Interview with Alison Barrett

Interview, Speakers

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Alison will be presenting Wireframing Essentials on Saturday
in the Design track

Alison has been working with WordPress since 2008. She started out building simple client websites and moved on to developing plugins and theme frameworks.

After working at various local agencies in Minneapolis, she is now a senior web engineer at 10up. Alison lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and their three cats.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
I’m always developing for the end user  – I want a person who doesn’t know what HTML is to be able to use and update their website, and end up with something that is beautiful, in both visual appeal and the code it outputs. WordPress makes it so easy to develop for the user, because WordPress is made for the user. Also, the WordPress community beats that of any other CMS out there.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
You’ll get more bang for your buck than any other conference you’ll ever attend. You’ll meet fantastic people, you’ll learn great new things, and you’ll have a blast at the afterparty.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
I recently worked on an internal tool for employees to order business cards. It automatically populated the fields using information from our employee directory, and it had a card preview that updated live as information was changed or different layouts were chosen. It saved everything via AJAX as it was entered, and you could drag and drop contact information to and from the card. It was fun to build and super easy to use.

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Focus on the user (or client) experience, and you can’t go wrong.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
I love the Codex. I am looking something up on it every single day. At this point, Google has started to push the Codex to the top of my search results because I visit it more than any other WordPress resource out there.

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I am a gamer. I love RPGs and strategy/simulation games. I could play Minecraft, Mass Effect, or Starcraft II for days on end without getting bored.