Introducing Miriam Goldman

Miriam is a lead web developer at Pondstone Digital Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Ottawa, Canada. She’s been a web developer for over 12 years, has been working with WordPress since 2008.

Show Notes

Website | MiriamGoldman.ca

Twitter | @mirigoldman

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 36.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Miriam Goldman. Miriam is a lead web developer at Pondstone Digital Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Ottawa, Canada. She’s been a web developer for over 12 years, has been working with WordPress since 2008. She is one of the core organizers of WordCamp Ottawa and speaks at various WordCamps across North America. Outside of web development, she is a black belt in karate, and also a competitive Latin ballroom dancer. Hi, Miriam. How are you?

Miriam: Hi, Liam. I’m good, you?

Liam: Very well, thanks.

Tara: Hey, Miriam, nice to see you.

Miriam: Nice to see you too.

Tara: Welcome. I’d like to hear a little bit more about you and your ballroom dancing and your black belt, but especially about your interaction with WordPress and our community. Tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Miriam: I’ve got into web development pretty early. I just kind of fell into it, and WordPress I kind of just stumbled upon in 2008. I just really fell in love with it and I just built on it more and more, and I managed to get jobs that used WordPress as their content management system. Do a little bit of freelancing on the side and then I got involved with the WordPress and WordCamp community just by chance. I started just attending and then my boss at the time said, “You should speak.” So I started to speak. Then we became good friends with Megan Haynes and Sean Hooper here in Ottawa. They encouraged me to join the organizing team. That’s how I became one of the co-organizers and I believe I am taking on speaker lead for WordCamp Ottawa 2018, but it hasn’t been finalized yet.

Tara: Excellent. Is WordCamp Ottawa pretty large? How many people attend that one?

Miriam: A couple hundred. I think we had somewhere between 150 and 200 last year, I don’t recall the numbers. But it’s pretty good because there’s a core of people who come up, they come from Toronto and Hamilton, or they come in from Montreal. The cities are pretty close to each other, it’s a two-hour drive to Montreal from here and it’s about four or five-hour drive to Toronto. Kind of like the eastern WordPress community is actually pretty large and people just go from city to city because it’s pretty easy to get here.

Tara: Great. Before we talk more about WordPress and web development, tell me a little bit about the relationship between being a black belt in karate and a ballroom dancer?

Miriam: I started with karate first. I started that about ten and a half years ago because I wanted to get fit, and I was watching a karate class before a kickboxing class and I said, “That looks fun. I’m going to try it.” So with that, I got discipline and self-confidence. And the ballroom came on because I liked watching Dancing With The Stars. When I got my first-level black belt seven years ago, I wanted to do something else to build different muscles so I found a studio that just had group classes,