Portland, Oregon

Nik McLaughlin

I build software that belongs to you.

Curiosity · Compassion · Can-do

About

🌊 Hi, I'm Nik.

I'm a dot-connector by nature: between people, between disciplines, between what we all say and what we actually mean. I studied philosophy and anthropology to understand people and systems, and then I spent a decade applying that lens to businesses of all sizes.

I've led product, engineering, and support teams at SkyVerge and started Plugin Jam to give people a place to make things together. Lately I'm thinking and writing about AI in WordPress, helping humans understand it and making sure they are empowered by it.

I live in Portland with too many side projects, not enough records, a task-driven toddler, and particular opinions about pour-overs.

Nik and Ollie

What I Do

Bridging teams, tools, and people.

🧭

Brand & Product Leadership

Owning brand strategy, product direction, and cross-functional alignment from roadmap to revenue.

🗣

Developer Advocacy & Community

Conferences, hackathons, contributor events, and education. Building the connective tissue around open source ecosystems.

⚡

AI & Technical Depth

LLM integrations, RAG pipelines, MCP tooling, and agentic engineering with a decade of full-stack development to back it up.

🔗

Organizational Navigation

Connecting Engineering, Product, and Go-To-Market so the right work ships at the right time.

Around the Web

Building beyond the day job.

I build projects that are more poem than product. I also like to talk about AI, open source community, and sometimes write actual poetry.

Read the blog
🤝 Community

Plugin Jam

An independent community event brand for WordPress builders.

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🔧 Project

Baton

A workflow orchestration plugin for the WordPress Abilities API.

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🤝 Community

WordPress Core AI Team

Contributing to the AI initiative in WordPress core — helping shape how the platform adopts and governs AI tooling.

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Recent Appearances

Let's talk.