North America

  • Second Chances: How A Trip Back Into The WordPress Community Saved My Life

    Often, we refuse change and don’t get a second opportunity to make things right. But for me, June 17, 2017, changed my life forever. A life-threatening heart event forced me to start over and in the short time since WordPress helped me rediscover myself and to do the things I truly love. At 10 am…

  • How the WordPress community contributes to human development

    In the beginning WordPress being an “open-source” platform concept was only an idea by Matt Mullenweg that was supposed to gather people to contribute for free for a greater cause with no guaranteed success. The idea to gather people around a vague and non-profit cause would not have succeeded without the generosity of WordPress pioneers,…

  • History and Future of Kids Heroes in WordPress

    Kids events are not a new thing in the WordCamp and WordPress event space, however, the number of these events happening around the world are on the rise. Kids events focus on teaching children how to become content creators, creative thinkers, and even business owners. Numerous repeat attendees have morphed their personal blogs into businesses…

  • I Am Cookie Dough

    I was always told I had to go to college. I was “gifted” so learning came easy and I enjoyed it.  From ages 6 to 18, I went to competitive accelerated schools designed to churn out college students. It was a narrow path I’d been set on, without encouragement to explore beyond. Majoring in theater…

  • My “Hero’s Journey” Through the Dark Underworld of WordPress Hosting

    The following is an expanded and updated version of my presentation at WordCamp Salt Lake City 2017. My girls love Moana. Especially when it first came to video and they could watch it every day… or two or three times a day if mom wasn’t feeling good or catching up on sleep from being up…

  • I Found My People

    When I was a kid not a single girl said “I want to be a web designer when I grow up”. Mostly because there was no world wide web. There weren’t video games either, until I was in junior high school and Pong came out. Back when I was a kid, girls mostly thought about…