Speaker 1:
Welcome to Women in WP, a bi-monthly podcast about women who blog, design, develop, and more in the WordPress community.
Angela:
Hi. Welcome to Women in WP. I’m Angela Bowman.
Allie:
And I’m Allie Nimmons.
Angela:
Our guest today is Lisa Ghisolf. Lisa is GizmoCreative Factory with 20-plus years in design and development and 18 years in business. Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa:
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Angela:
We like to start off each episode asking our guests how they got into WordPress. How did you get started?
Lisa:
It was a long and winding road. I actually, I like to say I drank the Kool-Aid long ago back in 2008. I’ve actually been doing development and design much longer than that. I learned back when it was just HTML, there wasn’t even CSS, but back in ’96. But I was actually doing a pro bono project, and the developer on the project said let’s use WordPress, which I had never actually even really heard about. And I had heard about CMSs before, but they were always kind of these, especially open-source things that you never really were terribly sure about, but he built the site out in WordPress, and it was one of those things that just made the site actually editable by the client, which was huge at the time. And it kind of changed my business and everything forever. And 2008, WordPress was a completely different animal, not anywhere near what it is now. But yeah, it was great. It was a game-changer, definitely for me. So it was exciting.
Angela:
I think we have a very similar timeline because I was doing HTML and the ’90s.
Lisa:
It was very different times.
Angela:
Yes. [crosstalk 00:02:15] And then discovered WordPress in 2007 and it was a game-changer from the static websites, for sure. It was like, oh, you mean when a client wants to change a comma, they don’t have to contact me.
Lisa:
Exactly. Oh, yes. And they still contact us even now to do that stuff. But it’s completely a different world. It’s kind of putting it back in their hands, which is wonderful. So, yeah. And the ability to do dynamic sites that’s another thing that wasn’t such a big deal or it wasn’t so easily accessible, especially to us. So, to me, it was a huge deal. It was a huge deal to be able to do that. And I started creating little templates, little nothing templates. They had a homepage. They had a sub-page. And I was selling little $500 templates to people. It was nothing on the scale of selling a true template by any means. And certainly, mobile was not a thing at that point, so I didn’t even have to worry about that.
Lisa:
But yeah, it completely changed how I did business. And I really loved number one, the community, just knowing that there was a community out there that could actually support you rather than just getting by by your wits, and that I could Google something and it actually had a answer out there rather than just hoping and praying that there was something. Knowing that there was something out there for me, that would be a wonderful thing in any case. I actually started looking around too at other CMSs. And not to throw any shade to any other CMSs, but I looked at [inaudible 00:04:06] and I looked at Drupal, and I just didn’t see, number one, a community, but also I didn’t see the stability and the also just the extendability that I wanted to see, the things that I wanted to do with it there. And maybe those things are there now.
Lisa:
Like I said, I drank the Kool-Aid, so it’s been hard for me to walk away from WordPress for a long time. But yeah, it’s definitely been a long road, I guess. I should say my skills have grown since then. My client base and the things I’ve been doing since then have definitely grown beyond just doing a few templates. I’ve definitely grown to do custom work, kind of building from the ground up, but also partnering with freelance developers mostly to do more custom work. I certainly use the plugins that are out there, and there is so much that you can do out-of-the-box.
Lisa:
But just to give you an example, a few years ago, I did for a client a 5k race site. And this is something that does not exist and still does not exist on WordPress. There are out-of-the-box solutions on different … They’re kind of their own little custom solutions out there, but this was actually something that I did with the Give’s plugin, plus a couple other plugins with a freelance, I can’t even say it, plugin developer that essentially gave them the ability to have … It’s a 5k race site, but it also has individual runner profiles and each of those has their individual earnings for how much they’ve been bringing in, and each of the charities that they’re working towards, how much they’ve earned for those charities. And on the back end, it also had the custom reporting so that we knew how much we’re bringing in for each of those charities and we could report individually to all of them. So that was a big custom job that initially, I didn’t know if I could do all of that, but I was able to do all of that with WordPress.
Lisa:
And like I said, the Give plug-in, gravity forms. Yeah, which I use endlessly and to a lot of great effect, things like that, that you really wouldn’t think you would be able to do. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing that if you want to just throw money at things. It’s one of those things that you really kind of have to want to, I guess, build. I don’t know how to explain it.
Angela:
Yeah, build it yourself rather than … Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Lisa:
Yeah. Because you could just buy that out-of-the-box solution. You know how much you’re spending on that every month until it’s done. But it was a labor of love. That was one of those nonprofit projects, not pro bono, but it was definitely a custom project and one of those that’s kind of a one-off that doesn’t necessarily come along every day.
Angela:
I think it’s an amazing use of Give. And Allie worked with Give, so she could probably speak to that a little bit.
Allie:
I was just going to say, I don’t know if you notice my whole face just lit up, I love hearing about uses of Give in the wild because I did work for that company for a while and I adore that product and I adore that team. And I would love to see the way … Because it’s a very pretty, in my opinion, easy plugin to … You install it, you start using it, you hook it up to your payment system, you start accepting donations. But I loved when I would see people get really creative with it, and people like yourself who were actually able to dig into it and adapt it to things that it doesn’t ordinarily do. So if you wouldn’t mind sharing, if that site is still live, sharing that link with us. I’d love if Angela could include it in the show notes so people can take a look at it.
Lisa:
Oh, yeah.
Allie:
Because I definitely want to take a look at it because I think that’s so incredibly cool.
Lisa:
I’m definitely [crosstalk 00:08:42].
Angela:
Yeah, you don’t have to share it this, yeah, this moment.
Angela:
Yeah, not this moment, for sure.
Lisa:
Oh, yeah.
Angela:
But we will put it in the show notes afterwards so people can see it.
Lisa:
Oh, yeah. I’m immediately, like let me go.
Angela:
Yeah, let me show it to you. We want to see screen flow. We want to explain it all. Because I think that use of Give, Matt has talked about that, about how you could use it for membership sites. You could really multitask it. And I do have one client using it for memberships. But we did customize like you did.
Lisa:
You were able [crosstalk 00:09:14].
Angela:
Yeah, in the way that you probably integrated Gravity Forms with that whole thing as well. And I think that’s kind of the beauty of WordPress. You were speaking about community, but also this ecosystem that plays well together, that all of these things are coded in such a way to a certain standard we hope. Not all plugins are friendly in this way. And some of them start friendly and get less friendly over time. I’m experiencing that with one plugin right now. But that ability to connect these things and that they all have hooks that can talk to each other is pretty phenomenal. So that someone who doesn’t have an extensive amount of custom PHP prowess, who can work with maybe someone who has a little bit more PHP skill and really make truly custom solutions happen.
Lisa:
And that’s really where I consider myself. I am not the deep PHP coder by any means. I consider myself kind of the solutions person where I can bring together those pieces and make them work. And I actually, it wasn’t even my idea, but it was something off of one of Gives blog posts by someone there who had put together Give plus Gravity, and it was something like a race website that someone there had put together the idea of, and it just kind of coalesced into wait, this is a great idea. And the website, I remember, because it was a few years ago, it was kind of the height of the pink pussyhat thing. It was pinkhatrun.com. And it is still live. You can’t obviously do donations or anything anymore because it was just for that particular time. But yeah, it was a great thing that came together at that particular time and it was a perfect solution for us. Yeah.
Lisa:
And there’s things like that, that I feel like those solutions would not come together unless it was the WordPress community having those ideas out there and those plugins out there that can come together with the little things. For a pie shop I had done years ago and they’re no longer clients. I’m actually not sure if they’re around. But I had actually done, they had a website, and they were literally manually putting down catering orders. And they wanted to put them online. And they had Thanksgiving orders, Christmas orders that they were just manually putting into their system, into these Google Sheets. And literally, I just did it into Gravity Forms, actually put it from there, and went into Google Sheets, which was their backend system. They didn’t really have any other backend systems for managing all of these things. So that became their backend system for managing we need this many pies, we need this many sides of this, or whatever it is. So they actually got all their orders in this way.
Lisa:
And it actually, number one, took a ton of time off of their managers for actually handwriting all of these ridiculous numbers of orders down at one of their busiest times. But also, took all of this time off of people who were too busy to come into the store or to call the store, and they could actually just make the order online, pay, and they were done. Things like that, that I think a lot of folks don’t even realize that they can get done. It’s that simplicity that … Oh, and I think I also with Zapier, that was the other part of it that was … So it was a whole flow and I wrote a blog post about it. But it was a simple thing, but you don’t realize how much of a difference it makes to a business, but that’s the kind of stuff that I love to do. So I guess it kind of comes down to being that consultant, which is kind of the nebulous term.
Allie:
I love that. You mentioned multiple times now that the WordPress community is a lot of what set it apart for you from other CMS tools. I know that my chosen way to engage with the community is WordCamps and Twitter. What is the way that you like engaging with the community? Have you been to WordCamps before the world ended? Is social media your way? Is Slack your way? What is the way that you interact primarily with the community?
Lisa:
I have to get better about Twitter. I’m more or less just throwing out things that I find that I like lately. But yeah, before and actually, it was probably maybe the year before that, I just hadn’t been doing as much of it. But previously to that, I had been going around to a lot of WordCamps, primarily Chicago, but just because I’m from here, but also around the country. And also I went up to Montreal. But I’ve done San Diego. I’ve been to San Francisco, but I didn’t speak at that one. Let’s see. I’m trying to think. I’ve been around Raleigh. God, I’ve been all over the country speaking at different WordCamps. And not only those but also I’ve spoken at a couple travel blogger conferences as well, just because there’s a lot of WordPress folks there. I know the community is the same all over the place and it’s just great to meet these folks everywhere.
Lisa:
And you also just meet folks who, they don’t find the exact resource that they need there. So sometimes that person is you, sometimes you can hook them up with that resource across the country. It’s kind of crazy. Milwaukee is not that far for me, yet I’ve done work for folks up there. I found resources up there. San Diego, et cetera. It’s kind of crazy how it’s not that far away, yet it all kind of coalesces. It’s that common thread that we can all get together and talk, and generally over a few craft brews, and it’s all good and it’s all exactly the same.
Allie:
Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts because I attended my local WordCamp here in Miami for a few years before going to my first out-of-town one. And I was kind of nervous. I was like I don’t really know what to expect. And it was like, it’s the same thing just in a different location. It’s just kind of the same people, the same kind of conversations picked up and moved over here, and that was super, super comforting. You always learn something new. Obviously, you always meet new people, but it really is the exact same vibe, the exact same feeling, and yeah, that’s really fantastic. Have you been to any WordCamps outside of the country? I haven’t been able to go to any outside of the US before and I’ve always wanted to.
Lisa:
Just Montreal. Which, I mean, again, it was no real difference to me. And there again, I met people from Chicago, so it was like why am I even here for a meeting?
Allie:
Traveled all the way to Montreal to meet someone from here.
Lisa:
Exactly. I’m like, come on. At least I got some very different food and got to tour around. The other great thing too, you get to meet some of the people who created BuddyPress, and I got to put questions to them that they could not answer themselves for stuff that I had huge questions for. I’m like, okay, thank you. I do not have to put this into the forums. I can just say that the founder of BuddyPress did not have the answer to this, so I can just move on. So you kind of feel like you have the edge in their house.
Allie:
That is one thing I love about this community is the longer you stay in it, the more people you meet, and you start meeting the people that created the products that you use and you realize it’s a pretty darn small world.
Lisa:
Oh, yes.
Allie:
I used to be very intimidated by I would see someone give a talk, someone who owns this product, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, this is this person, blah, blah, blah. And they’re just a normal person like everyone else and they just created a great product. It’s a very-
Lisa:
Exactly. Yeah, or Mary will show up at WordCamp or something, and it’s like, oh, it’s just Matt, that’s all.
Allie:
Yeah. It’s a very humbling experience. It’s humbling yet at the same time, it’s very confidence-boosting because it’s like, I’m the same as all of these people. There’s no-
Lisa:
Exactly.
Allie:
That’s one thing I love about this community is there is a certain lack of hierarchy to that sort of feeling. Everyone is here to teach and everyone is here to learn and it’s this big gorgeous equalizer.
Lisa:
Yeah. No, definitely. That’s something I have always tried to impart at least to my clients, like there is no such thing as a stupid question and don’t feel bad about having or, oh, I broke this or something went wrong and it’s just not fixable. No, no, no. Believe me, it’s fixable and we’ve probably all been in this situation before or something similar. Just don’t worry about it. So that’s just my own feeling on it. Yeah.
Angela:
Yeah. I was a little intimidated to go to WordCamp Europe. I was thinking about going to the Paris one, and I was traveling near there around that time. And it was before we started the podcast, and so I was like, well, those Europeans, they’re going to be so much more sophisticated and I’m a little intimidated even though I traveled in Europe a lot. But now that we’ve interviewed so many women, that was a great thing about this podcast is that we’ve been able to interview women around the world. And it’s really, Allie, you were talking about it, making the world smaller. Our world has definitely gotten smaller as a result of even over the pandemic, so many more Zoom meetings. And I find that in our meetups, we have people from all over the world attending meetups that used to just be attended by people in person in our location, and that’s been pretty phenomenal. Have you been participating in any remote sessions at all, any WordCamps or conferences or meetups?
Lisa:
Not really. Although, I’ve been feeling like I should be getting back into it and looking around at what’s out there. I have noticed more, I think it is done in Florida, maybe it’s Fort Lauderdale or something, WordCamp has been doing something lately. I have a feeling I should be at least participating or at least looking around at them. But what I’ve noticed has been on Elementor, which is kind of on my most despised list, so I don’t really go there.
Allie:
Yeah, the WordCamp, Miami team does a mega meetup every once in a while. I actually haven’t been attending those as often. But yeah, those are pretty big ones that have been happening.
Lisa:
Yeah. I think it’s a good idea just because there’s so many great topics out there. I should check them out.
Angela:
What do you speak on when you speak at WordCamps?
Lisa:
I try to stick to, and that’s something I’ve been thinking about, what should I be speaking going forward? I’ve been big on, my last topics were more how to redesign or design your sites and the process you should be thinking about going through as you go through that, just because most people don’t really think about the process, or they’ve not thought that there is a process, that you just think about design and not content or not anything else or not function or not anything.
Lisa:
For me, the big things are heat maps and click-throughs using tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg and to see really what is happening on your site versus what you think might be happening and going beyond just analytics because I think that can be kind of not misleading, but you tend to look at, oh, over this past year everybody looked at my homepage, and my contact page, and my bio page, which is what happens on every site. And, oh, this was my biggest blog post or something like that. But it doesn’t really look at the granular things like what people are really looking at and what they’re really clicking on, and are they getting lost on your homepage, or are they finding what you want them to find?
Lisa:
And I found that with a lot of clients, they’ll think, oh, this part of my page is awful, no one clicks on it, and sometimes it’s the most clicked on part of it. They hate it, so they don’t want it there, so that’s their issue. It’s kind of like they put on the blinders of, well, the CEO likes it, or I like it, or I hate it, so, therefore … To me, those are the important things to be looking at.
Lisa:
And even if you have a low traffic site, I feel like those are the things to be really paying attention to, just to make it more useful, make it more interesting. I think it’s so easy to throw up a site and feel like it’s kind of like a print piece where it’s just done. It’s you don’t touch it again until you next to your redesign. And it was a living, breathing thing. It should be fed and watered. And so that’s one thing that I’ve talked about and I feel like I should be really expanding on that and making the heat map thing a bigger part of that. And previously, I’ve spoken about branding or more like 101 things like how to really use the dashboard of your site. I’m trying to think of what else. Design thinking, those kinds of things, which kind of leads your site design or whatever it may be.
Allie:
Well, I personally would love to see a talk on even just you walking through that process for that racing site where you combined Give and Gravity Forms and things like that. I think we had this big shift recently toward stories, right? In talk stories, processes, how did I accomplish X? How did I do Y? And so seeing a real-world example of how you had a problem and used this software that had all these common denominators to solve that problem, I would run to a talk like that. Yeah, that would be really, really … Because that’s so unique, right? That’s unique to your exact experience, but it’s also something that people can take a lot back from at the same time.
Lisa:
No, that’s true. Yeah. I know. And I wish that they would reinvigorate that. I think that they kind of abandoned the idea of doing that again. And I’m like, come on, do the race again. Because who cares about the pink hat thing, do it again, do it not that way or something. But yeah, I think it’s such a great thing, invigorating some other way. But no, you’re right. Definitely. [crosstalk 00:24:59].
Angela:
Yeah. And I organized the Boulder WordPress meetup. And so I would be happy to have you as a guest at our meetup. I’m always looking for speakers. And so that would initiate you into the online community that’s been happening because we might be doing this for the better part of the year I think. So let’s get you in.
Lisa:
All right. [crosstalk 00:25:20]. Well, now, I have to do work. Oh, my goodness.
Allie:
Look at that.
Angela:
Oh, you can do it anytime this year, but I love Allie’s idea because like you said, you got inspired by that blog post. Think about how many people you would inspire, and you don’t have to replicate exactly what you did, but here’s kind of how you would go about this process and it’s so helpful.
Allie:
Also, I’ve helped organize a handful of events at this point and one-on-one beginner talks are super, super useful and handy, but I also love having a good, okay, I have all the beginner stuff down. I have all the intermediate stuff down. I want to take this information to the next level. And I think that’s a perfect subject of here’s a case study on how you can take all these things that you learned, your base knowledge about WordPress, and basically create something that’s larger than the sum of its parts, right? I think that’s super interesting and will attract a different audience of people as well.
Lisa:
That’s true.
Allie:
Also to circle back to the conversation about events. I just popped a link in our chat here. wpcalendar.io/online is my go-to, always updated, always accurate list of WordPress events worldwide. So they have online WordCamps and other things, and then they have meetups that you can find. So I check this all the time for what’s coming up as well.
Angela:
Yeah, Lisa-
Lisa:
I’ve heard of it but it fell off the list of things.
Angela:
We’re going to get you drinking the Kool-Aid again in 2021 here.
Lisa:
That Zoom Kool-Aid.
Angela:
I just never quite stopped. That’s the thing.
Allie:
I will say it can be a little exhausting. The thing about going to a WordCamp or going to a meetup is it’s you get out of the house, it’s a special thing, you get to chat with people. Like you said, have a brew or two. And I’ve been attending fewer meetups recently and things like that, just because the Zoom fatigue is real. So yeah, I try to sprinkle them throughout my schedule, where it’s maybe I’ll do one a week or a handful a month or something like that. So we do want to get you into the virtual events, but don’t feel like you have to come to all of them because then you end up hating it.
Lisa:
Well, I know. Well, and it’s not like I have to leave my house.
Allie:
Exactly.
Lisa:
That’s very true.
Angela:
It is motivating to be a speaker at someone else’s meetup for sure, and it can be exciting.
Lisa:
Oh, yeah. Definitely.
Angela:
And you can meet a lot of really cool people that way.
Lisa:
You can’t zone out. You can’t just say, what?
Angela:
I attended one meetup and I really wanted to listen to the topic, but I was busy. And so I had my laptop in the kitchen, I had my camera off, and I was cooking this whole amazing stew while I was listening to David Hayes talk about PHP.
Allie:
That’s kind of awesome.
Angela:
It was so great. I’d sometimes unmute just because I had a comment and then it was like, okay, back to cooking.
Allie:
I love that. That is such a 21st-century merging of gender roles like, how punk of you. I’m like, yeah, I’m cooking dinner, but I’m also learning about PHP on the side like no big deal.
Angela:
Oh, no, it gets better. I was actually constructing a chicken coop, sawing wood and hammering and stuff, had my laptop outside listening to a woman talking about WooCommerce.
Allie:
That is so cool.
Angela:
Yeah, I was like on this deadline with the weather and had to get the coop done. So yeah, so I also was doing construction. So there’s some more [crosstalk 00:28:58].
Allie:
I love that.
Lisa:
It’s very millennial.
Angela:
I’m not a millennial that’s for sure.
Allie:
I am. Maybe that’s why I find it so cool.
Lisa:
There you go. That’s inspiration. She’s working on her chicken coop while listening to a podcast.
Allie:
PHP [crosstalk 00:29:21].
Angela:
It wasn’t a podcast. It was a live presentation on someone’s meetup.
Allie:
That’s so cool.
Angela:
But I had to stop the power tools every now and then like, wait, what did she say? Stop hammering.
Allie:
That’s such a cool thing too is if you could go back in time and tell yourself as a kid about that day, how impressed would the child’s view be?
Angela:
That would be weird.
Lisa:
Who is this person?
Allie:
Yeah.
Lisa:
[crosstalk 00:29:48].
Angela:
That’s the future?
Allie:
Yeah, chicken coops and selling things online. Wow. That’s great.
Angela:
That’s wild.
Allie:
We all have to-
Angela:
Lisa, what do we all do for fun?
Lisa:
Oh, gosh. It’s hard to think about these days.
Angela:
Okay. Let me put it this way, when the pandemic is over, what is the first thing you’re going to do?
Lisa:
Oh, gosh, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. It’s kind of funny, I sent a link to my friend not too terribly long ago to sign up for a drag queen brunch.
Allie:
That is so fun.
Lisa:
So I do have my first shot.
Angela:
Me too.
Allie:
So you’re halfway there.
Lisa:
Exactly. So we all have our priorities. Some of it is random events like that. Some of it is just getting out of the house and getting out. And I don’t want to say something like, I go out hiking because I’m in Illinois, so hiking is really lots of flat land around me. But so much of it is just getting out to restaurants and travel is one thing I miss. That was one thing I loved about going to … And I say it in a sideways, I was going to WordCamps, and so I can say it as I was speaking at WordCamps and networking with my peers, et cetera, but it was also just travel to other places, visiting friends, getting out.
Lisa:
Montreal was just wonderful for that. And it was a great WordCamp anyway, but it was a great stopover there anyway, and to visit for a while. Those are the big things that I really miss and I really want to get out there and do again. And I have not really done the international WordCamps. I think some of it is probably my fear of, am I really going to be able to understand what happens at the Italian WordCamp, but maybe I don’t care.
Angela:
The food. The food, it’s a business write-off and it’s food.
Allie:
The food. Even though-
Lisa:
There are a few conferences I found over time that I kept going back to because they had … And I don’t want to throw any shade toward camps, but they weren’t WordCamps. There were some conferences I kept going back to because they had such amazing food at them. One of them, I will say, and it was a great conference too, Write/Speak/Code, and I believe it’s a .org. It’s actually to encourage women to write code, speak at conferences, and code.
Angela:
That’s amazing.
Allie:
That is so cool. [crosstalk 00:32:42].
Lisa:
So if you’re not … And they have scholarships and that kind of thing. And there’s a lot of talk about … One of the talks that I actually did at the last one, which was a couple of years ago, it was about invisible illnesses. So those illnesses, things that aren’t visible to the naked eye necessarily, but if you do actually work for an employer, maybe you need a disability for, but you don’t want to be identified by them because you could be discriminated against or something like that. And then another one was, actually, it’s here in Chicago, although I think that they sometimes go elsewhere, but they’ve been virtual lately. Oh, I’m going to forget the heck. It’s a code camp. Oh, UX Camp. And it’s for UX campers, but they also have other ones that are about product camp, more about leadership and about building products, things like that. They’re just excellent in general. So, just throwing those out there for anyone who may …
Angela:
We will include all of those links in the show notes.
Lisa:
Yeah. And I’ll get you more specific links for that last one.
Angela:
We would love that. In the Write/Learn/Code, I hadn’t heard about that.
Lisa:
Yeah, Write/Speak/Code. Yeah.
Angela:
Write/Speak/Code, I mean.
Lisa:
Yeah.
Angela:
Yeah, that is amazing.
Lisa:
Yeah. No, I went to it for several years just because. And then I was like, okay, I’ve kind of gotten everything I think I can get out of it. And again, great food.
Angela:
Yeah.
Lisa:
That year, we had Filipino food for lunch. So I mean, you don’t see that.
Angela:
Yeah.
Allie:
That’s super cool.
Angela:
Yeah, the travel thing is, yeah, like Allie was saying, the Zoom, you can get burnt out on, it’s hard to get burnt out on travel.
Lisa:
You can just walk out the door if you’re tired of the conference.
Angela:
Yeah.
Allie:
Exactly.
Angela:
Yeah.
Allie:
I mean, that’s the great thing about the in-person conferences too, right, is the hallway chats. It’s like, okay, well, there’s nothing that I want to attend right now, or this talk isn’t what I thought it was going to be, so I’m going to go outside and I’m going to … Those are sometimes the best conversations you have is just an organic conversation that comes up with someone outside, or a connection that you make, or someplace like an after-party or something. There’s so many other facets that it’s hard to work those into the virtual experience in the same way.
Allie:
So, yeah, I completely agree with you. And I’m always thinking about that first WordCamp that I go to after all this is over and how I’m just going to cry the whole time. I’m just going to be so … I’m not going to be paying attention to anything. I’m just going to be hugging people. It’s going to be intensely emotional, but I’m really looking forward it.
Lisa:
It will be overwhelming.
Allie:
Yeah, it’s going to be really overwhelming. I’m going to be so drained afterwards, but it’ll be definitely worth it. And I hope I can meet you at one of them at some point.
Lisa:
Yeah, definitely. No, I’ve been wanting to go to Miami, so good excuse.
Allie:
That was actually the very last one that I went to. I think it was the last WordCamp, the last in-person WordCamp that was hosted.
Angela:
Wow.
Allie:
Do you know that, Angela? I think, WordCamp Miami-
Angela:
I don’t but I-
Allie:
Yeah, 2019. It was in February. So I think it was one of those ones where we were like it would be hard to cancel it.
Angela:
Oh, February. Oh, it was. February of 2020, you mean?
Allie:
Yeah. Yes, yes. Sorry, February 2020.
Angela:
I do you remember that. Oh, yeah, because I think the pandemic was just starting and it’s like is this still going to happen?
Allie:
It was just starting.
Angela:
And it’s just like, they had it and it was-
Allie:
And some people didn’t come because they were uncomfortable with traveling and they weren’t sure. And then all the ones after that, I remember DC, all the ones after that started being canceled, and then it was announced, no more. Like, it’s not even a question. So yeah, that was the very last one that I attended. It was fantastic. I can’t remember the last one that I traveled to. I want to say it was Phoenix. I can’t exactly remember. But yeah, the first one back is going to be a doozy.
Angela:
Yeah. The last one I went to was WordCamp US in St. Louis. I love St. Louis. That was amazing.
Allie:
That was a really good one.
Angela:
And I was scheduled to go to WordCamp Europe, and I had plane tickets, and had an Airbnb, and I had the whole nine yards. And I look at my Facebook memories as they come up and I just look and go, oh, that was going to be a great trip. It’s like all my reservations.
Allie:
I think Facebook should just stop that whole … Don’t remind people of anything from 2020. Just turn it off for the whole year. Nobody wants to remember that. That’s just cruel.
Angela:
Yeah. I was going to go to Belgium, Porto, and Barcelona and every place. Anyway.
Allie:
Yeah, I remember.
Angela:
Well, Lisa, it has been so wonderful to have you on the show, and I really look forward to eating some yummy food with you and drinking a beer. I’m an IPA person. What are you?
Lisa:
I’m more Belgians, but that’s okay, we can still get together.
Angela:
What about Allie, are you a beer person?
Allie:
I’m not a big beer person. I much prefer wine. I’m a wine aunt, but I’ll drink a beer for the sake of it.
Angela:
We will have the drink of our choice. Oh, yeah, for the sake of it. So we can cluck our tumblers together.
Allie:
Yeah, exactly.
Angela:
Yes. Well, thank you so much, Lisa.
Lisa:
Thank you.
Angela:
Can you tell people how to reach you? What is the best place for people to find you online?
Lisa:
Oh, gosh, I’m always online. You can always find me on Twitter at gizmo, G-I-Z-M-O, design. You can always reach me at gizmo-design.com. You can always reach me at lisa@gizmo-design.com. And I’m always around quite honestly. Those are always the best ways to reach me, and no by phone because honestly, everything goes to spam.
Angela:
Yes. Well, thank you so much.
Lisa:
No, thank you.
Allie:
Yeah. Thanks, Lisa.
Lisa:
Thanks. Bye.
Speaker 5:
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