Introducing Kendall Guillemette

Kendall is a WordPress technical lead at Kanopi Studios. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Show Notes

WordPress business website | Kanopi Studios

Baseball Podcast | Stolen Signs

Environmental Podcast | Group Project

Twitter | @k3nd477

Episode Transcript

Liam: This is Hallway Chats, where we talk with some of the unique people in and around WordPress.

Tara: Together, we meet and chat with folks you may not know about in our community.

Liam: With our guests, we’ll explore stories of living – and of making a living with WordPress.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 27.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Kendall Guillemette. Kendall is a WordPress technical lead at Kanopi Studios. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Hi Kendall.

Kendall: Hello.

Liam: Hey Kendall, how are you? Thanks for joining us today.

Kendall: Thanks for having me.

Liam: Our pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, a little bit more than Tara shared?

Kendall: Yeah. I’ve been in the web development business for about 20 years, started kind of right out of college. Got a job at a regional marketing firm, basically doing pre-press work, and that involved in I taught myself web development and have grown in that realm. And I started working with WordPress specifically about 10 years ago, and kind of have taught myself that the whole way. I have an arts and design background. The technical side of things has been kind of no formal training but have definitely spent a lot of time and energy diving into that. Yeah, and then on the personal side of thing, like I said, I live in Portland, Oregon. Married, I have two little boys and love being outside, and I love baseball. Those are kind of my vices.

Liam: Baseball. I heard the World Series was fantastic. Would you agree with that assessment?

Kendall: Yeah, it was one of the best ones in a while. Although, last year probably would take the cake for me. I’m a Chicago Cubs fan so that was pretty special for me. But, yeah, this year was really exciting to watch.

Liam: Yeah, I’m from suburban Chicago and I like Wrigley Field because it’s a nice beer garden but I’ve got a lot of family who were just thrilled to see the Cubs win. Why are you a Cubs fan? That’s interesting. You’re pretty far away from the Cubs.

Kendall: Yeah, I grew up in Chicago, in the suburbs out west in Glen Ellyn. That’s where my Chicago fandom comes from, moved out west, lived in Seattle for a while but moved out west about 10+ years ago as well.

Liam: Cool, cool. Your story about how you got to where you are today, the print designer in me picked up on. You started doing pre-press work. Tell us just a little bit about that, we enjoy chatting with people who’ve transitioned from print to web turn, I both have done, so it’s always interesting to hear how others have walked the road.

Tara: It does look to be a little something about your age, though. That means you’re not 20. [laughs]

Kendall: Yeah. I studied art in college mainly painting and printmaking. There’s not a lot of job jobs up for that. And I knew someone who started the original design communications company. They started doing CD Rom development and multimedia slideshows, that shows my age a little bit more.

Liam: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Kendall: They hired me, I think,