 Good morning, everybody. So my name is Shita Tarabin. I'm going to be talking to you today about how I've used WordPress to not only build personal relationships for myself, but also for my business. And my talk is called Let's Take This Offline, Making Friends, and Growing Professional Relationships in Real Life. So I want you to take a moment and think about today. Why are you here? Why did you come to WordCamp? What are you trying to get out of it? Are you looking for a job or to meet a specific person or build a business relationship? For me, personally, I want to catch up with old friends that I've made through the WordPress community. I want to meet new people who I've met only online. And I also want to see what people are doing with WordPress. What are they launching? What are new projects that are happening? So my hope is that the next 15 minutes, you will channel what it is that your goal is. What's your purpose? Why are you here this morning? And I'm going to help you hopefully accomplish that. So who am I and why should you listen to me? I have been in the WordPress community going on four years now. I've also been at WP Engine for the past four and a half years. As part of my role at WP Engine, I started out going to WordCamps and representing the company. Four years ago, the WordPress landscape was much different. And so I've gotten to see the WordPress community grow and evolve into what it is today. I wanted to create this little photo collage so you could see specifically the bottom right-hand corner. That was me at my very first WordCamp, New York City, 2012. I've come a long way from that. I've made a lot of friends. And I have had a lot of impact specifically to help me be the person that I am in my life today because of all of you out in the audience. Thank you, Livestream also. And so today, I just want to share some of my tips on how I helped do that for WP Engine and also for myself. So even for the most social individuals, sometimes meeting new people is really scary. And I'll use myself as the example. When I went to WordCamp, New York City in 2012, I didn't know anybody. I didn't know anybody in the community. I didn't know who I was supposed to know, who I was not supposed to know. And most importantly, nobody knew who I was. And that was extremely scary. However, if you do know me now, you'll know that I'm outgoing, and I love to talk and meet new people. But nobody knew me at the time, and I didn't really know how to get that message across. So part of my journey and part of yours is being OK with that. It's realizing that everybody starts with nobody knowing who you are. We all start from zero. So I know that the imposter syndrome is something that gets talked about a lot. Even the most respectful people that I know in the WordPress community feel like they don't belong sometimes. And it's OK. We all have those moments. So how do you become known? Where do you even start? For me, I started to follow the people who did have voices. Not because they were more popular or because their voices were louder, but they were making themselves known. They knew who they were, and they were putting that out there for the world to see. I know this talk is supposed to be oriented on how you take things offline, but I do believe that these relationships start online. So where do you even begin to find these people to take those relationships offline? So for me, I went to Twitter because in the WordPress community, Twitter is a popular place where conversations are had. And you get to meet people and see what their personalities are and what's important to them. And I'm sure we've all met somebody here hopefully this weekend who you've met online simply by just recognizing their gravitar, their image, or their Twitter handle. So I want to show a picture of what my profile is. How do I present myself and put my best foot forward? Well, I live a full stomach, which to me is a full life, and it's a good one. It's a yummy one. I'm also a marketer at WP Engine. I think I'm an influencer and an adventurer, and I'm very busy, and I like it that way. And I'm a food blogger at my blog, Dime with Shada. For me, I'm putting the information that is what I want to present to the world in hopes that attracts people to want to talk to me, to want to come communicate with me. Sometimes you might put a funny cat picture as your profile picture, which is fine. I'm not saying it's wrong, but if you want to put your best foot forward and being able to be identified so people can connect with you and build relationships, you just think about how you're presenting yourself. So now that you've got your profile put together, now you have to think about how you're going to go and engage with people. And how do you even find people that you want to talk to? Maybe you're new, maybe you're not new. Maybe you know that you want to get in the plug-in development, and so that's a great place to start. Otherwise, just start typing in Google, Wordpress, Insert, Blank. So in this example, I looked up Wordpress Agencies. Simply by doing that, I'm able to go through and read articles and see brands and company names and people who I may or may not want to go follow up with. And so I encourage you to think about what it is, again, that is your goal, why you're here, what you're trying to accomplish, and who can help you connect those dots to fulfilling that goal. And so go follow those people on Twitter. Go interact with them. Introduce yourself. Engage with them. I think engagement is extremely important. Don't just follow somebody and be passive. If they post something funny, tell them that it was something funny. Tell them that you like the way that they always expose themselves on Twitter by being very candid or that they take really great pictures. And so I think it's a great place to start is just by Googling things that you don't know. Google is very powerful. The other thing I would like to remind you is if you have not Googled yourself, do it. You'd be amazed what you see. In my case, I wanted to pull what Google pulls up when you type in shade of Tarabi. Everything that you see here is things that I've curated specifically to make sure that they show up on my profile. But that wasn't always the case. You guys have always, has anybody taken pictures maybe from your college days and then a friend posted and ends up on the internet somewhere? And then when you Google yourself, that picture pops up of you having a keg stand. Anybody? Some people? I know there's a few of you out there. Use Google to see what you're presenting about yourself and try to backtrack that way. So if you see something that's unfavorable on there, try to go through and remove those pieces of content. So you're always putting your best foot forward. So again, for me, my Google is telling an accurate story of who I want to be seen as. I want to be seen as somebody who's social. I want to be seen as a food blogger because that's really a big passion of mine. I also want people to be able to find me easily. My social links are popping up immediately above the fold. And then all the images are of myself. Maybe I'm lucky because my name is so unique. So if your name is like David Hall, maybe it's not going to be as easy for you to have the whole page to yourself. Just be mindful of what it is that is being presented about yourself. Know who you are and know who you want to be seen as. And then go try to shape that on the internet so that when people find you online, they're finding the right person that you want to be seen for. So now that you hopefully have some tips on things that you can take care of online, let's talk about taking this offline. You're at WordCamp. You made the first step. You showed up to an event like this. So what is that goal again? How are you going to engage with people while you're here in person at a conference? One of my favorite things to do is to go through the attendee list. All WordCamps publish the attendee list. Some publish it sooner than others. But in this example, I pulled this from WordCamp 2015 because actually WordCamp 2016 wasn't live when I did my slides. But I love the WordCamps do this because it's a way for you to see who's going to be at a WordCamp before you show up. So it's tied to your gravitas. So again, making sure that you have a profile picture that people can easily identify you by, making sure that your social handles are there and they link to things that you want people to find about you. It's both a great way for people to discover who you are, but it's also a great place for you to discover who's going to be at WordCamp. So who can you start to follow and engage with online and be mindful that when you're here, you can go meet them. And so because I've been going to WordCamps for a while and this has been a little secret of mine, I've gotten pretty comfortable just, you know, finding somebody on this list, knowing that I want to go meet them because of a plugin that they did or an article that they wrote or a talk that they've given. And now because I've seen how successful it can be and how unscary people are actually, are in the community. I mean, everybody's friendly here. I know that not everybody in this room knows each other, but I bet that if you turned around and talked to the person behind you, they would happily love to talk about themselves. I think we all need to remember that the people love to talk about themselves and so if you give them the opportunity to talk about themselves, you'd be amazed at what you might discover. So now that you have a list, you know who you kind of would like to go follow up and maybe try to meet. Another thing that I encourage you to do is to follow the hashtag. The hashtag is a great place to one, get inspiration for what's going on. So for example, I saw people using the hashtag the other day that there was a cheesesteak meetup and I happened to know the person who was putting on the meetup, but just had kind of gotten busy with other events throughout the day and being able to go there and see that people were engaging and they were having fun, it made me wanna go be there. And so I took a group of friends and we all went to this cheesesteak meetup. So sometimes you're able to find parties or opportunities or events that you can go be a part of and sometimes you can just see what the conversation is. I know that so much of what we're doing here is talking and sitting and listening and absorbing but also making sure that we're looking at what's happening online so people are constantly sharing information. So all WordCamps usually have a hashtag, it's a great place to hang out while you're sitting in talks like this. I don't mind you being on Twitter if you're looking for somebody that you can go connect with. And so what if you don't know what you don't know and you wanna try to go meet somebody? I personally believe in, again, knowing who you are even if it's just the high levels. I'm a food blogger, I'm passionate marketer, I love technology and I love a good meal. Knowing who you are, knowing what you want people to know about you is so important because people are gonna ask you what you do and if you kinda don't know what to say or you don't know how to communicate that, you're not allowing somebody to fully get to know you and how you can build that relationship that could turn into either a friendship or a professional business relationship or an opportunity sometime later on down the line. So I really believe in being goal oriented. I believe in being strategic. I believe in doing everything with intention and with purpose because that's how doors get open for you is by stating your intention. If you sit in a room and you're quiet and you don't raise your hand and you don't talk, how am I gonna know that you're really excited about e-commerce? So that way when I maybe have a friend who's an e-commerce, I can connect to you but if I don't know that about you, how do I know to help you? And I think we all wanna be helped, I think we all wanna be known, I think we all wanna be understood and part of that is knowing who you are so you can state your intention out loud. Another thing that I love to do is to use lunch to talk to people I don't know. Whether that's eating lunch at the venue, going and sitting at a random table by a stranger or maybe you're gonna go offsite to lunch, invite somebody who maybe you sat next to in a talk who you'd wanna get to know better. Use those opportunities to step away from the conference to be able to dive in deeper and build these relationships. Some of my favorite conversation starters are to ask somebody for help, ask for their opinion on something, use their interests if you know that about them, let's say maybe that they work for a specific company that you're interested in and you can always offer to buy somebody food. I think food is a great way to the heart. Another great place is the happiness bar. So the happiness bar this year is by the registration table, whether you wanna volunteer and kinda share your skills with people who need help or you need help with your WordPress site, the happiness bar is a great place just because, again, people love helping each other, people love giving up information that makes them feel like they're the thought leader in the room and you can leverage that by one, getting some help and two, making a new friend through them getting to tell you who they are. I think it's just a really great place to go hang out and to get help and to make another new connection. Another place is with the sponsors. So I know that sometimes we might not be thinking that we wanna go talk to the sponsors or pick up the swag but secret, we wanna get rid of our swag so please take all of it. Being at a WordPress company, I'm so fortunate because I get to go to WordCamps all the time and I love meeting our customers, I love meeting people in the community, I love the vibrancy that exists and I need people to come talk to me when I'm standing at a booth and so I encourage you don't be afraid, go talk to the sponsors. They contribute so much to make these WordCamps possible that they're a great resource for you if you're looking for a job or just looking to get connected to maybe some cool new thing that's being launched in the WordPress community. That's a great place to start. So I'm now fortunate to have probably in the hundreds of friends because of WordPress because of just showing up and being friendly and opening my heart to the community that I didn't have before WordPress and before going to WordCamps and Meetups and the reality is that relationships take time and I believe in being authentic and not really doing anything for personal gain although there should be that goal of what you're trying to accomplish but again just by being genuine and getting to know people you actually build real relationships and I'm fortunate because some of them are sitting in the room today supporting me this morning and I really thank you because you've made my life better, you've enriched it, you've given me knowledge, you've been supports to me and it's just I don't think people realize that that exists in the WordPress community and so I encourage you just to again talk to those strangers because they'll become your lifelong friends. So I do believe in being authentic, identify maybe shared goals that you have, let go of expectations. Sometimes maybe offer something before asking and when in doubt always plan something fun to do. So this is a picture actually of WordCamp Phoenix. I have become known in the WordPress community as the girl who likes to go on food meetups so I love it. I mean it literally energizes me because every WordCamp people looks at me like where are we gonna go eat? Where's the dessert place? Like when can we go right now? So if you ever wanna go eat some cool yummy food when you're at a WordCamp with me just come find me, find me on Twitter, I'd love to invite you out. But in this example, I invited a few friends and those friends invited friends and we ended up with this huge group at this ice cream parlor in downtown Phoenix and just had a blast. We pretty much shut the place down. We were just talking and chatting and I think realizing that all these people contribute something to the community is important. Realizing that their business owners and developers and freelancers and men and women, young and old is really cool but also just getting to know people for people. What do they like to do outside of the office? What do they like to do in their free time on the weekends? Repress is online but so much of this goodness happens in the wee hours over sprinkles and scoops of ice cream. So if you're not familiar with Six Trees of Separation, it's the idea that there are Six Trees of Separation between you and any single person. So let's say you don't know Lisa Saban Wilson but I know Lisa. I am more than happy to introduce you to that person, whoever that person might be. Leverage your network, leverage the people that you currently do know to help you get connected to the people that you don't know. I think it's a great way just to maybe meet somebody new that you wouldn't have met otherwise through a mutual friend because it's a little bit less scary when somebody gives you an introduction that way and if it's too nerve-wracking for you to go introduce yourself to the stranger, maybe drag a friend along and you both can go meet them. I tested this one with one of my friends in the audience. I was asking if he had business cards on him and he said no but he actually did have some business cards. I think we forget to have business cards in the WordPress community because everything is done online. Again, you wanna have a social profile, you wanna have a website, you wanna have a way for people to find you but I believe in physical business cards. It's not archaic, it's so important. It's a little memorable way for you to hand somebody a little card so they remember to follow up with you. I have a best practice of either keeping business cards that are mine in my left pocket and cards are the people I meet in my right pocket and within at least 24 hours, if not the hours after I meet them, I'll just send them a quick email. Hi, I'm Shada, we met at WordCampUS. We talked about your new plugin project. Let's follow up when things, you know, calm down for you a bit. I have just gotten so much in the habit of doing that that it's become my practice and it has just paid in dividends because people forget to follow up. They forget to carry on that conversation so by being in control of driving that conversation forward, it will open doors for you. Another thing worth mentioning is to maybe go join groups outside of WordPress so because I'm a food blogger, I'm really fortunate in Austin, Texas, we have a group called Austin Food Blogger Alliance. I think WordCamps and WordPress Meetups are really great for WordPress stuff, new plugins I should use or, you know, getting help if maybe my theme isn't working properly on my site. But I love being a part of a food blogger meetup because those are the people who get to geek out with me over what's the best new restaurant that I should go try out and include on my blog or what's new camera that I could use so I can take better pictures so that it enhances the look and feel of my website. Let's say you're a small developer in a city and you want to build websites for small business owners, but you are building small websites for real estate agents or doctors. Maybe going and joining their meetup groups will help get you into a new community that can help open opportunities for your small business. So I just encourage you to think about those, you know, exterior groups that might be a part of what you're currently working on today and leverage that to help you get more connected. And so in closing, I just want to kind of remind you, like, what is that goal? Why are you here? Why did you show up? What are you trying to accomplish? I'll share a little quick anecdote. Being strategically mindful of what that goal is and trying to achieve it will really help you go far. My swim coach, I was a swimmer in high school, told me to write the time that I wanted to achieve at my swim meet on my hand and look at it every day in practice. So for weeks and weeks I would look at that swim time and by the time the meet came I was channeling hitting that number. 99% of the time I achieved that goal simply by thinking positively, thinking strategically of what that goal is that I want to accomplish. So it can be as small as just, you know, building up the courage to go meet a stranger, just telling yourself you can do it or standing up at a word camp and giving a talk like this to a bunch of friends and strangers in the audience. You can do anything that you set your mind to. So channel what your goal is, channel what that outcome is, and you can achieve it. So thank you so much. My name is Shada. You can find me on Twitter at ChapToura and Dine with Shada and my website is dinewithshada.com.