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This list is not exhaustive, but after traveling to a different WordCamp almost every weekend for the past 6 months, these are some things that occurred to me as I sit here on this plane.

• Always smell your “clean” hotel towels BEFORE you dry your face.
• Many local craft beers are just not good. You have to try a lot of bad ones before you find the diamond in the rough.
• It took 6 months of travel almost every weekend to finally qualify for Sky Priority on Delta.
• Biggest benefit of Sky Priority? I can use the bathroom right when I get on the plane so I don’t have to get up during the flight.
• Full-size laptops are impossible to use with the seat back tray. T-Rex arms all the way.
• If you order a beer on the flight, there’s a 50/50 chance the flight attendant will give it to you for free because it’s a pain for them to use the mobile CC reader AND if you’ve had the opportunity to be friendly when boarding.
• You can check your roller bag free of charge if you do it at the gate.
• Airport food is mostly terrible. A few exceptions were Vienna, TGI Friday’s in Atlanta, and the BBQ place in Birmingham.
• Bring your own bottle for water refills. You can bring empty bottles through security.
• Podcasts are awesome.
• Get an Amazon Prime account and use the Amazon Video app on your phone. Pre-download series and movies and you’ll be good to go.
• I really need to buy over the ear headphones for comfort. In-ear ones for several hours at a time make my ears hurt all weekend.

There’s probably more, but the plane I’m sitting in is pushing back ready to leave Omaha.

Travel safe!

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The post The Pitfalls of Working from Home and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Adam W. Warner.

In this episode I chatted with Andy McIlwain. Andy’s a not only a great guy but also open and honest about his experience at GoDaddy.

The post Andy McIlwain – GoDaddy Content and Humanity Manager appeared first on Adam W. Warner.

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Today I chatted with Alex Standiford. We met at WordCamp Northeast Ohio and I immediately felt as though we were old friends. Funny how that happens in the WordPress community.

As with all my guests, Alex has shared an interesting path to getting involved with WordPress and plugin development.

http://www.easybeerlister.com/

With Easy Beer Lister, you will spend less time managing the beer information, both online and offline.

• Spend less time showcasing your beer on your website. Add and update all of your beer information in one place, and the info will update everywhere else.
• Spend less time fussing with manual menu creation. Easy Beer Lister makes it easy to create beer menus, both for print and a TV screen.
• Have you already added your beer information to Untappd? With the Easy Beer Lister Untappd addon, you can import all of your beers in minutes!
• To see a demo site running Easy Beer Lister, visit http://brewio.alexstandiford.com

If you’d like to help support the development of Easy Beer Lister, and make a few bucks, you can sign up for the affiliate program here:

http://www.easybeerlister.com/affiliate-area/

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We talked about our introduction to computers, Michael’s background in Math and how he got started in WordPress.

The post Michael Hull – Mathematician, Musician, and WordPress Developer appeared first on Adam W. Warner.

I’ve just spent 5 days at the offices of SiteLock.com, my new employer.

My job title is WordPress Evangelist and it’s one that explains not only my core values and my personality, but also my role in contributing to the WordPress project as a whole.

A Summary of the Past 4 Years

…or why I would start working for someone else when I’ve been running a successful WordPress-focused business from home.

In January of 2012 I learned that the company I had been with for 4 years was closing their local office. This was a decision made by the parent company, based in Sweden with additional locations in Kansas and Canada.

I was proud of the work I did there, transforming a 20 page static HTML website into a WordPress Multisite install and differentiating the brand and it’s offerings into 8 separate sites focusing on Residential and Commercial markets as well as creating and managing a Digital Asset Management system.

It also included Intranet portals for Marketing and Sales Reps, custom developed tools for both of these teams and adding Internet Marketing and Social Channels options for each.

All the while, slowly growing a small free and premium plugin business on the side.

Feeding my passion.

I had a decision to make. Both for my future career goals and most importantly, my family.

I took the entrepreneurial leap and left the company one month before our first son was born. My focus became FooPlugins.com, full time.

I accepted a severance package, cashed out my 401k and borrowed startup money from family.

Make or break time.

Growing my own WordPress-focused software business.

Starting a WordPress-based business when you’re not a hardcore developer or designer is possible. I’m living proof.

The key is finding the right business partner which I talk about at length here.

I feel like I did a lot of things right from the start. I was already a known person in the community. I had spoken at several WordCamps and launched our official plugin business in a way that received a lot of visibility immediately.

But I also did a lot of things wrong.

Scheduling and staying productive:

One thing I didn’t anticipate is just how chaotic it can be to work from home while raising (now two) toddlers.

Working from home comes with unique challenges and for me, scheduling, getting enough sleep and making sure to take care of my physical (and emotional) health were the three that I struggled with most.

I’ve written about this before and there’s a nice summarized list of actionable tips on Lifehack here.

Following the tips in those two links above, and becoming very strict with scheduling everything on a calendar, I was able to wrangle in the chaos and alleviate my stress. This in turn improved my daily productivity immensely.

Delegating tasks:

Those of us with entrepreneurial spirits tend to want to have a hand in everything.

We’re typically lifelong learners and have an innate desire to know every single detail of any process we use or every feature of any of the various tools and services we utilize to build our brand and revenue.

This caused me to lose focus and get distracted because I’d find myself going down the rabbit hole of minutia instead of concentrating on the big picture – continued growth.

Why I’m making a change.

After spending the past 4 years in my home office I started to feel increasingly disconnected from the WordPress Community. It may sound strange because I was still immersed through dedicated WordPress Facebook groups, Slack channels, Twitter, Blab.im sessions and more.

But I was missing the intimate and personal interactions I feel when attending WordCamps. Those hallway conversations you have, the business and partnership opportunities you find (or create), and more simply, the friends you make.

Both of our boys are now in preschool and the time was right to start looking for opportunities outside my home office but still with a focus on companies doing great things within and for the WordPress Community and for the WordPress project as a whole.

I was specifically looking for a WordPress Evangelist position. More on that title and what it means below.

I’ve found that with SiteLock and I’ll be publishing more details of what that means in future posts.

What is a WordPress Evangelist?

If you’ve been paying attention to the WordPress Community for the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen companies starting to utilize this job title or some form of it.

(the stale version)

A WordPress Evangelist researches the needs of WordPress users within the community and formulates business strategies to ensure the company’s branding, products and services meet those needs.

Although the title itself is relatively new, it’s really a mixture of more traditional professions like customer service, marketing, brand management, business development and more.

What Being a WordPress Evangelist Really Means

Where a WordPress Evangelist role sharply diverges from the above is that it’s about serving the WordPress Community first, and very specifically.

You may be thinking I’m trying to slide in some marketing hype, but I can assure you I’m not.

As I said at the beginning of this post, WordPress and evangelizing the project, the software, and the community is who I am. It’s what I’ve been doing since I discovered it in 2005.

It just didn’t have a title until recently.

Finding the perfect fit (SiteLock)

I turned down two offers from other companies before accepting my current position.

Note: I know how fortunate I was to be able to turn down anything, especially a WordPress Evangelist position.

I do feel availability of these positions is definitely on the rise and I suspect we’ll see many more in the coming months and years.

The reason for not jumping at the first two offers was not financial. It was philosophical.

I got the sense that the people I talked with didn’t place the same importance on the spirit of Open Source and respect for the community as I do.

I don’t mean to sound too altruistic, but those things matter to me. A lot.

What also matters is helping to ensure that people across the world using WordPress to make their voices heard, are able to do so on a more secure Internet.

Who is SiteLock?

They are the global leaders in website security. Period.

I’ll be writing more about the company and their products in the near future but he’s the bullet items of why I accepted their WordPress Evangelist role.

• Their security service and systems are amazing.
• They get it. I’m convinced they’re wholly committed to making a difference to individual users as well as businesses.
• I’m also convinced that they understand why they should, and are committed to, contributing to WordPress in a meaningful way that will impact millions of users.
• They secure more than 8 million websites of all technologies, not just WordPress. They’ve been at this since 2008.
• I spent time sitting with their security research team and saw what they do in person. I was in awe of the incredible knowledge and systems surrounding me.
• The entire company seems to be comprised of people with passion. A passion for always doing what’s best for the end user.

Lest you think I’ve had the wool pulled over me, I’m also acutely aware of some differing opinions. I addressed those directly in my initial talks and again during my week at office in Arizona and I’m confident they’re doing things right.

I see only great things for WordPress, the community, and for SiteLock in the future.

You Might Be Wondering…

What does this mean for the future of FooPlugins?

Nothing is changing with the Foo, except that some of my daily responsibilities are transitioning to other people on our team.

FooPlugins has solid premium plugins and many more exciting things happening in the coming months and years. “You know who, it’s the Foo!”

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