{"id":1974,"date":"2012-08-25T08:38:12","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T13:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2012.chicago.wordcamp.org\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2013-10-14T22:01:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T03:01:51","slug":"interview-with-samuel-wood-aka-otto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/interview-with-samuel-wood-aka-otto\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Samuel Wood aka Otto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you use WordPress:
\n<\/strong>
\nMy name is Samuel Wood, but everybody except my parents calls me
\n“Otto”. It’s a nickname I picked up in college which stuck. I do
\nrandom things for WordPress.org, the WordPress core, plugins, themes,
\nsupport, and everything in between. You might say that I’m a bit of a
\ngeneralist in that way.<\/p>\n

What will you be speaking about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

After speaking at dozens of these events, I found that having
\npre-defined topics is boring to many audiences. Either it flies over
\ntheir heads, or they already know it. So I’ve taken to the “support”
\nroute. Lots of people attend WordCamps, and leave without having their
\nspecific questions answered. So what I do is to have an “Ask me
\nanything” type of session, where I will answer any question posed
\nwhatsoever. If I don’t know the answer, then I have the core code up
\nand ready and I will demonstrate how to find the answer. This evokes
\nmore discussion, more interaction, and is frankly a lot more fun for
\nall involved, IMO.<\/p>\n

Who is your target audience? Who will get the most out of your presentation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anybody and everybody. No question is too simple, no question is too
\ndifficult. After doing WordPress for over 6 years, and being involved
\nin all aspects, I know most of the answers. If I don’t, then I can at
\nleast point the way. I’ve only been stumped once, but it turned out to
\nbe a really obscure issue. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

What do you hope the WordCampers will get out of your session?
\n<\/strong>
\nAnswers to their questions. That’s one of the hardest things in a
\ncommunity based system, finding decent support. Since I mostly do
\nsupport all the time, on all sorts of things, then I hope that
\neverybody in the room gets their specific questions answered. If
\nsomebody isn’t willing to speak up, then I’m always available for the
\nentire conference for a one-on-one consult to try to help. Helping is
\nwhat I love to do most.<\/p>\n

Tell your favorite WordCamp story!<\/strong><\/p>\n

A bit over 2 years ago, the first WordCamp I attended was in Savannah,
\nGA. Jane asked me to speak, but I replied that I’d actually prefer to
\nattend one before speaking at it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Up until then, I had never met anybody else who even used WordPress
\nexcept for two people: my friend Paul (whom I convinced to switch to
\nWP from Blogger) and Matt Mullenweg, who had been nice enough to
\nsponsor my BBQ team. I had been working for Matt for about 4 months at
\nthat point, and didn’t realize the amount of name recognition that I
\nactually had. So when I introduced myself to people as “Otto”, every
\nsingle one of them said something to the effect of “Oh! You’re OTTO!”
\nto me, and usually thanked me for helping them out on the support
\nforums for some obscure problem a couple of years earlier.<\/p>\n

It was bizarre, because I didn’t know that I was actually well known
\nat the time. Came as a bit of a shock. It’s still very weird to be
\nrecognized, but at least it’s for helping people. That’s a good
\nreason, I think. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Contact Info:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/ottopress.com
\notto@wordpress.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tell us a bit about yourself and how you use WordPress: My name is Samuel Wood, but everybody except my parents calls me “Otto”. It’s a nickname I picked up in college which stuck. I do random things for WordPress.org, … Continue reading Interview with Samuel Wood aka Otto<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8004624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","category-speakers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2g26I-vQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8004624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426517,"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/426517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicago.wordcamp.org\/2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}