Episode 174 – WordCamp Birmingham Hallway Chats

In February Topher and Cate went to WordCamp Birmingham and Topher was able to interview both Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette in the hallway.

Introducing Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette at WordCamp Birmingham

In February Topher and Cate went to WordCamp Birmingham and Topher was able to interview both Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette in the hallway.

Aisha’s Links:

https://aishaadamsmedia.com/

https://wordpress.tv/speakers/aisha-adams/

https://www.facebook.com/aishaadamsmediagroup

Marcus’ Links

https://mburnette.com/

https://profiles.wordpress.org/mdburnette/

https://wordpress.tv/speakers/marcus-burnette/

Transcript:

Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher. This week we have an interesting collection of Hallway Chats from WordCamp Birmingham. A few months ago, Kate and I went down to work in Birmingham, and I got to talk with Aisha and Marcus. We’re going to listen to both of those interviews in this hour today. 

But before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. They’ve been really good to us and a faithful companion for a long time now. If you’re looking for a good web host, check out Nexcess. 

Hey, folks, this is Topher. I’m at WordCamp Birmingham. I’m here with Aisha, and we’re having an honest-to-goodness hallway chat right here in the lobby of the venue. Aisha, where are you from? 

Aisha: Hi, I’m so excited to be here. Actually, I’m originally from Birmingham, Alabama. 

Topher: Wow.

Aisha: And that is why WordPress, y’all, is so important. 

Topher: Good. You said “originally”. Are you still from here or did you go away? 

Aisha: I actually live in Asheville. Asheville, North Carolina.

Topher: Okay. All right. Awesome. So I don’t know the South. Is that very far away? Do you fly?

Aisha: It’s about six hours away. Have you not been to WordPress AVL?

Topher: No.

Aisha: WordPress AVL. You gotta come to WordCamp AVL.

Topher: Okay. 

Aisha: You gotta try it out. 

Topher: I will do that. Did you drive or fly to get here? 

Aisha: We drove. Actually, my husband… Whenever I do WordCamp, he’s like, “Let me just drop you off.” So he dropped me off and took a trip to Atlanta without me. 

Topher: Oh. That’s not so bad.

Aisha: So I’m here with all my friends and enjoying… Just enjoying being with… It’s been so long since we’ve been together, you know? 

Topher: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. So why are you here? What do you do for WordPress? 

Aisha: Mostly just have a good time and meet people and learn a lot of things. But I like to get back to the community that gives so much to me. So today I spoke on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And when I’m not speaking on DEI, I’m probably talking about being an influencer using social media marketing to promote your blog. So I have a WordPress blog that has 64,000 followers. And then I also have my business on WordPress site as well.

Topher: How are you measuring followers on your blog? What tool do you use to know that?

Aisha: I actually use my Facebook because it has the highest engagement. I’ve been very lucky… Facebook recently picked me up to do performance bonus. 

Topher: Oh, wow. 

Aisha: So I actually get pay per view, per click, per share, per comment.

Topher: Wow.

Aisha: Yeah. So that’s been an amazing journey. So Facebook is like the hub for kind of where I do everything. But I also use my analytics. I have… You know Jetpack?

Topher: Yes. 

Aisha: So I use the Jetpack plugin to track my analytics.

Topher: Okay, that’s cool. How long have you been doing this? How long you’ve been in WordPress?

Aisha: So a funny story. I was a school teacher and I had a car accident. I broke my neck, my wrist, and my leg. 

Topher: Oh.

Aisha: And my car had actually hydroplaned upside down into a body of water. And I was in the water and thinking to myself, “Yes, I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.” So when I get to the hospital, they’re wheeling me into surgery, because I’m in and out, in and out, and I’m telling the nurse, “You gotta call my boss and tell her I can’t make it today.” And she looks at me and she said, “Sweetie, it’s gonna be a lot of days that you won’t make it,” and I got even more excited. 

Topher: Okay, that’s your first clue that that’s not the job for you. 

Aisha: It’s time. It’s time. I’ve done my time. I love the kids, I’ve done enough. And I’m gonna be a famous writer. So I started a blog and I had a very boring blog, because I was trying veganism and you know how the vegans are. ?

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

Aisha: You go vegan, you got to tell everybody about it, how you did it and I would get like two people to my blog and be like, “If I could just get 20 people to my blog.” And a friend of mine reached out to me and he said, “Your blog is really nice, you have a really great platform, but you really have other things that we need to talk about. And right now, you will be more useful to us talking about those things.”

So I started actually writing for activists. So I worked with Black Lives Matter Birmingham-

Topher: Sure.

Aisha: …to tell some of the activism stories that they were working on. I talked to people who felt like they had been done wrong by the justice system. I still share a recipe-

Topher: Were you ghostwriting on their behalf or were you like doing journalism and telling their story?

Aisha: Journalism and telling their story and bringing people in and starting conversations about the things that mattered in my community.

Topher: Yeah, that’s good stuff. That’s better than veganism. 

Aisha: Of course. I’m not even vegan anymore. But you could still find some really good food.

Topher: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is really cool. I like that a lot. I have a personal project called HeroPress that facilitates people telling their stories about, you know, just the same sort of stuff. And it is very fulfilling to… because a lot of people I talk to, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t have a story. I’m not interesting. Why would anybody care?” And there’s an art to drawing that out, saying, “Listen, you are cool. If you do have a story, and it’s important, and you need to tell people. And then when they realize that that expression on their face, like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know that I had this.”

Aisha: How did you learn about that like the power of storytelling? How did that come to you? 

Topher: It’s funny. Now you’re interviewing me. When I was starting HeroPress, I didn’t know what it was going to be. My task was to come up with something. And I was talking to a young man in India, he was a developer, and he came to me frustrated one day said, “My company is failing. We’re not getting contracts from America. We don’t know what to do. What do I do?” 

And I said, “I don’t know. I’m not a businessman. I’m not in India. I don’t know any of this stuff. But I went looking for somebody else who could answer that. So I found some business people in India-

Aisha: Oh, wow.

Topher: …who knew how to do it and I connected them. And they will help him. And then I thought, Okay, so this is what I want to do. I want to find people in repressed economies or whatever and help them. But I don’t want to come in as the great white savior and say, Here’s what you should be doing. I want to get people who are their neighbors who already succeeded, and then connect with them.

So that began my journey of finding those people. I go into a community and I find that somebody who’s done something. And often enough, they don’t know they’ve done something. Like, I have a job and I’m working, and like you have it, you’re working, they’re not, so tell them how you did it. 

Aisha: So you’re a connector and you’re also an encourager. 

Topher: Yeah. 

Aisha: That is wonderful leadership. 

Topher: It’s very, very fun. Probably because I mean that’s what fulfills me. Everybody loves what fulfills them. That’s my thing. 

Aisha: Nice.

Topher: Well, thank you for talking with me. I hope to see you again. Do you get around to other WordCamps?

Aisha: Yeah. I’ve done, of course, WordCamp Asheville and WordCamp Birmingham but also WordCamp Philly and WordCamp Jacksonville and WordCamp Greenville and [inaudible Toron?].

Topher: Do you go to WordCamp Philly proper or do you go to US in Philly?

Aisha: I actually went to WordCamp Philly proper.

Topher: I did that once. Maybe twice. I’ve been to Jacksonville but none of the others you mentioned.

Aisha: I have not gone to worlds yet. I really want to go. So hopefully I will get an opportunity someday.

Topher: Yeah. You should do US. It’s not that far north this time.

Aisha: Okay. Where is it gonna be? 

Topher: It’s right next to Washington DC. 

Aisha: Okay. So what? Virginia? 

Topher: I don’t remember the name of the town. And I’m not sure. It might even be in DC proper.

Aisha: Oh.

Topher: But it’s that close. 

Aisha: I love Disney. I spent time there and I’ve been there for a while. 

Topher: So. Yeah, yeah. It’ll be fun.

Aisha: Cool. It’s so great talking to you. Thanks for sharing your story.

Hi everybody. This is Topher. I’m at WordCamp Birmingham and I am here with Marcus Burnette. And he’s manning the GoDaddy booth with Jessica. Welcome, Marcus.

Marcus: Good, Topher. How are you doing?

Topher: I’m doing awesome. This is… what are we in? February? How many WordCamps you’ve been to this year? This is your first? 

Marcus: Yeah. This is my first one this year.

Topher: All right. I don’t think there were very many in January. So what do you do in WordPress? 

Marcus: I am on the GoDaddy Pro field team now. I’ve been working with WordPress for I guess about eight, nine, ten, years maybe. I worked at an agency in Orlando where I’m from for 10 years and we did Drupal work for a little while and then I switched over to WordPress after that. Didn’t like the direction that the Drupal project was going for our business. We were a small agency of four people and we didn’t have the time to take on another steep learning curve. So we decided to see what else we could do and WordPress was where we-

Topher: So what led you to GoDaddy? 

Marcus: At the end of 2019 before the pandemic even, the agency that I was at was starting to have a little bit of just financial trouble. So it was just time to look for new work. And I actually ended up getting hired at the SkyVerge on the support team there. And so-

Topher: And then GoDaddy bought SkyVerge?

Marcus: Yeah. So I was at SkyVerge for about six months before GoDaddy acquired SkyVerge. So I came to GoDaddy via the SkyVerge acquisition.

Topher: So you were a developer, but you’re not developing now. Right? 

Marcus: Yeah. I’ve been all over. So I started as a designer at the agency. And then because we were so small, took on development as another hat, as they say. And then when I left there, I had two criteria. One, I wanted to work remotely. SkyVerge had always been a remote team even before the pandemic. 

And I wanted to not be part of an agency, but help the folks that were in my spot in the agency. So I specifically looked for support work where I was supporting agencies doing the work that I had been doing for 10 years because I knew the struggles that they would face and the ways that they needed help, and so on to be able to support that. So I started with SkyVerge on the support team after leaving the agency.

Topher: So practically speaking, what do you do day to day?

Marcus: So twofold. A lot of it is event-related. Coming into WordCamp is a big part of it. Also, I run a weekly meetup for GoDaddy Pro, where we have folks come on and provide value for our Pro audience. When I say pro audience, I mean folks that are building websites for other people, so agencies, freelancers, that sort of thing.

We have people come on weekly, and kind of share a little bit about what they do and who they work for, and provide some value to our Pro audience. So it’s a mix of that, mix of virtual events and then personal events.

Topher: Yeah, I’ve seen you in a lot of WordCamps. I guess, since pandemic, what’s your average? 

Marcus: It feels that way. I have really only been coming to WordCamps for maybe the last year. So my first one was actually Montclair last year right before EU. So I had a chance to kind of dip my feet in with a smaller group before being dumped into the massive WordCamp that is EU.

Topher: Was that your first WordCamp or just your first one for GoDaddy?

Marcus: It was my first one for GoDaddy, but I think maybe only my second one, period, because even though I had been working with WordPress for a while with the agency, I wasn’t really a part of the community at that time. I think I went to one WordCamp Orlando, and then the pandemic happened, and everything got shut down for a couple of years. So Montclair was the first one back, I believe. I was able to go to Montclair. And at that time, I happened to be part of GoDaddy already.

Topher: It’s interesting to me. Before the pandemic, most people in WordPress had been to WordCamp at some point, one or two or five or whatever. But nearing the end of the pandemic, I met people who had been in WordPress for, quote, “years,” few years, and had never been to a WordCamp. Then one-

Marcus: I almost fell into that bucket. Right?

Topher: Yeah.

Marcus: I had one before. And it is interesting. It does feel like I’ve been around for a while working with WordPress, because I have. But I wasn’t really part of the community at that time. And it wasn’t until really towards the middle end of 2019 that I decided that, you know, I want to check out what the rest of the community is about and dip in there. And then all of a sudden, everything shut down.

Topher: So now you’ve been to some WordCamps, what do you think of them? Would you have recommended to yourself five years ago that, hey, you need to get on this? 

Marcus: Yeah, I clearly didn’t know what I was missing when I was working in WordPress and not part of the community and part of the camps. And that’s both virtually and online. I mean, the community at camps is great. It’s definitely a different environment. But I wasn’t part of the community online either. And I feel like there’s so much that you’re missing out on if you’re not engaged with the community virtually. And then, you know, if possible, I know it’s not possible for everybody all the time to go to WordCamps, but if there’s one near enough to you that you can make it to.. I know that the WordCamp do their best to keep them reasonably priced so that everyone can attend if they’re, you know, close enough. So I 100% would encourage anybody to go to a WordCamp if they’re able to.

Topher: I have a friend, Andrea, who used to be on the WordCamp central organizing team and she has a WordCamp called “And then I went to WordCamp.”

Marcus: Nice. 

Topher: And everyone who’s ever been to one immediately knows what it’s about. You hear those words? You know? Because everything changes when you go.

Marcus: It really does. I mean, I didn’t realize just how much the connections that you make with folks that at WordCamps, really help inspire you in your WordPress work, and give you all these avenues for help when you run into a wall. 

Topher: Pretty much. Just today, I met a woman, this is her first WordCamp and she’s been in WordPress two years. I saw her standing by herself, not talking to anybody, which, that’s not right at WordCamp. So I went over and said, Hi. And I could tell that it was already having an impact on her that she’s probably gonna make friends here today that are gonna help form her career, just like everybody does. 

Marcus: You don’t realize how much you’re missing out. And you don’t know what to look for when kind of on your own. But when you meet up with folks and they offer, you know, here’s what I do in WordPress, a lot of times its stuff you didn’t even think about. You’re like, Oh, yeah, well, you run this plugin. Oh, that sounds like a really interesting plugin. I wouldn’t have even thought to search for something like that. But now that you’ve told me about it, I don’t see why I haven’t been using something like that the whole time. 

Topher: I can remember probably four or five WordCamps over my career where I traveled home thinking, Well, this changes everything. This changes the direction of my career, this changes everything I do, this changes everything. So it’s not just like your first WordCamp opens your eyes. It’s like every one of them as you go, it’s like-

Marcus: Yes. Oh, there’s something 

Topher: Ah, wow. 

Marcus: It spans everything from WordPress itself to the business around WordPress to how you just meet up with friends in WordPress. It changes your friendships, it changes how you do work, all of that. 

Topher: Yeah. All right. Well, I appreciate you talking to me. 

Marcus: Absolutely.