 I'm Catherine Presner. I'm from Montreal, Canada. And I'm a theme whisperer and happiness engineer on the theme team at Automatic. So I help users customize, configure, and troubleshoot their themes to get their sites looking exactly how they want. Let's start with the story my mother told me. So there was a website she wanted to show her coworker. We'll call her Barbara. My mom gave her the URL. Now, after a couple of minutes at her computer, Barbara became incredibly frustrated and said, I can't find a site. So my mom went over to Barbara's desk to see what was happening and quickly realized that her colleague had put the domain into Google's search box instead of the browser's address bar. My mother couldn't believe it. She patiently showed a wide-eyed Barbara how to get to the site directly. Now, there's something else you should know. This didn't happen many years ago in the early days of the web when everyone was getting used to browsers and search engines and all that. It happened earlier this year. My mother's 70 years old, and Barbara is decades younger. It's really easy to assume that everyone knows how to put a URL into the browser's address bar to get to a site, and sometimes it takes this kind of story to remind us that not everyone does. Don't assume everyone knows what you do, even if it's something you consider extremely basic or obvious. We're all wrapped up in our own little bubble of knowledge, and it's easy to forget that not everyone knows what we know. Do I know enough? This is a question I've asked myself many times after getting involved with web design and WordPress, and maybe you've asked yourself the same question. When referring to myself over the years, I've always adamantly declared that despite whatever skills I might have, I'm not a techie. I didn't study computer science. I'm not what I'd call a hardcore programmer. And yet, some might point out the obvious. I've been sharing WordPress knowledge and forums and at conferences since soon after I started using it. My friends and family come to me for tech support of all kinds. I spent over a decade building custom websites for clients. I now help folks with technical issues all day, every day, and I even get paid to do it. I solve people's WordPress problems, quash quandaries, clarify conundrums. And yet, I would never dream of referring to myself as an expert, a guru, or a unicorn. Let's not even talk about Rockstar. Whenever good things have happened to me in my WordPress life, I've made up explanations for them that didn't involve my skills, experience, or knowledge. So let's say I got accepted to speak at my first WordCamp. Well, they just needed more women. I helped someone at a WordCamp happiness bar. But their question was easy. Anyone could have answered it. I was asked to speak at WordCamp San Francisco. Well, really, that was only because someone dropped out at the last minute. It really had nothing to do with me. I got hired by Automatic to do tech support. Well, I must have fooled them really well. Wait till they find out I'm a fraud. Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? Does it sound ridiculous? I'd like to tell you about an actual dream I had, shortly after landing my job at Automatic, where I would be working alongside people I admired greatly. My new boss, some guy you might have heard of named Madmallow, I don't know, looked at the code for a website I'd built, decided I didn't know what I was doing, and rescinded my offer to join Automatic before it even started. I was going to have to tell all my friends and family that I didn't actually have my dream job after all. How embarrassing. Subtle, huh? Interesting what comes out through a subconscious in dreams. A combination of low self-esteem and posture syndrome, and let's face it, a severe case of Canadianitis has prevented me from until very recently truly believing that I may actually know a few things, some stuff that might benefit others. But how did I start to overcome this, and how can you do the same? Well, start small like I did. Think about one little thing you know how to do. Do you know how to change the color of a site title with CSS? How to set a scheduled post? Help someone do it in one of the WordPress support forms. If someone in your local meetup group asking for plug-in ideas for their project, suggest your favorite and tell them why you love it. Did you just learn how to do something really cool with WordPress? Write a blog post and show others how to do it. Before you know it, you'll start to get more confident. Help a friend or family member set up a WordPress site. Volunteer at a WordCamp happiness bar. There's really nothing like seeing people's faces light up in person when you've helped them with a problem they've been struggling with sometimes for months. Then suddenly, after a short while, you might start to find that helping people with WordPress is addictive, in a good way. You'll probably start getting some thank yous from people you've helped. At Automatic, when WordPress users thank a happiness engineer for something we've helped them with, we call those hugs and we share them with each other. Save your hugs, share them with someone. Have someone helped or inspired you? Let them know, privately if you like, but even better in public. Send them a tweet, leave them a comment on their blog. Lift up someone else and make their day. We have a system at Automatic called Kudos, which lets us send a short written message to a colleague we want to recognize for something they did to help us out or a job well done on a project or anything else we want to call attention to. Kudos are visible to anyone within the company and I go back and I reread mine every once in a while, whenever I could use a warm fuzzy or two. Dwell on your praise, revel in your successes, small and big. Save it all up and look at it when your brain starts to have doubts again. You deserve it. Just think, if you're affected with an imposter syndrome, there's zero risk of your head getting too big, right? At some point along the way, I stop saying I'm not a techie. The way I see it now, it can be found somewhere along the techie continuum and perhaps, just maybe, I'm somewhere towards the higher end of it. So no matter where you are on the techie continuum, chances are you know a bit more about something than someone else. So don't be afraid to share your knowledge with them. It feels good, it's giving back and maybe someday you'll even start to feel like you may know a few things. Here are the slides. I'd love to chat with you on Twitter or in person, if you see me around, feel free to come up and say hi. Thank you.