Episode 107: Mike Demo

Introducing Mike Demo

A former MousePlanet MouseStation Podcast co-host, Mike Demo is a lover of open source first, specific tools later. Before joining BoldGrid as a community evangelist, Mike spent years in the financial and insurance industries. He believes in sharing his business acumen and marketing insight. He presents regularly on open source topics like WordPress and Joomla! – where he was a board member of that project.

Show Notes

Website | Bold Grid

Podcast | Mouse Planet

Podcast | Bold Life Podcast

Twitter | @mpmike

Referenced in this Show:

Lee Cockerell

John Rampton

CMS Garden

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.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 107.

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

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Mike Demo, a former Mouseplanet, MouseStation podcast co-host. Mike Demo is a lover of open source first, specific tools later. Before joining BoldGrid as a community evangelist, Mike spent years in the financial and insurance industries. He believes in sharing his business acumen and marketing insight. He presents regularly on open source topics like WordPress and Joomla, where he was a board member of that project. Welcome, Mike. We’re glad to have you here today.

Mike: My pleasure.

Liam: Mike, thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, please?

Mike: Yeah. My name is Mike Demo, and I am open source evangelist. So I travel around the world and I go to things like WordCamps and hosting conferences, and just connect with community. I’ve been in making websites ever since middle school. I used to code all my papers in HTML.

Tara: Wow. Let’s ask a little bit about the Disney because I can see behind you some Disney stuff, Disney posters, and it sounds like you are involved in some Disney podcast stuff. So tell us a little bit about your Disney.

Mike: I’m a huge Disney fanatic probably more so than most anyone else in the WordPress community. And I am including Roy in that. My wife and I, live in Minnesota but we have annual passes to both Disney World and Disneyland. We go about once a month. I used to work for the company. I learned a lot. I ended up becoming friends and get to know some of the executives that are in the company.

And then I started a podcast with my really good friend Mark Goldhaber who used to write for a mouseplanet.com. And we did that for years and years. So if you want to listen to a five straight months of my voice, you can go to mouseplanet.com/podcast. But I still love it and we go all the time.

Tara: Wow. What’s your favorite thing to do at Disney World?

Mike: At Disney World, it would probably go to the Polynesian Resort to go to Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto which is their kind of hit in a way Interactive Tiki Bar.

Tara: So you do the adulting stuff?

Mike: I do everything. I ask your character breakfast. But the thing that we have to do every time is go to Trader Sam’s.

Tara: All right. And do you have a preference of Disneyland over Disney World or vice versa?

Mike: You can’t really compare it two.