It’s a sad day for the WordPress community. I write this with a heavy heart, that Jesse Petersen — a Genesis Preferred Developer, theme and plugin developer, and so much more — lost his fight with Cystic Fibrosis today.
The LOSS of a Great WordPress Community Member — Jesse Petersen!
Ahmad Awais
He was a WordPress user since 2005, a developer since 2008 and a friend to many.
Can you look over your life and say you’d be leaving those connected to you better off having known you? If not, start today.
— Jesse Ⓦ Petersen (@jpetersen) July 3, 2017
I’m pretty sure; I was better off knowing him! Many would agree!
I had built this plugin to say #Hi to the WP Crowd members, and Jesse was one of us. This is what I saw when I came to write this post in the WordPress admin panel. You’ll be missed! :(
Jesse Petersen#
I didn’t personally, know Jesse — but he was a great member of our community. I am not sure what to say. I got to know him better only after he went public with his Cystic Fibrosis genetic disease. I feel like telling you all about him in a few points below.
It’s my way to remember him! Jesse:
- He was a family man — a husband and a father to two adorable boys
- Most known for being a Genesis Preferred Developer
- A WordPress user since 2005, a developer since 2008 and a friend to many
- A plugin developer. His latest plugin was GenesisThe.me After Entry Widget Pro that added a widget after a post.
- He also has five plugins in the WordPress repository including Genesis Latest Tweets and Stealth Login Page. His last commit was only five days ago. :(
- A proud WordCamp Speaker, you can find him talking at WordPress.tv
- A member of The WP Crowd and was on many of our podcasts.
- He was also a Treehouse instructor
- More about him at this WCUS blog post
- Jeff wrote about Jesse on WPTavern
What Can We Do?#
I wish if the WordPress foundation — or a non-profit fund could be set up for folks like him. The awesome WordPress community could be more awesome that way!
Support His Family#
Jesse leaves behind a wife and two precious boys who will be going through a lot in the upcoming days. They also could use all the help they can get for last expenses and going forward. Ben Meredith has setup a Give fundraiser to help with the last expenses and for the family going forward.
Prayers for him and his family. I hope I can urge you to support Jesse’s family →
It’s the least we can do, for all his contribution towards our lives and the WordPress community!
Founder & CEO of Langbase.com — The most powerful serverless AI developer platform for building AI products · Ship agentic AI pipes, tools, and memory with BaseAI — The first Web AI Framework (free, open-source, local-first, deploys serverless, agentic pipes, tools, and memory)
Ex VP DevTools & DevRel Eng. Rapid · Google Developers Advisory Board (gDAB) founding member. 🧑💻 AI/ML/DevTools Angel Investor ❯ AI/ML Advisory Board San Francisco, DevNetwork
🎩 Award-winning Open Source Engineer & Dev Advocate 🦊 Google Developers Expert Web DevRel 🚀 NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter mission code contributor 🏆 8th GitHub Stars Award recipient with 5x GitHub Stars Award (Listed as GitHub's #1 JavaScript trending developer).
🌳 Node.js foundation Community Committee Outreach Lead, Member Linux Foundation, OpenAPI Business Governing Board, and DigitalOcean Navigator. 📟 Teaching thousands of developers Node.js CLI Automation and VSCode.pro course. Over 142 million views, 24 yrs Blogging, 108K developers learning, 200+ FOSS.
✌️ Author of various open-source dev-tools and software libraries utilized by millions of developers worldwide ⓦ WordPress Core Developer 📣 TEDx Speaker with 100+ international talks.
✨ As quoted by: Satya Nadella · CEO of Microsoft — Awais is an awesome example for developers.
💜 Loves his wife (Maedah) ❯ Read more about Ahmad Awais.
👋… Awais is mostly active on 𝕏 @MrAhmadAwais
📨
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Even though i did not know him, this makes me feel so sad. Tragical loss for his family and friends. I hope they find the strength to survive this terrible situation.