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 grew up in the 90s and 2000s which was a weird time for technology. Part of me remembers carrying around a case of cassette tapes and the sound of dial-up occasionally screaming from the living room. The other half recalls hacking into my dad’s email from the shared family computer for the first time…
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…
I’ve been a web designer since 1996. In some ways, it’s hard for me to fathom. Those were the days of Netscape Navigator and table-based page layouts. I wrote every bit of HTML by hand on a seriously-underpowered computer and a tiny monitor. Definitely a far cry from where we are today. I was completely…
I’m jolted awake to the sound of the tones going off in my room. I knew that I hadn’t been asleep long because we’d already run a late call and it was still dark outside. Running to the truck, I hear the address come out over the radio for a medical call. It’s the third…
My Mom used to say that things you remember from your past the most are things that had an impact on who you are today. Negative or positive, they affected you in a way that helped create the person you are. The Early Days Her father said to her, “Jean, you are always welcome but…
هذا المقال متاح باللغة العربية I’m about to get real! Vulnerable! Transparent! & guess what…I don’t give a fuck! So buckle up boys…you’re about to go for a ride! Escape June 2014 when I decided to leave my life I’ve lived with my husband for thirteen years, left everything behind. My community I always knew,…
I remember when I was about 10 years and my mom got our first ever computer. She went to the store and got a bunch of CD’s which I was hyped about because I knew some of them were games. She gave me a yellow box that had “Microsoft FrontPage” on the front and said,…
“A place is only as good as the people you know in it. It’s the people that make the place.” ― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four This quote is a large part of the space WordPress holds within me. Coming from a career in Civil Engineering and a background of Industrial Technology WordPress as…
I never meant to become an activist. I swear. It was an accident. And yet here I am, celebrating my one year anniversary of leading the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training working group in the WordPress Community team. We are causing waves in the number of women and other underrepresented groups who are stepping up to…
