Community Spotlight

Hello, Ohia! Which team are you a part of, and what is your role?

Howdy! This is my second year on the Community Team and both years I have been the Design Team bridge. This year I am on the sub-committee for the Kid’s Workshop, WordCamp Connect, and Community Booth.

Where are you from / where are you based?

I am from Akron, Ohio, which is why you’ll see a Z in my words where you might think there should be an S. I have lived in Spain for over 4 years and am currently based in beautiful Granada.

When did you first get involved with the WordPress project, and have you contributed to the project previously?

Well it all started in 2009 when I interned at a Joomla! shop in Asheville, NC. I spent about 9 months there and then moved on to freelance work still building with, you guessed it, Joomla!.

Around 2010 I started working for a non-profit called Our VOICE. I was part of the Preventative Education and Outreach team which meant creating curriculums around consent and healthy communication and then going into classrooms to teach about it.

The outreach part was basically a ton of hours standing behind a table doing what a lot of our beloved sponsors do at WordCamps. I designed all of our SWAG and handed it out to anyone who cared to listen. When we realized that the Our VOICE website was in need of updates I stepped up and took on that responsibility too, because hey, I knew my way around a module manager, didn’t I? 

My forward momentum and thrill for a new project came to a crawl when I realized their site was built with WordPress. I had to teach myself how to use this new backend, and it was not easy because that was back before YouTube had a tutorial for learning everything you could possibly want to know about, in multiple languages, 24 hours a day, to infinity and beyond.

I stayed awake until all hours of the night reading forums, drinking coffee, and pulling my hair out while lurking in the community. A couple of years in and I became a first time attendee in 2012 at Atlanta WordCamp. Six years later in 2018 I found my way to WordCamp Kent, Ohio. After that it took me another decade to return to the Community even though I was working with WordPress almost every day.

When I saw that WCEU was in Porto in 2022 I bought a ticket and then when the call for volunteers came out I applied and got assigned to be a swag wrangler. That was where I first met Jose Luis Losada, who was on the volunteer team that year. He told me that the team thought my entry was maybe spam because I didn’t use a last name. Fortunately I forgot that I had applied to be a volunteer in the first call and filled the form out more than once. My background doing community outreach would be perfect for this, I always get super energized in situations where I’m meeting people in that rapid-fire kind of way. I had so much fun that I applied to be an organizer in 2023 for WCEU in Athens and was selected by Estela Rueda to be on the Community Team. As we got closer to the event I was asked to help with the WAPUU and ended up making WAthena, the official WCEU23 mascot, in just 6 hours while riding on a bus to WordCamp Lisbon. 

Since then my involvement in the WordPress project has escalated quickly. Living in Spain I have had many many opportunities to attend, volunteer, organize, and even MC WordCamps and Meetups. 

In July 2023 I jumped on last-minute, to be a part of the 6.4 release cycle which called for participation from gender-underrepresented humanoids in the WordPress open source project. I was added to the design cohort and ended up being a noteworthy contributor in the credits (that made me feel pretty cool). Most recently I helped lead a design table (in Spanish, YIKES) with Ana Cirujano during Valencia’s Contributor Day. Currently, I am actively learning how to respond to GitHub tickets on matters that need design and design feedback and I’m building sites with the block editor growing and learning along with WordPress.

Something that I think is really special about WordPress is that all contributors have a profile and it keeps track of all the things you add to the project. If you’re curious to know what I get up to next, mine is here: https://profiles.w.org/ohia/

Which team are you on, and what is the team responsible for?

The Community Team manages Contributor Day, Community Booth, Kid’s Workshop, Wellness Track, and WordCamp Connect. We also collect all the side event registrations and get them to the Comms Team to be published so that while you’re at WCEU you never have to stop partying or exploring or networking.

Unless, of course, you want to and then you just go to the WCEU quiet room and take a break and a breath. In general Community Team seeks to infuse fun and might I say, even a bit of mischief to your WCEU experience.

What are you and your team working on at the moment?

We’re currently brewing up some activities and games that get attendees to connect with each other, visit sponsors, and maybe even find a few hidden surprises around the gorgeous Lingotto Exhibition Centre.

We also really want people to come visit us at the Community Booth which we consider to be a central hub of the event. This year we are highlighting sustainability and at the booth so we’re thinking of impactful and interactive ways to do that.

What are you excited about for WordCamp Europe?

Well I was looking forward to meeting Remkus but that just happened at State of the Word so now my list of top 5 things to be excited about for WCEU24 would have to be:

1. Seeing all my comrades from the international WordPress community
2. Exploring gorgeous Torino
3. The SWAG designs
4. Feeling that electric buzz from networking, learning, creating, and bonding
5. Italian catering!!! Mwah (chef’s kiss)!

What would you say to people thinking of applying as an organiser or volunteer for WordCamp Europe?

I ask a lot of people if they have ever considered organizing or why they haven’t yet and usually the answer is that they are too busy or that being on the team might be too much work. For me, it’s not. 

Organizers are selected around October, so the teams have ample time to create a roadmap and execute action items. This year the Community Team is made up of 9 people, so our workload is spread out. And, while you do have to put in some effort and time, what you put in you will get back tenfold.

I feel a connection to all the people on my teams from both years and also to ALL the other organizers when I meet them at events throughout the year and to me that is invaluable. 

If you do apply make sure you understand what each team does and include in your application what your preference is and why. I am a natural networker, I love to support people and make them feel welcomed and at ease so the work I do for the Community Team feels like a treasure rather than a task.

If you have been on the organising team for previous WCEU’s, what are one or two things you learned from the experience?

Oh, JEEZ. Well last year we wanted to celebrate the Museum of Block Art so that was my motivation to finally learn how to use the block editor (that’s just between me and you though so don’t tell anyone else it took me so long).

The biggest thing I learned was that we are all just people doing our best. I witnessed a lot of grace last year and saw a lot of encouragement and knowledge passed down from veteran organizers to new ones. Everyone’s contribution matters and in the end there is a profound sense of gratitude shared between each and every one of us.