dynasties

Happy birthday to the Trotts

Owen Thomas · 09/17/07 04:28PM

It's a big year for Ben and Mena Trott, the husband-and-wife founders of Six Apart. The blog-software company was named after their six-days-apart birthdays; Mena just turned 30 yesterday, while Ben begins his fourth decade on Saturday. (Such a cradle-robber, that Mena.) Six Apart's board of directors just gave Mena the best present a founder could ask for — a new CEO, in the form of the eminently capable and blogging-savvy Chris Alden. Putting Alden, the former CEO of the Red Herring (back when it was an authority on tech, not its current incarnation) in charge should do much to clear up the company's bouts of less-than-transparent behavior. It's hard to top that kind of gift. So if you're in a generous mood, save it for the next generation of Trotts. The Trottlet, as some around the Six Apart office call Ben and Mena's next product release, is expected next month, according to their baby registry.

Silicon Valley's baby boom

Owen Thomas · 07/12/07 09:45AM

I never intended for the blogger-baby story, which began with the birth of Ollie Kottke to A-list bloggers Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan, to become quite such a saga, but news has a way of happening. Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield are no longer expecting a baby — they have a daughter, Sonnet Beatrice Butterfield, according to fellow Yahoo executive Bradley Horowitz. Here's the rundown on the rest of the couples mentioned in yesterday's baby poll, which — well done, readers — you guessed correctly.

What to expect when you're an executive who's expecting

Owen Thomas · 07/12/07 09:29AM

Why make such a fuss over who's disclosing their pregnancies? I worked at Wired Ventures, then the publisher of Wired magazine, in 1996 and 1997, in the midst of the agony of its failed IPO attempt. One controversy at the time was the disclosure that cofounder Jane Metcalfe, the magazine's publisher, was pregnant and planned to take maternity leave shortly after the planned IPO. For the record, no one I know believes that Metcalfe's pregnancy had anything to do with Wired's troubles. But for a top executive to take a leave is always a strain on a young, growing company, and is a fact best disclosed, as Wired Ventures did. Hence my surprise that Mena Trott waited until now to talk about her news. Caterina Fake, the cofounder of Flickr and an executive at Yahoo, has, by contrast, written publicly and often about her pregnancy. More on the status of Fake's pregnancy, and the rest of the couples mentioned in our poll, shortly.

The pregnant A-lister comes out

Owen Thomas · 07/12/07 08:59AM

Mena Trott, cofounder and president of Six Apart, the blog-software company, is pregnant. There, I said it — and now, so has she. Trott blames her superstitions as a first-time mother for keeping the pregnancy a secret for so long. The lack of disclosure, though, has been uncharacteristic for Trott who, as a spokesperson for her company, has long made blogging about herself an integral part of Six Apart's publicity strategy. Six Apart's new blogging site, Vox, however, makes it easier to keep some posts limited to a small circle of readers — which is part of how Trott kept her pregnancy quiet. For a blogger, work and home life are never far apart.

Let's play hide the baby

Owen Thomas · 07/11/07 03:26PM

Last week, the birth of a son (and future blogger) to Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan reminded us of another famous Web personality who triedhad a colleague try, bizarrely, to claim that the mom-to-be's pregnancy was "off the record." (Memo to other would-be secret-keepers: "Off the record" is always a matter of mutual agreement between reporter and source, not something you can declare unilaterally.) We asked for guesses on who it was, and you had lots of good ones. Now it's time to vote, picking out the baby-hiders from among these glamorous A-list bloggers. Pictures of the people you've speculated about, and a poll, after the jump.

A bouncing baby blog

Owen Thomas · 07/06/07 04:54PM

Jason Kottke, who was blogging long before anyone called it that, and Meg Hourihan, the cofounder of Pyra Labs, maker of Blogger, are the proud parents of Ollie Kottke. Mazel tov to the new mom and dad! We can't wait until Ollie starts IMing us tips about his A-list blogger parents. For those of you as thrilled as I am by news of the next generation of bloggers, here's a question: Which other famous A-list blogger couple is set to have a baby very soon — but who are going around telling people, absurdly, that the mom-to-be's very obvious bump is "off the record"? (Photo by jkottke)

Another Sulzberger Youngster Makes Good

Doree Shafrir · 06/28/07 03:01PM

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an op-ed piece by a 24-year-old Brooklyn lad named Ben Dolnick, about his summer working at the Central Park Zoo. Dolnick's first novel, Zoology, was published last month, and it's about an 18-year-old boy from Chevy Chase, Md. (where Dolnick is from, too!) who goes to work at the Central Park Zoo. In a wee review, the New Yorker wrote that "Dolnick seems to share some of his protagonist's immaturity, but he demonstrates an engaging lightness of touch." The book seems to be—we haven't read it—a pretty slight coming-of-age novel in which the protagonist barely comes of age. (It's blurbed by Jonathan Safran Foer, but still! UPDATE: We have learned that they went to the same D.C. private school.) Dolnick's doing pretty well for himself! It probably helps that Dolnick's mom, Lynn Dolnick, is Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr.'s cousin. Also, she sits on the board of the New York Times Company. Not that the Times, which seems to get its panties in a bunch about conflicts of interest and disclosures and the like, mentioned that. But there's more of this web to untangle.