I’ve been working with WordPress for about two many years now. I started how most do, with just installing free and premium themes, and now I’m writing custom themes and plugins for clients. The main thing that drew me to WordPress was definitely the people. When I was just starting out, I struggled with a lot of basic questions. It’s extremely awesome being able to search online for something you’re dealing with, and find dozens of answers from a variety of people.I did work with a few people on the new oEmbed integrations. I got involved with it when one of my Automattician friends, John James Jacoby (also a Wisconsin native!) was leading a hack day at WordCamp Grand Rapids. That’s when I learned to navigate through Trac and how to upload patches, as well as the best way to write tickets. I’ve always loved the idea of oEmbed, it’s a great concept. The concept is a website will return a JSON response with a whole bunch of data to allow a site to embed something. For example, in WordPress, if you want to embed a YouTube video, you don’t need to fiddle with the embed codes you get, you can just simply paste in the video link. I also worked with the HTTPS fixes, as well as testing patches, posting bugs, and all that fun stuff. When I write my presentations, I always try to inject some humor. One trick I learned a while ago is figure out about the middle point of your presentation, and figure out a way to give your audience a break of some sort. The thing about presentations, you never know 100% the skill level of everyone in the room. I’ve given developer talks and talks for beginners; no matter what it is I give all of my presentations to my parents, who don’t understand anything I do. This lets me pinpoint what parts are potentially too complex, what is way too boring.