A New Direction for My Agency: Northbound 🔗 **Source:** [A New Direction for My Agency: Northbound](https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [wordpress, strategy, consulting] > author: Remkus > source: remkusdevries.com > reference: [https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/] > date created: 2026-02-17 00:00 > > # 🏷️ Title: A New Direction for My Agency: Northbound > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - What happened. - Truer than North, Remkus’s long-running WordPress agency, is being reframed around Northbound, a formal ecosystem-level advisory offering. - Why it matters. - It shifts focus from pure implementation to strategy, positioning, and long-term impact within the WordPress ecosystem. - Key stakeholders. - WordPress product companies, agencies, and hosts seeking better ecosystem fit, partnerships, and growth. - Risks and tradeoffs. - Less emphasis on execution work; requires clients willing to invest in long-term advisory rather than deliverables. - Bottom line. - Northbound becomes the strategic “north star,” with consultancy and agency work supporting clearly defined ecosystem-aligned directions. ## 📖 Main Content - Explain the core arguments in plain language. - Over 20 years, Truer than North evolved from building WordPress sites into high-performance, complex implementations and long-term partnerships. - Parallel to this, Remkus did broad consultancy: architecture, performance, partnerships, go‑to‑market, and helping companies enter or grow within WordPress. - He argues WordPress behaves less like a simple platform and more like a complex market or ecosystem of products, agencies, hosts, contributors, and incentives, where misreading the ecosystem often hurts otherwise solid products. - His accumulated experience across agencies, products, hosting, events, and community work gives him a “systems-level” perspective on how decisions ripple through WordPress. - The shutdown of Guildenberg, which was helping companies navigate the WordPress ecosystem, crystallized that he had already been doing similar work informally and could formalize it as a dedicated service. - Northbound is that formalization: a long-term advisory practice focused on product direction, partnerships, positioning, visibility, and second-order effects, rather than deliverables or outsourced execution. - Consultancy remains, but scoped to problem-led, clearly bounded engagements (architecture reviews, performance, scalability, workflows, evaluations) within the broader direction set by Northbound. - Agency execution becomes supportive and strategy-led, rather than the core of the business. - Add sourced context and define terms. - “WordPress ecosystem” here includes core, plugins, themes, hosting, agencies, events, and community norms shaping incentives and collaboration. - “Second-order effects” refers to downstream, often unintended consequences of strategic decisions (e.g., how a pricing change affects partners and perception over time). - Note uncertainties or contested claims. - The claim of having a “unique and incredibly broad perspective” is plausible given his roles but still self-assessed. - The degree to which ecosystem-level advisory can be standardized vs. highly bespoke is not detailed. ### 🗒️ Notes - The article opens by marking “twenty years” of running a WordPress agency and describes an evolution from basic site builds to “high-performance builds, complex WooCommerce implementations, infrastructure decisions, performance optimization, scaling challenges, and long-term client partnerships.” - Consultancy has been ongoing for “almost fifteen years,” covering: - Advising agencies on architecture and performance. - Helping hosting companies with positioning and partnerships. - Supporting product companies on roadmaps and ecosystem fit. - Guiding new entrants into the WordPress market. - The nature of questions shifted “less about implementation and more about direction,” emphasizing fit within the broader ecosystem rather than isolated technical problems. - WordPress is framed as “often described as a platform, but in practice it behaves more like a market,” a network where decisions ripple outward and alignment, incentives, and timing matter as much as code quality. - Remkus draws on experience from: - Agency work and product advisory. - Partnerships Manager at Yoast. - People and partner initiatives at Servebolt. - Founding/organizing WordCamp Europe and WordCamp Netherlands. - Launching Within WordPress. - He notes recurring patterns: - Products fail not due to weak code but poor ecosystem reading. - Partnerships fail due to misaligned incentives. - Companies sometimes work against the community they depend on. - Small tweaks in positioning, collaboration, or timing can unlock outsized growth. - Guildenberg’s shutdown acted as a catalyst; its premise (helping companies navigate the WordPress ecosystem) was “directionally correct,” confirming a real and ongoing need. - Having been a Guildenberg partner, Remkus understood their model and saw an opportunity to “step into the void” in a way consistent with what he’d already been doing informally. - This led to a clear articulation: “Northbound is the formalization of the ecosystem-level advisory work I have been doing for years.” - Northbound is defined as: - Long-term advisory for companies building and growing inside WordPress. - Focused on product direction, partnerships, positioning, visibility, and second-order effects. - Not about deliverables or outsourced execution; rather, about informed decisions in an interconnected system. - Northbound’s ideal clients: - Companies expanding into WordPress who need to understand how it truly operates. - Existing WordPress players wanting sharper positioning and better partnerships. - Product teams seeking ecosystem alignment before scaling and who recognize that “visibility, relationships, and incentives matter as much as features.” - Northbound draws on: - Product strategy and go‑to‑market thinking. - Deep technical knowledge of WordPress and infrastructure. - Partnership development. - Narrative and content leverage via Within WordPress and similar channels. - Organizational insight from formal education in HR, Business IT, and Commercial Economics. - Collaboration with partners in domains where he’s less strong. - Consultancy is repositioned as: - Scoped, problem-led work: architecture reviews, performance/scaling decisions, workflow improvements, product evaluations, and well-defined challenges. - Structural change: - Previously: agency at the center with consultancy orbiting it. - Now: Truer than North operates as Northbound (direction) plus Consultancy (problem-solving) with agency execution as needed. - “Northbound sets direction. Consultancy solves defined problems within that direction. Agency execution supports where necessary.” - The shift is described as a consolidation, not a pivot, reflecting the reality that the work has “moved upstream” over time. - Closing emphasis: after two decades, his highest-value contribution is helping companies understand how their decisions interact with the ecosystem they rely on, and Northbound makes this focus explicit. ## 📚 References - A New Direction for My Agency: Northbound — original article (https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/) - Within WordPress project (for context on narrative/channel leverage) — https://withinwp.com/ (assumed) - WordPress.org — ecosystem context — https://wordpress.org/ ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Paragraph A paraphrase. - Over twenty years, the author’s agency has evolved from simple WordPress site-building into complex, high-performance projects and long-term, strategic collaborations, while his parallel consultancy increasingly focused on direction, alignment, and ecosystem fit rather than one-off implementation problems. - Paragraph B paraphrase. - Seeing WordPress as a dynamic market with interdependent actors, and prompted by Guildenberg’s closure, he is formalizing his long-standing ecosystem advisory work into Northbound, which will guide companies’ strategic decisions, with consultancy and selective agency work supporting that overarching direction. ## 📰 Newsletter WordPress veteran Remkus is reshaping his long-running agency, Truer than North, around a new strategic advisory offering: Northbound. Instead of just shipping sites or optimizing stacks, Northbound helps companies read the WordPress ecosystem—product fit, partnerships, positioning, and long-term impact. If you’re planning a big move in WordPress (new product, market shift, or partnership strategy), this kind of upstream guidance may save years of trial and error. Learn more: https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/ ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: - Design talks and content around “WordPress as an ecosystem/market” to help developers think beyond code. - Education: - Create workshops on product–ecosystem alignment and performance/architecture patterns in WordPress. - Developer experience: - Publish example-driven guides for scalable WordPress architectures aligned with common hosting and plugin patterns. - Developer marketing: - Run campaigns that emphasize ecosystem fit (compatibility, partnerships, community impact) rather than just features. - Community management: - Facilitate discussions between product teams, agencies, and hosts about incentives, collaborations, and shared roadmaps. - Internal/external/cross-project: - Establish feedback loops from agencies and hosts back into product roadmaps. #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: - Document contribution and collaboration policies for WordPress-related work. - License Compliance: - Ensure GPL and related obligations are clearly understood for WordPress products. - Security Management: - Define processes to coordinate security disclosures with upstream WordPress and major plugins. - Software Inventory: - Track WordPress plugins/themes used internally with SBOM-like inventories. - Developer Support: - Offer guidance on open-source-friendly business models within WordPress. - Community Engagement: - Set up funding or contribution commitments to key WordPress ecosystem projects. - Strategic Alignment: - Align OSPO KPIs with ecosystem health (upstream contributions, plugin sustainability). #### Community - Maintainers: - Offer roadmap clinics focused on ecosystem dependencies and partner alignment. - Contributors: - Provide onboarding guides mapping how contributions impact agencies, hosts, and products. - Sponsors: - Publish transparent reports on how sponsorships support sustainable WordPress infrastructure. - Ecosystem: - Run cross-project incident drills (e.g., security, breaking changes) across themes/plugins/hosts. #### WordPress - Core: - Clarify priorities that directly impact plugin/theme ecosystems (e.g., performance, backward compatibility). - Core Performance: - Track ecosystem-facing metrics (plugin compatibility, real-world page performance). - Core AI: - Create guidance on responsible AI integrations within WordPress products. - **Core Program Team:** - Coordinate with event organizers and major product companies on release messaging and adoption. - Mobile: - Improve how mobile experiences reflect ecosystem diversity (block themes, patterns). - Playground: - Use it to demo ecosystem-aligned architectures and plugin combinations. - Community: - Offer meetup kits focused on ecosystem strategy, not just development. - Training: - Create learning paths around “WordPress product management and ecosystem strategy.” - Marketing: - Highlight successful ecosystem-aligned products and partnerships. - Support: - Surface common integration issues between core, plugins, and hosts. - Design: - Provide UX patterns that account for multi-plugin realities. - Documentation: - Document expectations for ecosystem compatibility and cooperation. - Photos: - Encourage imagery representing diverse WordPress roles (agencies, hosts, product teams). - TV: - Curate talks on WordPress business strategy and ecosystem navigation. - Polyglots: - Emphasize localization as a strategic growth lever for products. - Accessibility: - Tie accessibility improvements to ecosystem-wide adoption patterns. - Meta: - Improve .org tools that show plugin/theme compatibility and ecosystem relationships. - CLI: - Offer commands that support common agency workflows (multi-site, staging). - Hosting: - Develop shared expectations for performance, security, and compatibility with key plugins/themes. - Tide: - Use scores to inform ecosystem health metrics, not only individual plugins. - Openverse: - Promote it as part of a broader content-creation ecosystem inside WordPress. - Themes: - Provide mentoring and guidelines for block themes aligned with core direction. - Plugins: - Encourage provenance, security practices, and clear partnership models. #### The WPOCC - Programs: - Offer fellowships focused on WordPress product strategy and ecosystem leadership. - Projects: - Run documentation sprints on “how to navigate the WordPress ecosystem.” - Funding experiments: - Pilot matched grants for plugins that invest in partnerships and community engagement. ### FAIR - Technical independence: - Encourage local evaluation of plugin performance and reliability. - Policies and covenants: - Advocate transparency for funding and business models around key WordPress infrastructure. - Productized governance artifacts: - Offer templates for partnership agreements and ecosystem-aligned charters. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - H1: WordPress companies that receive structured ecosystem-level advisory (like Northbound) achieve faster, more sustainable growth than those that only focus on implementation. - H2: Misaligned incentives in partnerships are a primary cause of failed WordPress collaborations, even when technical integration is solid. - H3: Small changes in positioning and timing can produce disproportionate adoption gains for WordPress products. - H4: Framing WordPress as an ecosystem/market leads decision-makers to different (and better) strategic choices than framing it as a simple CMS platform. - H5: Long-term advisory relationships produce better outcomes than short, deliverable-based engagements for complex WordPress products. ### 📊 Methodology - Study designs, data sources, and analyses: - Comparative case studies of WordPress products/hosts with and without ecosystem advisory; track revenue, installs, churn, and partnership outcomes. - Surveys and interviews with agencies, product teams, and hosts about failed and successful partnerships to identify patterns of incentive alignment. - A/B test positioning and launch timing for similar features in comparable plugins/themes; measure adoption and retention. - Experimental workshops: present the same strategic problem framed as “platform” vs. “ecosystem” and compare chosen strategies. ### ❓ Questions - What specific metrics best capture “ecosystem alignment” for a WordPress company? - How can advisory insights be scaled beyond 1:1 engagements without losing nuance? - Which roles inside a company (product, marketing, leadership) benefit most from ecosystem-level guidance? - How do community norms constrain or enable certain business models in WordPress? ### 🔮 Future Research - Develop a typology of WordPress ecosystem roles (agency, host, plugin, theme, SaaS adjacent) and their typical incentives. - Map common failure patterns for WordPress products entering the ecosystem. - Explore standardized playbooks for partnerships that align incentives between plugins, hosts, and agencies. ### 💡 Implications - Practice: - Companies should invest in ecosystem understanding early, not as an afterthought once growth stalls. - Policy: - Community and platform policies could better articulate expectations around partnerships and user impact. - Security: - Ecosystem-informed strategies can reduce security risk by aligning upgrade paths, dependencies, and communication. - Education: - Training programs should incorporate ecosystem thinking alongside technical skills. - Funding models: - Investors and sponsors might evaluate WordPress startups partly on their ecosystem strategy. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level estimate: - Approx. Grade 9–11 (Flesch-Kincaid-style), with clear structure and minimal jargon. #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: - Clean headings and logical narrative; no diagrams. - Improve: - Add diagrams showing WordPress ecosystem actors and relationship flows; before/after positioning examples. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: - No audio. - Improve: - Provide a 3–5 minute audio summary or podcast-style discussion of the shift to Northbound. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: - Strong narrative, clear definitions (ecosystem vs. platform), examples of failures and successes. - Improve: - Add explicit analogies (e.g., “WordPress as a city marketplace”) and brief glossary for terms like “second-order effects.” #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: - None. - Improve: - Include step-by-step exercises (e.g., map your product’s position in the ecosystem; identify key partners and incentives). #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: - Cause-and-effect reasoning (misread ecosystem → product struggles; aligned positioning → growth). - Improve: - Add simple decision trees or checklists for evaluating ecosystem moves. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: - Implicit focus on relationships and partnerships. - Improve: - Suggest discussion prompts for teams or mastermind groups around ecosystem strategy. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: - Reflective narrative invites personal consideration of one’s own business path. - Improve: - Add reflection questions at the end (e.g., “Where is your work moving upstream?”). #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: - Ecosystem metaphor resonates but is not extended. - Improve: - Expand ecological analogies (niches, symbiosis, competition) to explain roles in WordPress. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: - Basic HTML with headings likely used; simple text article. - Improve: - Ensure clear heading hierarchy and descriptive link text; add lang attributes if missing. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: - Standard blog layout likely keyboard-accessible. - Improve: - Confirm visible focus states and skip-to-content link. #### Contrast and readability - Present: - Modern blog design typically offers adequate contrast; text-first layout. - Improve: - Verify 4.5:1 contrast, line height, and font size; avoid light-grey text. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: - Responsive design likely; content reflows on mobile. - Improve: - Test at 200% zoom; ensure no clipping and consider prefers-reduced-motion settings. #### Media and captions - Present: - Text-only; no media issues. - Improve: - If media are added later, include captions and transcripts. #### Forms and interactions - Present: - Possibly minimal (comments, newsletter signup). - Improve: - Ensure labels, error messages, and touch target sizes meet WCAG 2.2 AA. #### Standards reference - Map gaps to WCAG 2.2 AA: - 1.4.x (contrast, text size), 2.1.x (keyboard), 2.4.x (navigation), 3.3.x (input assistance). ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: - Focuses on WordPress ecosystem roles; limited cultural scope. - Improve: - Add examples from diverse regions and markets where WordPress is used. #### Inclusive language - Present: - Neutral, professional tone; no exclusionary language. - Improve: - Define jargon (e.g., “ecosystem,” “second-order effects”) in plain language for non-native speakers. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: - Structured headings and clear paragraphs. - Improve: - Further chunk content with summaries and bullet points; keep consistent patterns. #### Representation - Present: - Narrative centered on the author; no imagery. - Improve: - If adding visuals, ensure diverse representation in photos/illustrations. #### Psychological safety - Present: - Respectful, reflective tone; no inflammatory content. - Improve: - Where comments or community spaces exist, link to clear community guidelines. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Types: - Inductive and causal reasoning: from repeated patterns (product/partnership failures and successes) to general claims about ecosystem alignment. - Strengths: - Draws from long, varied experience; acknowledges complexity; avoids over-claiming specific quantitative impact. - Clarifications: - Could be strengthened by concrete case examples and metrics. #### Fallacies - Potential: - Appeal to authority/self: reliance on author’s unique experience as primary evidence. - Fix: - Add anonymized case studies or data to support claims about misalignment and successful adjustments. #### Tone of voice - Tone: - Reflective, confident, and modestly promotional. - Examples: - “For years, that ecosystem-level perspective was simply part of how I worked.” - “This shift is not a pivot away from what I have been doing. It is a consolidation of it.” ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: - No denial or minimization of harm; article is not about conflict or accusation. - Attack: - No attacks on others; competition is discussed in abstract, structural terms. - Reverse victim/offender: - Not present; the author does not position himself as a victim but as a guide responding to a real need. ## 🎯 Conclusion - Bottom line: - Truer than North is reorganizing around Northbound, a formal long-term advisory practice that helps WordPress companies navigate a complex ecosystem—aligning product, partnerships, and positioning—while consultancy and selective agency work execute against that strategic direction. - Practical next steps for readers: - Audit how your product or agency currently fits into the WordPress ecosystem: partners, incentives, and community expectations. - Consider where you need upstream guidance versus tactical implementation, and whether a long-term advisory relationship could accelerate your alignment and growth. --- ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix (append after 🎯 Conclusion) ### 📚 Literature Split Pad - Purpose: Stage Konik CEE units that become per-source Literature notes. - Split level: **H3**. - Include verbatim quotes under 25 words and a [view highlight] link. ### [H1] Northbound formalizes ecosystem advisory work > [!quote] [A New Direction for My Agency: Northbound](https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/) by [[Remkus]] via [[remkusdevries.com]]. Published 2026-02-17. > “Northbound is the formalization of the ecosystem-level advisory work I have been doing for years.” Two lines: context and use. Cite data if relevant. [view highlight](https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/#H1) #xref #articleseed ID:rw_[MISSING] ### [H2] WordPress behaves more like a market > [!quote] [A New Direction for My Agency: Northbound](https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/) > “WordPress is often described as a platform, but in practice it behaves more like a market.” Two lines: context and use. [view highlight](https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/#H2) #xref ID:rw_[MISSING] --- ### 🔖 Atomic Split Pad (Zettel Candidates) - Purpose: Promote reusable claims into Atomic notes. - Split level: **H4**. - Each item: one idea, present tense, specific, testable. #### [Z1] WordPress functions as an interconnected market - WordPress decisions ripple through plugins, hosts, agencies, and users, behaving like a market rather than a single platform. - Links: [[WordPress-Ecosystem]] [[Platform-vs-Market]] #### [Z2] Long-term advisory outperforms ad-hoc consulting - For complex WordPress products, ongoing ecosystem advisory yields better strategic outcomes than isolated consulting projects. - Links: [[Advisory-Models]] [[WordPress-Product-Strategy]] --- ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue (Extract by Selection) - Purpose: Capture quick actions or sparks for Fleeting notes. - Extraction: **Select one line** → “Refactor: Extract selection to new note (content only).” - Keep each line short and self-contained. - [F1] Map our product’s current position in the WordPress ecosystem — context/https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/ #fleeting #inbox - [F2] Draft a partnership incentives checklist for WordPress collaborations — context/https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/ #fleeting #inbox - [F3] Evaluate whether we need long-term ecosystem advisory vs. ad-hoc consulting — context/https://remkusdevries.com/a-new-direction-for-my-agency-northbound/ #fleeting #inbox --- <!-- deep-read:sections end -->