If you’ve been reading our speaker profiles in the blog, you may have noticed that in each one I list what the speaker’s favorite jazz artist is (if they have one). Why am I asking about jazz, you might ask, or why should you care?

Since WordPress 1.0, major releases have been named after jazz musicians. WordPress core developers — and co-founder Matt Mullenweg most notoriously — share a common love of jazz music. It made sense and seemed fun to see where our speakers fall into the spectrum of jazz appreciation.

Jazz is a unique style of music where the performers play off of each other and the written music doesn’t matter as much as making sure there is a nonverbal communication with the other players through the music. It’s a lot like WordPress itself — there are millions of people using WordPress worldwide, thousands of people developing for WordPress or participating in the forums or the community. While these people may never speak to each other directly, all of it together plays into what WordPress is, why it is unique from other platforms, and ultimately determines where WordPress is going.

Last year, Matt launched jazz-quotes.com, a repository of quotes from various jazz musicians. It started with quotes that Matt had collected over the years, but soon added a form to submit quotes by a specific performer. While many of the quotes are specifically about music or other jazz musicians, many of them are inspirational nuggets that transcend music and can be applied to anything. I encourage you to visit Jazz Quotes if you’re curious about jazz, the performers, who a particular artist that the latest WordPress version was named after was, or if you are looking for inspiration. I promise that you won’t be disappointed; there’s something for everyone.

What’s your favorite jazz quote or jazz musician? Let us know in the comments!