Episode 82: Birgit Olzem

Introducing Birgit Olzem

Birgit Olzem says WordPress is her passion. She is the mother of five, granny of one, a coach and a trainer. She loves to connect people in the WordPress ecosystem and she advocates for mental health awareness and inclusiveness.

Show Notes

Website | CoachBirgit

Twitter | @coachbirgit

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 82.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats, I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we are joined by Birgit Olzem. Birgit says WordPress is her passion. She is the mother of five. Granny of one, a coach and a trainer. She loves to connect people in the WordPress ecosystem and she advocates for mental health awareness and inclusiveness. Birgit has been playing with WordPress since its first release. Welcome Birgit!

Birgit: Hi Liam. Hi Tara!

Tara: Hi! We’re so excited to have you here today Birgit. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us more about your story?

Birgit: Oh yeah. My signature story is the story of the year 2018. When I started using WordPress I didn’t expect that it went this way. So yeah. I am a mom of five as you introduced me, right? I am a Grandma one awesome grandchild. My oldest daughter gave birth in April this year. Over the years I taught myself developing and building websites. I’m an explorer. I’m always curious about how those things are working. That’s what led me to this point today. I have grown up in the countryside in Germany near the border of Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and France. So when I sit in my car, I am one hour away and in a different country. So it’s pretty awesome.

Tara: That is pretty awesome! So you have been working with WordPress for a long time. How did you discover it? What were you doing before you discovered it?

Birgit: I was originally more of a mother so I couldn’t finish my school education. I finished, but not really higher education. I wanted to do it but I got pregnant when I was 17. So I was in the early stages and so I changed my life into being a mom and a wife. I was a waitress but I was always curious about computers. I have played around with building websites and it was my hobby when my kids were sleeping, or at playtime with others. I used to sit on the computer and teach myself building websites and designing something like that.

Tara: Wow! What did you find to be the resources that were most helpful when your were learning? What were you relying on? Videos or books?

Birgit: Yeah. There were some websites in the early stages. There was a German website, telfhtml.de. It was most researchly and user groups, mail user groups and some firms where I learned a lot about php. I learned about that, About b2b, coffee lark, Joomla, Drupal over the years. I also learned about the user groups and about WordPress when it was released. I played with one of the first release versions.

Tara: Great! Can you talk to us a little bit about a talk that you have given about WordPress? What WordPress has meant in your life?

Birgit: Yes. I shared my story on how WordPress literary saved my life this year at several WordCamps. Through some strong connections within the WordPress community I was able to make my living but also to overcome a really really hard time in my life through the friendships I made in the WordPress community. In 2018, I had the chance and also the courage to talk about that hard topic in public. I learned that I can give more inspiration about th...