Nancy Bishop is a speaker at WordCamp Chicago talking about Third Coast Review: How an all-volunteer team is building a new website. Get to know her below!

Bio of Nancy S Bishop

Nancy is editor and publisher of Third Coast Review, a Chicago arts & culture website, which was launched in January 2016, and has a volunteer staff of ~40 writers. She’s a retired corporate business writer and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com.

WordCamp Chicago Mini-Interview

1. When did you first become interested in WordPress?

When I retired in 2012, my first goal was to do the personal writing—primarily personal essays—that I never had time for before. After writing half a dozen of them, it occurred to me that I was writing blog material. I explored various platforms and decided WordPress would give me the features and flexibility I wanted.

2. What motivated you to speak at WordCamp?

I wanted to tell the story of our new website, which is kind of a small miracle. The editors were all writers for Gapers Block, the website that went “on hiatus” as of 01/01/16, and we wanted a place to continue writing our arts reviews. We started planning the new site in November 2015 and launched two months later, on 01/08/16.

3. Why do you think WordPress is different from other web platforms?

I’ve worked with other content management systems (including SharePoint and Movable Type) which were more or less user friendly. When I started playing with WordPress.com for my personal blog, I thought it felt right for a person with some tech savvy who wasn’t interested in coding and getting into the html weeds. Now our new website is built on WordPress.org and gives great flexibility for the features that are important for our readers.