A couple years ago I noticed that someone had done a talk at WordCamp Brighton called “The Hero’s Journey“. As you can imagine it immediately caught my eye and I went hunting to find this cool person. As it turns out it was Tamsin Taylor from Brighton and she had a great story. As I…
In the early days of HeroPress there were quite a few Indian contributors, for a variety of reasons. India has long been a technology powerhouse, but the WordPress community was just beginning to get traction. I got to meet many Indians and even traveled there for WordCamp Pune. The stereotype that “India is cheap” is…
About a year ago, Christie Chirinos wrote the essay “What I Do Does Not Define Who I Am“. It felt like a big deal at the time, and it was, but like most big deals, it slowly faded from memory. That’s one of the reasons I do these replays, for the benefit of my own…
When HeroPress started, a stated intention was to be a voice for people on the fringe of the Western WordPress culture. In my head I thought this geographical, and involved places like Africa and Asia. I quickly came to realize that everyone is on the fringe of something. This month’s HeroPress replay is titled “Doing…
A couple years ago I was at Prestige Conf in Minneapolis. I noticed a young woman sitting by herself, patiently waiting for the talks to start, and thought I’d say hi. Her name was Stacey, and she was a freelance web developer and design expert. She was had recently quit her job to go freelance…
It’s no secret that HeroPress was greatly helped in its early days by people from India. Jeet, Saurabh, Aditya, Alexander, and many others gave deep and meaningful advice on how I, as a white American male, should approach the task I had set before me. This is one of the reasons it makes me so…
One of the things I’ve loved most about HeroPress is getting to know people far away. It’s getting harder and harder to name a country where I can’t say “Hey, I have a friend there!”. This week I’m in Australia for WordCamp Sydney, and I’m crazy excited about all the people I’m going to meet….
Being a remote worker makes it easy to hide from a world that you find scary or dangerous. If you’re never in the presence of other people they can’t hit you. Retreat becomes so easy. Marius Jensen from Sola, Norway grew up in a society that did not care for him, and made him want…
We all have our reasons for the things we do. Money, love, orders, etc. Vladimir Petkov started using WordPress because it solved a problem. As the years went by it continued to solve problems, and he continued to use it. His time to give back didn’t arrive until much later though. His 7 year old…
WordCamps have a unique power to impact lives and careers. Without people and community, WordPress is simply software. But when you add in a large group of passionate people, people who are and are interested, everything changes. There’s excitement, encouragement, and education. Entrepreneurship can be a long and lonely road. Having a solid support community…
