Christina: Thanks for joining us at wp_contribute(). Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Michelle Frechette, host of WPCoffeeTalk, head of customer service at GiveWP and fellow WordCamp organizer. Welcome Michelle.

Michelle: Hey, thanks for having me, Christina. It’s really good to be here.

Christina: It’s awesome to have you. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself in terms of the WordPress world?

Michelle: Well, people might better know me as Michelle Ames, but I did just change my name. So that’s why it’s Michelle Frechette now. But if I sound like Michelle Ames is because I still am the same person. And I’m in Rochester, New York. I do work for GiveWP. I’m the head of customer success there. And I have an office here in Rochester, New York, where I have people that work here with me and we all work for Give and you know, working with our customers things like that. I’ve been attending WordCamps for years and organizing for years too. I’ve been organizing WordCamp for about five years now. And this past year was really, really lucky to be on the WCUS, the WordCamp US team with you and with a bunch of other people too –

Christina: Yep!

Michelle: – Down in St. Louis and you know, contributing to the WordCamp US experience down there. So that was a lot of fun too. Other than that, I enjoy photography. I like to write. Like you said, I have WPCoffeeTalk is the podcast that I interviewed you on past summer. So that was exciting. And I just started a blog called Camping with Words, which is all about how you can participate and WordCamps, and some tips and tricks there. So yeah, so I guess you could say I love the WordPress community.

Christina: I think it’s safe to say the WordPress community loves you, too.

Michelle: Aw, thank you. It’s mutual.

Christina: So you mentioned of course, um, contributing with organizing through WordCamps. But I suspect that you contribute a few other ways in some other teams outside of community?

Michelle: I do actually. I am on the marketing team. And so I, I said most of the marketing stand up meetings that we have on on Wednesday mornings, unless I’ve got a conflict. And, you know, I’ve been part of the, what do you call it, uh showcase redesign, working with Harry Jackson and some other people that. I frequently take the minutes for that meeting and post those up there too. And, yeah, I guess, between organizing and marketing, that’s pretty much my thing. I haven’t done much with any of the other teams. I have posted some videos to the WordPress TV, but I’m not actually on the TV team.

Christina: That technically counts though.

Michelle: Okay.

Christina: As contributing, but I hear what you mean. You’re not a continual contributor on the team.

Michelle: Right? Yeah. And I like to think that a lot of the other thing is that I do contribute, even though there aren’t technically a contributing kind of thing.

Christina: Absolutely, yeah, for sure. So I don’t know if you remember, but do you know your contributor origin story?

Michelle: So I guess it would go back to the first time that, I mean if we’re going to talk about contributing being almost anything that you can do,

Christina: For sure.

Michelle: Probably the first time that I spoke at a WordCamp. I had been to WordCamp us the first one, and had sat down at the community table and talked to who I now know is Andrea Middleton. At the time, I couldn’t I couldn’t remember her name. I walked away like so confused with everything like oh my gosh, I can really do this. And said to her, you know, we’ve happened to meet up in Rochester. And I was thinking it a year or two, we might have a WordCamp and she said, Why wait a year or two. Let’s just do it. And I was like, Okay.

Christina: I’m familiar with that feeling.

Michelle: Yeah, so I actually reached out to the WordCamp Buffalo folks and said, Hey, can I help you guys with anything, so I can kinda learn the ropes. And so I actually joined their, their team as their social media. So I was posting everything out to Twitter and Facebook, etc. and became part of their team. And that’s the first WordCamp I spoke at. And so I kind of dipped my toes in the contributing field by doing all that, and you know, and one of my favorite ways to contribute is just to sit at the happiness bar, help desk, happiness or whatever, we’re calling it at any Camp, and just help other people there too. Even though I’m not really a developer, and I don’t do a lot of coding. You don’t have to really help people out at the happiness bar. So I guess that’s my origin story.

Christina: Cool. With the happiness bar, can you give us some examples of some people, or some problems or issues that you helped out with there?

Michelle: Sure. So sometimes it’s the help is, wow, I don’t know how to do that. But I bet so and so does, and directing them to somebody who can help, right rather than just sit there and like, trying to figure, like make something up. But I’ve been able to help people with some CSS issues. I’ve been able to help people find the right plugins for the things that they wanted to do. And just kind of, you know, generally, help like somebody will show me their site, and I’ll say, oh did you know you should set your permalinks? And they’re like, what are permalinks that I can explain permalinks and, you know, get the get the URLs a little bit tight here and things like that. So just, you know, just some basic tips and tricks here and there that I think have been helpful to people.

Christina: Definitely. Lots of things that your average user still doesn’t necessarily know because there’s so much to know. Right?

Michelle: Exactly, exactly.

Christina: Excellent. And what would you say is your proudest contribution moment?

Michelle: Uh, gosh, it’s um, I probably have a couple that really vie for top proudest. One of my proudest moments was earlier this year, back in the spring, I got a Facebook message from, from Megan Rose down at WordCamp Kent, asking if I was going to be coming to WordCamp Kent again this year. And I said, Well, I guess I will. I hadn’t really thought about it too much. But yeah, I can I can come and she said, Good. Will you be our keynote speaker. Like, the goosebumps went up and down my arms. I was like, glad she hadn’t called me because I burst into tears. I was so excited, so happy. And so that actually was just seriously one of my proudest moments. And I was able to give that keynote talk to two other Camps this year as well. So I was a keynote speaker three times this year, which was exciting. But being asked and to be part of the WordCamp US organizing team was also really, really exciting for me and one of my proudest moments, as far as contributing to the overall WordPress community.

Christina: Yeah, I think that was one for me too. There’s something special about that. I don’t know.

Michelle: Absolutely. If you like your I mean, like everybody’s part of the community. But when you get to organize an event of that magnitude, you feel like you kind of joined a special club, you know that we all have this camaraderie that’s just really, experienced those things together. And even though we do it all remotely, you just feel this bonding with other people. And it’s not exclusive of a, you know, other community members. It’s just a shared experience that makes you feel that, I don’t know, that’s something special about having been part of it.

Christina: Yeah. And it’s another way to expand your circle within the WordPress community as well. Right?

Michelle: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Christina: Awesome. So you mentioned with the marketing team, that you were doing some work on the Showcase? Can you explain that a bit more?

Michelle: Yeah, so we’ve been redesigning how the showcase works. So that the showc