What is your name and where in the world are you?
Name: Sven Lehnert
Address: Düsseldorf, Germany
Can you tell me a bit about your background?
I’m living with my wife and daughter in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Since 2001 I’ve been earning my money with developing. I started as a java developer developing financial controlling software. After 2 years, I decided that this can’t be my goal and started to go my own way as a freelancer. The first years I just traveled around the globe and tried out what the world could offer me, working in many different jobs, to get a bit more life experience. Around 2007 I started to build a local community for subculture with a friend of mine. At this time BuddyPress popped up and inspired us. Step by step we saw ourselves developing themes and plugins. Things continued, and in the end, we decided to concentrate 100% on developing and designing themes and plugins.
Are you a full-time plugin developer or is it your bit on the side?
Full-time
Why did you decide to put your development efforts into WordPress?
I love the idea of open source, and believe that this is my way.
When I started to look for an open source system to work with I quickly found out, WordPress and BuddyPress is the place for me to stay. There are many thoughts in my mind, why I think GPL is more as just a license, it’s a way of life, but this would blow this interview.
How much experience do you have working with WordPress?
3 years developing plenty of websites, plugins and themes for WordPress. I’m not a ninja, but I feel very home in all the php files, hooks and filters 
Can you tell me a bit about your plugin and why you wanted to develop it? (e.g was it to solve a problem you encountered, was it for someone else, or did you just wake up inspired one morning?)
It was my starting point, I wanted to create a BuddyPress community and this plugin was needed. In the end, I just continued to develop the plugin itself, because many people were already using it.
What other plugins have you worked on?
Have a look at my WordPress profile, there are 5 free plugins where I gave my part or did the whole plugin.
But most of my plugin developments are individual plugins for customers.
Do you have a favorite plugin?
BuddyPress!
Any chance of a sneak preview of future plugins?
I’m into BuddyPress theme developing at the moment and building a framework I will upload into the repository hopefully end of next week.
The theme framework will deliver you all functions and classes you’ll need to create a highly customizable WordPress theme with options page. file-uploader, color-pickers…
For more info go here.
Tell me a bit about your development setup and process. What’s your workspace like? Why?
We try to work as funny as possible. Mostly I work with 3 other guys together, listen to music and getting nuts 
The Places are changing all the time. It makes us tired to hang around too long in our office.
What are your essential programs, accessories, toys for developing? What helps you get the work done? Are there any pieces of software you think you should use but you don’t?
My MacBook, Aptana, Filezilla, Firebug and all the great stuff. There is nothing I’m missing at this time.
Do you have any favourite plugin development snacks or habits?
Tea and that’s it, I should eat more often…
What else do you do apart from develop great WordPress plugins?
First of all I have a 2 years old daughter, my wife and I split the day, so half of the day I’m with my daughter.
Further I love traveling, nature and play music, drumming and percussion.
