Alice is a long-time blogger, an avid reader and a language geek. She’s a polyglot for the Italian WP community and has been working as a multi-language customer support agent for WP Media since September 2015, her first experience in an IT company.
Alice will be giving a talk titled “Trying, applying, getting involved: how I started a career in WordPress as a total newbie“.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Harare?
I decided to apply after meeting Thabo at WordCamp Europe. We were on the same slot of Lightning Talks, so we had the chance to know each other better and share the adrenaline before going up on stage 🙂
I felt really inspired after listening to his talk, learning about the WordPress growing community in Harare and the experience of your first WordCamp.
At the same time, Thabo listened to my talk about how I started working with WordPress as a newbie, and hinted that I could share my story with the Harare WP community. I thought it could be a great opportunity, indeed!
Along with my teammate Caspar from WP Media, who also met Thabo in Paris, we decided to apply to speak: luckily WP Media decided to support our travel, so it has been an easy decision!
What is your talk going to be about?
It’s the story of how I started working with WordPress and got involved in the Italian community as a Polyglot.
When I started working with WP Media, a lot of people – first of all my family and friends – asked me “How did you end up finding this job?” They never saw me as a tech person, so they couldn’t understand how could I be make a living working with a tech company.
So my talk is a consequence of all the explanations I had to give to people about my job and my involvement in the WP community!
What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
The talk is especially targeted to people feeling insecure about their role in the WordPress world.
With my experience I want to share the message that to work with WordPress you don’t have to be a tech person. There are so many talents that can be put to use in WordPress: let’s try to be imaginative and don’t limit ourselves!
How did you discover WordPress?
I started using WordPress several years ago, with my personal blog. I’ve been blogging since 2002, but I switched to WordPress a few years later: I read good reviews about it and wanted to have more freedom in the customization of my blog.
But I had no idea there was such a big community behind it: I discovered it only a few years ago, when I started working with WP Media in 2015.
How has WordPress impacted you?
Well, I could simply say that it changed my life for good! It gave me the opportunity to prove myself in a new career path and to work remotely for the first time: that has been a huge, positive change in my daily life. It also allowed me to meet a lot of awesome people and travel around.
You see, the impact has been quite big 😀
What do you do when not working?
Uh, a lot of things actually. I read and write a lot, for my personal blog and a few Italian travel blogs.
I also help managing an Italian web community for solo-traveling-women named Viaggio da Sola Perché: I love solo-traveling, but as a woman traveling alone there are still a lot of taboos to be broken about the subject.
And when I’m not in front of a computer, I enjoy the city I live in —which is currently Genova, in northern Italy: discovering new places to eat, seeing friends and walking around 🙂