Imposter Syndrome affects minorities and Women in Tech at a much higher rate than in other professions. Dashon Hawkins and Sheila Hoffman will share their own experience on this important topic.
No Limits: You’re a dev rockstar and don’t know it. – Dashon Hawkins
This is a straightforward, looking from the outside in dive, that is designed to inspire and motivate all levels of developers especially those who have intermediate or advanced level skills in WordPress who at one time or another have felt or are currently feeling ‘Imposter Syndrome’. This is primarily fueled by some in the global web development community who look down their proverbial noses at WordPress/PHP development. We briefly explore the history of computer science covering such notables as the (grand)mother of higher languages and go into the core challenges that have faced the tech industry when it comes to the lack of diversity and openly discuss how to overcome barriers that we can together overcome in this market. This all leads to a shocking revelation at the end that is the focal point of that speaks to the power of redemption and triumph through many layers of adversity that should leave everyone in attendance encouraged to go further, dig deeper within themselves and share the message of empowerment to any and everyone they come across in the future in order to break the tech barrier. This is exclusive for WordCamp Phoenix to evangelize that Tech is for all.
Finding one’s strengths & defining a niche – Sheila Hoffman
Sheila started doing print design using rub-on transfer letters and cutting up magazines for paste-up fliers in the ’70s when she was running Recreation Centers for the US Army in Korea & Germany. She turned that into a business as a “graphic designer” in the ’80s when everyone was doing Desktop Publishing with Pagemaker. To keep up with the times she taught herself Frontpage and then NetObjects Fusion to make websites for her print clients in the ’90s. By the early 2000s she figured out how to add WordPress blogs to her HTML sites. And finally, she took a 3-hour workshop in WordPress and started creating WordPress websites for clients in 2010, initially with premium themes and pretty quickly using page builders, currently in Divi. This seems a non-traditional path into the WordPress community. How has being a self-taught woman of a certain age played into her career path? How does imposter syndrome impact this journey?