Episode 102: Miranda Knee

Introducing Miranda Knee

Show Notes

Twitter | @MaLandra_88

Website | MirandaKnee.com

Other sites mentioned in the show:

Mor10.com

WesBos.com

CMB2

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 102.

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

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Miranda Knee. Miranda is a web developer who strives to build appealing, responsive websites. She’s experienced in WordPress and familiar with creating custom themes. Miranda loves to learn and to grow. Outside of coding, she enjoys yoga, sci-fi and fantasy books, movies, and weightlifting. Welcome, Miranda.

Miranda: Hello.

Liam: How are you today?

Miranda: I’m doing well. I would say I’m excited and a little nervous because this is my first official podcast. So hope it goes well – that I do well.

Tara: Well, we’re so happy that you joined us. Thank you very much for being here. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Miranda: Yeah, sure. I’m 30 years old and proud. I love it. I work for a nonprofit in downtown of Pittsburgh called the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. The Allegheny Conference, basically, they’re a great company. They work in many ways to make the Pittsburgh region better. And when I say Pittsburgh region, it’s typically Southwestern Pennsylvania. They do that through many means, such as trying to convince corporations to come here. And when they come here, they create jobs. So that’s good.

We have a chamber department, we have an economy department, and we have all kinds of affiliates. So all these major departments and affiliates need websites. They need a web presence and that is where I come in. I’m their web developer. I build the websites, I maintain them, I update them. That’s what I do. And I like it. It’s been a great learning experience. But I am the only web developer at the company, and so that can sometimes be challenging.

Tara: Yeah. How did you first get started and learned the trade?

Miranda: Well, I will say this is my second career choice. When I first went to school, I went to Pittsburgh Technical Institute, and I worked for Multimedia. In Multimedia, you can take two tracks. You can either go video editing or web development. In my first round, I chose to do video editing because it was fun, it was creative.

I also liked web development but at that time, I decided to go video. I did that for five years, liked it but didn’t love it. Then I had a crazy experience in my life where I broke my leg. It kind of turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life because it gave me time and time off work, time off life. And with that time, I got to really think like, “Was this the right path for me? Should I change it? What do I really want to do?” And I figured out that I wanted to build websites because I’m a problem solver, and web development allows you to solve problems every day.

So I went back to PTI in 2014, and within a year graduated with my web degree. And six months after graduating with that the Allegheny Conference decided to hire me.

Tara: Were you learning WordPress specifically or did you learn that after you got your degree?

Miranda: I was first exposed to WordPress in school.