which will be translated to include subtitles, focused on tips and tricks from our experience on how to get into the right support mindset and how to use support to create loyal customers. The audience was wonderfully responsive and we had the opportunity to chat with many WordCamp attendees about their thoughts on support, Happiness Engineering, and how education is a part of their day-to-day work with WordPress.

We weren’t the only Automatticians at WordCamp Rio. Miguel Lezama joined us to talk about Jetpack, and the recently launched br.jetpack.me, at our booth. Additionally, Claudio Sanches, from the WooThemes team, was part of a panel on “Mercado de Trabalho do WordPress — Brasil e Mundo.

Claudio’s panel

Claudio’s panel

After the WordCamp, we got the chance to cowork at a startup incubator, Espaço NAVE, which is part of Universidade Estácio de Sá. Here, students compete to share their startup and product ideas over the course of a semester. We gave our talk to the community at Espaço NAVE, focusing on the importance of support for all products and companies, not just WordPress.

Espaço NAVE

Espaço NAVE

Later in the week, we traveled to São Paulo to meet with the local tech community, including Marco Gomes, the founder of boo-box, and WordPress community members. At the São Paulo WordPress meetup, we saw the incredible community dynamic in action as members shared thoughts and ideas on new topics and talks to cover throughout the year. Anyssa Ferreira gave an excellent talk on women working with WordPress in the Brazilian community before allowing us to take the stage to chat about support and localization.

Our trip to Brazil was packed with tons of productive and fascinating conversations. We were welcomed by an incredibly warm and dynamic community. We’re excited to see the ongoing results of our conversations around localized support, women and children in WordPress, and the WordPress community in South America as a whole.

Are you fluent in Brazilian Portuguese and English and love supporting users? If so, you might be a great fit for our Happiness Engineer (BR-PT) role. We’re also hiring dozens of other roles globally! Join our team!


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26 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. casadeplayakm122toyoseco

    Where I place the community wordpress Peru?

    Liked by 7 people

  2. hasmeetwrites

    Them WP badges though!!! Wish I could get one!

    Liked by 3 people

  3. MvdB

    I would give my right arm to work with you people, but that would be a bit drastic. 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

  4. Carla Doria

    This is great! And it’s good to see that the WordPress community is growing so much in South America (me being from Bolivia)!

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Steve Mathisen

    Is there some way to get just news about new features or changes without getting all of the rest of this not so pertinent news?

    Liked by 2 people

  6. claudiarant

    Yes, I speak Brazilian Portuguese. A shame I’m still a novice wordpress user and still struggle with a few things! Great to read about Brazil though

    Liked by 2 people

  7. jabrush1213

    Sounds like a fun time in Brazil! It is great to see WordPress expanding to South America.

    Liked by 4 people

  8. Valério Souza

    Reblogged this on Valério Souza and commented:
    Post em Inglês, sobre a visita da Karen Arnold e Erica Varlese ao Brasil.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Grandtrines

    Reblogged this on Grandtrines.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. unggoy5000

    Sir/Madam, How to apply or join? thank you

    Liked by 1 person

  11. ararealtor

    Erica, that event look fantastic! The opportunity to share knowledge with the blogger community of WP is an A+, plus there is a hiring opportunity open. Are you plan to coming soon to Florida? There is a group here?

    Liked by 2 people

  12. thesciencegeek

    Great post
    The Science geek
    http://www.thesciencegeek.org

    Liked by 1 person

  13. free3rrrrrr

    Verry interesting what i read here.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. suzanom

    Bom, suponho que você fale português e como esse post é associado a esse idioma, vou prestigiar a última flor do Lácio… O engine do WordPress é fantástico. Realmente muito bom.

    Tenho usado há alguns meses, para estudar junto com minha filha. Como eu e ela moramos longe um do outro, o WordPress (associado a outras ferramentas) tem sido fundamental.

    I’m glad to hear about more improvements regarding Brazilian Portuguese, keep on creating new features!

    Liked by 2 people

  15. Don Charisma

    Go team Brazil 🙂

    Cheers

    Don Charisma

    Liked by 1 person

  16. jamesakinloye

    Great job word press,u have done a great job ,by that which u have done ,kudos and keep it up.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. 🍁

    show! Quem é do brasil curte wordpress e é fluente em inglês tem como ganhar dinheiro? fazEndo algo ‘-‘

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Nicodemus

    Amazing for WordPress company ! Thank you very much for your incredible service around the world ! Nice for the Brasilian communauty !

    Liked by 2 people

  19. clarachinyere

    Hi all ! i love what you guys are doing Sound pretty good. I wish i had such a Chance, am very new to wordpress.com (clarachinyere.wordpress.com. I am still working on my Topic ” you have a dream , be persistent. Will notify you if you dont mind.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. andriansyah27

    🙂

    Liked by 2 people

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