What inspired or motivated you to give this talk at WordCamp?
I’ve been teaching with Girl Develop It Minneapolis for over a year now. I love the idea of teaching people how to code and bringing more brilliant diversity into the industry and into my teams. I noticed recently how very different my patience level is while I’m actually at work working with my colleagues, both junior and senior. I’m in “teaching mode” at a GDI class, but when it comes to my day job, I’m in “coding mode”. Finding the love for teaching while at work has been challenging—but it is necessary. My motivation for this talk came from the fact that companies and developers—myself included—are fearful of that junior dev hire, of what it will “cost” us to bring them into our teams. In reality, we should be leaping at the chance. After all, we have the opportunity to teach someone to live and breath our code base before anyone else’s.
How do you “create intention” in your job, career, or life?
As developers, it’s easy to simply go “through the motions”—we can quickly become these little coding monkeys and build whatever thing it is that we need to in that moment. This “monkey” feeling is not sustainable. We spend way too much of our lives “working” to do something that is anything less than brilliant. Creating intention, for me, is about being on a team and finding joy in working on a solution to a problem that is truly challenging, but one that, at the end of the day, you can sit back and be genuinely proud of.
If you were a WordPress Plugin, what Plugin would you be and why?
Probably something that would share a random, motivational, cheesy message—something similar to the random Slack greetings. I like the idea of being something that makes someone’s day a bit brighter.
If you were not doing your current job, what profession would you be in and why?
I would most definitely be a camp counselor of some sort, being outside, working with kids, playing silly icebreaker games, etc. I did this for a few years in high school and absolutely loved it.
What professional and/or research resource(s) can’t you live without?
Stack Overflow.Caffeine.People.