 Miele grazie Cristiano Buongiorno a tutti. Hello everybody. So this is talk is this talk is going to be in English and Already, I'm very happy to See you here and thank you for having chosen to be The audience of my talk. It was a surprise for me to be here today a very beautiful I feel very honored and I am going to share with you a part of my personal WordPress journey It is about how I became a WordPress community junkie and First of all, I wanted to have a look with you at my life back how it was four years ago So as Cristiano told you I have been working As a government agent in Luxembourg. This is the country. I have been born and raised I live in the beautiful German Eiffel since four years now together with my husband and our three dogs and The life in Luxembourg. So the work life in Luxembourg has been Special for me. I mean, there are a lot of advantages of being a government agent and the advantages are a lot about Security and materialism. So you have a very high income. You have a safe job. So There it isn't easy to fire you in fact So if you are good in your job or not, it doesn't make a big difference which is also not a big challenge to be honest and You have guaranteed pensions and guaranteed health insurance is which are good and important things But on the other hand, I felt that I had no professional goals and there was no challenge in my job and In the early morning, I didn't know why to get up and go to work because it wasn't something meaningful meaningful I was doing and After 12 years of being a government agent, I really struggled with the severe mental health problems. I dealt with a lot of frustration and lethargy and I really had depressive episodes at that point and but I felt that I had to do that because of course I liked to be in this secure situation, but in the end I realized so Who needs security? People with a lot of fears and I didn't want to be in that golden cage anymore So I decided that it was about time to change my life and to stop this so what I did I Went on a four-year sabbatical, which is something you can do in Luxembourg when you're working for the government and my husband he was also fed up with his job at that point and we decided to leave Luxembourg to sell our all our belongings and to move to the German Eiffel and Unfortunately The decision to change the life. I was leading at that point didn't solve all of my problems to be honest I fell into a deep hole first so the depressive the depressive episodes I had went worse in the beginning and I struggled with severe overweight and The latter guy got even worse because I didn't have any professional goals. I didn't have any personal goals I just decided that I had to change my life, but I had no clue how and I had several orthopedic complaints which went together with the overweight I had at that point and In 2015 I got diagnosed with lipidema Lipidema is basically a chronicle progressive disease Which is a fat disorder, which is very painful and which almost exclusively affects women and Because I I mean I was suffering of this disease probably during 20 years already without knowing it and because I didn't know and There were changes in my body, which I was not able to understand. I developed Severe eating disorders already in my early teenage years So I was and I am still married to a WordPress developer He's a software engineer and he chose a WordPress as the platform of his choice And he had a plan B. He wanted to be a developer and he worked on his career So fortunately one of us had a plan But I didn't have any clue at that point what WordPress was and I had no interest in Changing that because I am not a technical person. I'm still not a technical person and I wasn't involved with WordPress and This was kind of different for our relationship at that point difficult not different difficult for our relationship at that point because I was Kind of locked out of the life that my husband was leading every day and we had fewer common points of interest and also conversations were A bit difficult because we spent a lot of time together in our house But I wasn't involved in what he was doing every day so he he asked me at one point if I would like to join him to a so-called word camp and that word camp was work in Europe 2016 in Vienna and It was very hard for him to convince me because the idea to be with I am sorry 2000 nerds and me and like what am I doing there and nobody's going to talk to me and do you know big bank theory like Here comes penny and have no clue of what you're talking about That wasn't easy for me, but in the end I tried I I just agreed and in joining him to that trip and What I experienced in Vienna was totally different. I Had so many fears of being excluded on site and that nobody's going to talk to me and This is just not what happened. I Found so many inspiring people over there and I made new friends and I remember that before we went to Vienna. I told my husband like oh, we are not going to spend a whole week with these people I mean Maybe during the conference, but the rest we are going to stay in our in our couple because I was really afraid But already on the first evening I met so many cool people that I started connecting with face on Facebook with them and Making plans for the next day. So our whole week was was planned in one evening and it was me making plans with the people There are 2,500 people at this word camp in Vienna, which was if I'm not mistaken the biggest word camp ever and Nobody made me feel uncomfortable And it was a real warning of horizon and I truly felt that I wanted to be part of this community Which was so welcoming and Inclusive and I have never had an experience like this before in my life So when we came home back from Vienna I had kind of withdrawal syndromes like I want to be with this community a bit more and my husband told me that There is a website called word camp central where you can check whether there are other word camps around in your area And this might be something he probably regrets by now because I started immediately Signing us up for upcoming word camps and signing us up for volunteers because I felt like having a Task a job on the word camp would even help me to feel more involved Because I didn't plan to attend any sessions because in my head sessions were only for hardcore coders and developers, which is not me so the first one word camp we attended was What camp Frankfurt in Germany in 2016 and I helped at the registration desk which is awesome to meet people because you are welcoming the attendees and this was really cool to connect and We even took our dogs there. So this was the first word came our dogs went with us and we were really Included into the WordPress community of Germany by the first second And so this was like a confirmation for me that it was not only word camp Vienna But there are other communities around which are as welcoming as what I experienced in Vienna the next word came we attended was a word came to Netherlands in 2016 in Utrecht and There I had an aha moment. I don't know if this is an expression you say in English But it was like another broadening of a horizon because I attended the Opening remarks, but still I hadn't attended any real session in Frankfurt So I went to the opening remarks because I wanted to be polite and then there hasn't been any break Between the opening remarks and the keynote So I was locked in this room and I couldn't leave for not being sitting in a session because it would just be Impolite and so I had to be in my first session so it was not something I chose it was something I got forced in and The speaker was Marike van der Racht from Yoast and she was giving an SEO talk and I realized Hey, I am able to understand something and it's interesting and I learned something here and it was totally inspiring and it encouraged me to attend another session that day which was by Sally mayor from the UK and she was giving a talk called how wordpress saved my life and That was another big broadening of a horizon because I realized that There is something like remote work, which I didn't know as a government worker before and that I'm the most important message was that wordpress gives you the opportunity to raise your voice and No matter who you are or wherever you you're located and Yeah, this was inspiring and I will tell you later what I did with this inspiration the next working we attended was again in Germany it was working Cologne and What was special about this word came for me is that it was the first contributor day I attended Because again in my hat I thought that contributor days would be for coders only and that I would be completely useless there and so the Organizers and other attendees tried to convince me during the word camp to attend the contributor day which happened after the actual word camp and Yeah, I went there and tried to overcome my fears and I joined the polyglots table And at the end of the day I had localized one free theme into German and it even got committed the same day which was kind of an amazing feeling of having been useful and I also joined the discussions for creating and organizing a new type of word camp Which is about to happen in one month it is called word camp retreat in Salto in Germany and This was my first step of becoming a word camp organizer myself We attended many word camps after this one So it would take me like I don't know five hours to give you an impression from every word camp I attended and which I loved There's one example. I wanted to share here with you It's work in London last year in 2017 and it's going to happen again in one week I'm going to be there and work in London was for me an outstanding example of Inclusion and accessibility and I truly hope that I can have myself an impact on future word camps following the example of two organizers of work in London and this is also where both my purple hat and So since then every word came by attempt. I have my purple hat as you can see here I changed a Lot in my life in the last two years I decided that it was it was about time to take care of myself to take care of my mental health to get to take care of my physical health and I decided that I was worth it and So there's a considerable weight loss of 70 pounds and Started my lipidema therapy Which is not an easy thing to do because it means that you have to wear tight compression ornaments every day and going to Lymphatic drainage like to twice or three times a week and I went to Three very painful surgeries, but it was all worth it. I'm feeling better now and I am not the same person anymore not from the inside and not from the outside and I Totally changed my life and now I have new personal goals I have new professional goals and I discovered a new lifestyle like digital nomad lifestyle partly remote work and Also my creativity came back I don't know if coming back is the right expression because I don't know if I had any real creative episode before in my life So what did I achieve besides attending word camps and how did I use the inspiration I got from the community? I Found it a non-profit organization in Luxembourg together with other lipidema affected women and at that point the therapy wasn't covered in Luxembourg and as I experienced myself it was very hard to get a diagnose and I I wasn't diagnosed for two decades and I wanted to change that for affected women in my home country So I created a wordpress website with almost no skills in a very short amount of time Which confirmed what I learned in Sally mayor's talk like wordpress gives you the opportunity to raise your voice and we had an enormous reach and we got enormous feedback and We had have we had had several Appearances on national TV. I gave a lot of interviews we have been in local newspapers and Suddenly things began to change in Luxembourg. So I was in contact with the health ministers and In less than a year now the therapy is covered in Luxembourg and when I start it To become active therapy was better in Germany than it was in Luxembourg and now it's the opposite So in less than one year everything changed in Luxembourg for lipidema affected women and we created Campaign a lipidema awareness campaign where I was also one of the models But most important I did all the design for it and I didn't even know that I had any designer skills and all the typography and It was a lot of work because I had to have I had to to discover and develop those skills But it was so fulfilling and I never felt this kind of fulfillment in my job that I had before in 12 years I never had that fulfillment and this is nothing I earned money with and it was just a great feeling to do something good and To discover creativity Talking about creativity This is one of my dogs which sometimes Comes with us to word camps and the German wordpress community gave me the input that I should create it without poo with the characteristics of a French bulldog and So I didn't know that I had designer skills as I told you before and I was like, oh, yeah, somebody should do that I should find a designer who is doing that and then my husband told me like Oh, why don't you try it yourself? And I was like, I can't I mean I just can't and then he told me like Why don't you try? Yeah, and then I think it was it took me two or three hours to have the result I'm very proud of it and it's super cute and Then when I was discovered when I was covering from my surgeries I even started crocheting and I made this cute Crushed it version of the Vablee. I have stickers here. So later on you can find me and I can give you some of these cute stickers I get contacted earlier last year by Topha de Rocha who is The founder of hero press which is an awesome project where WordPress people from all over the world share their stories And try to inspire other people and he contacted me to ask if I could write an essay for hero press And I just felt like super honored Because I didn't know that I had something to share at that point and I admired all the essays I have read before from other people at hero press and of course I said yes and then I started to write down my story and I got heartwarming feedback and This was the point that I realized that I could maybe Be capable of inspiring other people in this community and this was the inspiration for this talk actually In the meantime, I have become a word camp organizer and meet up organizer myself So I'm involved in the organization of pre-different word camps and that's what came cologne which happened last year in November That's what can't retreat which is going to happen in a month And I am a proud member of the organizing team of what can be Europe in Balgrade this year I'm on the volunteers team and I am also a co-organizer together with my husband and the amazing very good old some from Germany of the tiny but awesome Meet our WordPress meet up Eiffel and As you can see in the meantime, I have become a word camp speaker as well which I couldn't have imagined like one year before that this could be possible and The first talk I gave was a word camp Berlin in Germany and I have this amazing souvenir from Anya Gross who made sketch notes and she chose the right color to illustrate it And this is how she experienced my very first talk and it was an awesome experience and it was very very emotional for me and also from from for some people in the audience and So I decided that I could share my story and spread it a bit more at work camps And I was talking at what came it's right last year and we're in work in Miami three weeks ago, and now I'm here So another big turning point in my life was again word camp Europe last year in lovely Paris mainly for two reasons First reason is I got asked by Francesca Marano If I would like to become an emcee and I haven't been on stage before And I was just freaking out when she asked me like well, oh my gosh They're going to be like two thousand people and I have to be on stage and and introduce speakers and Do all that in English, which is not my mother tongue and I'm gonna die and again I had so many fears, but then I decided to overcome these fears and to give it a try and to seize the opportunity and In the end I was freaking out every time I went on stage like I had to go 22 times on stage I counted them and but on stage I managed to keep my cool and it was an awesome experience So as you can see I struggle a lot with imposter syndrome, which is probably something you might know and There was one very important sentence a very nice person told me just the evening before going on stage the first time She told me You don't have to be afraid We are the WordPress community and we wanted to succeed and that's helped me so much because That's true. I mean I haven't met any Person in this community who just wanted to see anybody fail somewhere and that really helped me to keep my cool. I Decided when I accepted to become an emcee for what can be rubbed that I wanted to add value to the conference and I wanted to add value to the speakers and That's why I created a special emcee form where I was asking the speakers to provide me with some informations professional and personal informations about them to allow me to prepare appropriate introduction and This form is in the meantime has in the meantime become mandatory for several work teams around the world Which I'm very proud of because it showed me that new ideas are welcomed and that They saw the value in it So the other big turning point at work in Europe was that I am now a WordPress professional in some way Because I met for the second time the crew from Plask Plask is a web ops hosting and server management platform and I met the crew the first time at work in Berlin and we had a lot of fun and They approached me in Paris and told me that they were looking for a so-called WordPress community manager and Asked me if I would be interested in doing that job and I felt super honoured but for me was totally clear and I'm not going to accept that because I will not be able to do That and it's too early for me and imposter syndrome struggled. I struggled with imposter syndrome again and Yeah, so I had some discussions later on with my husband again And then he told me why don't you just let these guys decide if you are capable of doing this or not and Then I decided to give it a try because I Achieved so much other things. I didn't know I was capable for in the years before So why don't why just don't give it a try and so since August last year I am the WordPress community manager for Plask and It allows me to even travel more to be more with the WordPress community. I love and To create win-win situation so Plask is sponsoring a lot of WordCamp and allows me to To contribute a considerable amount of my working time to the WordPress project and on the other hand Plask gets valuable feedback from the community because they strive to Get even better in what they do and so they got a feedback of the needs of the community So this is this is a recap of the WordCamp. So I attended in 2017 and which I am attending in 2018 and it's even not all I think there's at least two WordCamp missing and So I am really traveling a lot and it is something I love because I love to meet people. I love to meet new people and So this is a small impression of what I experienced last year I told you that I'm a WordCamp organizer now myself So the first WordCamp that happened which I was an organizer of was WordCamp Colloin again last year in 2017 And I got surprised on stage after the opening remarks by the German WordPress community who had created Evapoo with obviously some characteristics of mine and They it was really I busted into tears. It was so heartwarming and sweet and They called it like the Evapoo for the community newcomer of the year. So it was really really really nice and My husband made me one month ago the most awesome birthday present because we are huge Lego fans and So this was my birthday present one month ago So he did a pixel created a pixel version of this Vapoo and he built together the sat and Offered it and so we were building this in like two or three hours and he was really amazing in the past 25 minutes I was talking a lot about fears and I think this is a very important message. I want to share with you everything you want lies on the other side of fear The key for success is just overcome your fears and try new things and don't be afraid of changes in your life if you're stuck in a situation that makes you unhappy try to change it and It is not an easy thing to do especially when you are a control freak and I am a control freak And I'm sure I'm not the only one who's a control freak in here There are some and who is struggling with imposter syndrome Even more people I see you So it is not an easy thing to do, but it is worth it My relationship with my husband also changed during the last years because now We have more common topic of interest. We found new friends together. We are allowed to travel the world together and Something that was a problem is now a new common strength We are supportive to supportive to each other. We are proud of each other and So this is a very sweet tweet that my husband was posting at word camp Frankfurt and If there's a call to action I can do today It would be Bring your partner's friends and family to word camps because amazing things can happen just like it did for me and I am not the only example There are other people even in this room who allowed me to share their story and first example is Dennis was sitting in first row and his daughter Sammy and She got involved into WordPress by volunteering and in fact she was the speaker Wrangler My first time that I was speaking at a word camp in Berlin and she helped me a lot. She was the friendly face I was allowed to look at in the first row and she's just an awesome person And I'm still in a good contact with her and she's volunteering At a lot of word camps. Well, I mean she's traveling a lot So if she asked the occasion to be a volunteer even here in Italy, she did it sometimes in Milano, I think She's adding a lot of value to conferences We have Kate and Tofa de Roja so Tofa is the founder of hero press as I told you before and His wife Kate is not a technical person and she wanted to become a farmer when she was younger and then she married a developer so she was joining Tofa to WordPress conferences over 20 years and She fell in love with this community and in the meantime she's a working organizer and speaker herself she was the lead organizer for what came grand rapids last year and they also take their daughters occasionally to word camps and They make friends there like their parents make friends there and most important They learn at a very young age about the business opportunities that WordPress creates Which is so valuable and which is something you probably don't learn easily at school We have Diane Wallace and Mick Scarlett and Diane is a designer and she Dragged her husband Mick like kicking and screaming to his first word camp Because he also thought that it was not the right place for him to be and in the meantime he is doing amazing talks about accessibility in inclusion at word camps all around the UK and adds value to a lot of word camps We have Laura Bern and Kevin Cristiano Kevin is a WordPress deputy is involved in the community team But he got involved into WordPress because of his wife Laura because she had a WordPress website that has over a hundred thousand visitors back in 2007 and Kevin wanted to help her manage the website and then he found the WordPress community and Laura didn't join the community until 2015 When she was attending her first word camp and she got called by the community box immediately like me And in the meantime, she's a word camp speaker and organizer herself We have mark Benz again who is from the United States and He occasionally take his kids to word camps and he wrote an amazing blog post about How about why he is taking his kids to word camps and I want to cite a quote from this blog post I? Want to show my kids that the land of community both professionally and personally Does exist and that no matter what they pursue as they get older? They should always seek out communities that are supportive and Realize that they need to be equally supportive of the people and communities around them We have Manuela van Vreuen and her daughter Kristen Manuela was one of the lead organizers last year at word camp Utrecht in the Netherlands and I love this picture on the right because it shows a Manuela Doing some lead organizing stuff together with her lovely daughter Kristen who was volunteering and helping her mother to create a great event And last but not least we have the lovely event son of health also from the Netherlands Who has also a very interesting story? WordPress story because four years ago. She was looking for a way to overcome imposter syndrome and She was living in the United States at that point and she signed up for a word camp Miami But as soon as you signed up she got in total panic zone because there will be so so many new people She haven't met before and then the call for volunteers came out for what can Miami? And she thought like maybe it could be helpful to be on a concrete task and have something concrete to do And so she wouldn't she would it will allow her to come out of her panic zone and that's what she did and focusing on the joint goal allows her to make to Shift away from the anxiety she had to deal with and to make real connections and volunteering and contributing at word camps had to grow her self-confidence to a most to to much more healthy a level and I met her son Julian at what came I made in last year and Julian is kind of an introverted person and if I thought that her son could use a boost and Profit from the welcoming atmosphere at word camps and that's what happened And I talked to Julian and he told me that he was so surprised of the welcoming and helpful atmosphere And that everybody around him just tried to help him to make useful contributions And if somebody around didn't know the answer to his question They would immediately start finding somebody that knew the answer and this is something he unfortunately doesn't experience at school so we coming to the end of this talk and I mean, I still don't know exactly where my journey is going to take me in the end But I am super happy that I had the courage to chose To stop the life which was making me unhappy and to go for a new challenge So, thank you wordpress community for having me on board and for helping me to build a better life Thank you Carol very very much your stories are very amazing So any question any question in the room or please you have to come here because we have all fashion style with Hi, thanks. It was a great great talk You've been dragged screaming and kicking to your first work. I'm do you have a retrospective? Any idea of how I could do the same with someone I love like any trick that I could use Any any good pitch? I Think it could be helpful to show. So is it is it for who are we talking about for? Your girlfriend. Yeah, I think it could be helpful to show my talk like because I always try to Convince people like personally and I had I had several occasions to meet partners or a friend of wordpress people at After events, so I didn't have the courage to come to the actual event and I managed to convince them to come But yeah, probably I think that you you have already all the arguments you need like It is a welcoming community and it can change lives so I think it could be helpful to show this talk and To there are other similar talks who are really community talks and who helped people to change their lives And yeah Just just just tell her to give it a try and if she doesn't like it, which is not going to happen Then she doesn't have it to have to do it again Thank You Carol Other question Then the other question. Okay. Hey Karen. This is um, this is actually a request wrapped in a question Can you please never stop doing this? Can you please always keep giving this talk because it's so inspiring and and it's it's honestly just one of the most inspiring and encouraging talks I ever see at work him so No, no, no, no, just please keep doing this. Thank you Thank you again very very much. I totally agree 100% with you. Okay, so Any other question? Oh Hi, it's also not a question. I just wanted to say how much I relate to this talk and my own journey and I just cried Watching a talk and I just want a hug I'm also now in among a world camp organizer and really I agree totally change your life Thank you very much Thank you, Patricia. I I met Patricia's family yesterday at Volunteer speaker pre-event and yeah, we talked about that and I'm really looking forward to see your husband and kiddies this afternoon Because they told us to come so this is another example Patricia is bringing a family to work camps Exactly perfect. So Any other question time is sorry time is over to Change so thank you. Thank you again Carol Okay