Ryan Boren (he/they), President, Co-Founder, Co-Creative Director
Ryan is a former WordPress lead developer who retired from tech in 2021 after 15 years at Automattic, the distributed company he helped start. He finished his time at Automattic working on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team and helping create and run the Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group. Building a community, a company, a platform, and an ERG was an intense ride full of mistakes and learning that Ryan distills into Stimpunks.
Ryan’s Bio CV
Howdy. I’m Ryan Boren (he/they), Co-Creative Director at Stimpunks Foundation, a nonprofit by and for neurodivergent, disabled, and queer people. I’m a retired tech worker turned wannabe sociologist.
CV: I helped start WordPress.org, WordPress.com, WordCamp.org, and Automattic.com, among the first fully distributed organizations.
About: Queer, Autistic, bipolar, hyperlexic, monotropic, PDA, RSD, exposure anxiety, threshold anxiety, situational mutism, power wheelchair user, neuromuscular disease, Stiff Person Syndrome, Scheuermann’s Kyphosis, Spondylolisthesis
Location: Dripping Springs, Texas, USA, named after the springs at the Milk House Branch of the Edwards Aquifer, a gathering place for the Tonkawa people, who were here before us. We’re a little west of Austin in Texas Hill Country.
Current SpIns: pens and paper, everyday carry/coping, punk rock, queercore, Ezra Furman, The Linda Lindas, Chappell Roan, The Last Dinner Party, food anime, Thai fisherman pants, Tokyo street fashion, solarpunk, solar energy, heat pumps, electrification, library economies, third places, epistemic injustice, scrollytelling, webtoons
What I am excited about: Developing and spreading our conception of Cavendish Space and Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
What makes me hopeful: The work we do at Stimpunks can be wildly painful. I pause for and appreciate every glimmer of hope and joy I encounter on the journey. “Power demands sad bodies. Power needs sadness because it can dominate it. Joy, in consequence, is resistance because joy doesn’t give up. Joy as a life force leads us in places where sadness can never go.” —Gilles Deleuze
More
- Access Rider — Ryan Boren — This rider exists so you don’t have to guess, and so I don’t have to spend the encounter explaining myself instead of doing the work. It says how to support my access needs so we both get something good out of working together.
- Write a Neurodivergent Collaboration Manual — the long version of how I work, and a guide to writing your own.
- Stiff Person Syndrome, Céline Dion, and Me — what SPS is, from the inside.