{"id":5611,"date":"2026-06-26T03:02:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T03:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/?p=5611"},"modified":"2026-06-26T03:02:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T03:02:51","slug":"matt-all-roads-lead-to-om","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/?p=5611","title":{"rendered":"Matt: All Roads Lead to Om"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, my best friend and brother from another mother, Om Malik, passed away<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n

They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. \u2014 Bob Weir<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Om\u2019s request was for a small family prayer ceremony. In mourning, that will be all there is. In celebration and tribute, I love that everyone is sharing their Om stories online<\/a>, like the writing and photography Christopher Michel shared<\/a>, which very much embody the OG spirit of blogging that Om pioneered.<\/p>\n

\n

A Renaissance Man<\/h2>\n

I knew Om contained multitudes, but sitting by his side these last few weeks, I\u2019ve been amazed to learn how many deep and completely separate communities he was part of. He meant so much to so many, in so many different ways.<\/p>\n

Om loved putting on a good conference, and I\u2019d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an OmFest<\/strong>. I\u2019ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together. In the spirit of Open Source and co-creation, we can have some booths, flash talks, a gallery of his photography, pen showcase, and whatever other fun ideas people want to contribute. I can\u2019t wait for the beautiful collision of his tech \/ journalism \/ Indian party planner \/ pen \/ coffee \/ shoes \/ photography circles, and probably some niches I couldn\u2019t even imagine.<\/p>\n

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A Few Vignettes<\/h2>\n

I have so much to say about Om, but right now I\u2019m working on moderating comments<\/a> and keeping his website tip-top, so here are a few snippets:<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, Om was a lover of humanity. He became a fast \u201cregular\u201d everywhere he went. He wouldn\u2019t just buy coffee, he would also learn the name and story of every barista, the dogs and people in South Park. His deep curiosity and respect weren\u2019t just for the fine and famous. It extended to every soul that crossed his path. His encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory created connections not just in San Francisco, but all around the world wherever we traveled. (I need to pull the stats, but we went to five continents together, including Antarctica.)<\/p>\n

\n

Om and I were an odd couple. We met online through forums and email because Om was one of the earliest adopters of WordPress. We finally met in person in 2004 when I was 20 and he was 38. He connected me to the first investors I ever spoke to, Phil Black, who formed True Ventures, and Tony Conrad, and introduced me to Toni Schneider, my business soul mate, who became like a co-founder as the CEO of Automattic in our first 8 years.<\/p>\n

And of course on the internet. I don\u2019t know how we would count, but I would guess Om read at least 1 or 2% of the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\n

Om was a voracious learner. I was there when he first used chopsticks, and only a few months later, he knew every sushi restaurant in San Francisco and exactly what he liked at each.<\/p>\n

\n

Om is probably in the top ten in the world for finding things incredibly early. That\u2019s why he has the best usernames! How does one guy get the @om username on WordPress.com in 2005 (user ID 719), Twitter in 2006<\/a>, Instagram in 2010<\/a>? The first WordPress meetup was at Chaat Cafe (now Corner)<\/a> in 2005, 8 people showed up, and Om was one of them<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, my best friend and brother from another mother, Om Malik, passed away. They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. \u2014 Bob Weir Om\u2019s request was for a small family prayer ceremony. In mourning, that will be all there is. In celebration and tribute, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}