{"id":1000,"date":"2017-03-12T08:31:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T13:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2017.stlouis.wordcamp.org\/?p=1000"},"modified":"2017-06-30T14:19:40","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T19:19:40","slug":"wcstl-speaker-interview-david-needham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wcstl-speaker-interview-david-needham\/","title":{"rendered":"WCSTL Speaker Interview: David Needham"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Needham will be presenting\u00a0Presentation Skills for Humans<\/a>. He is from Champaign, Illinois, and works as an Agency & Community Training Manager at Pantheon.<\/p>\n

Here is David’s interview:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NILE FLORES:<\/strong> What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?<\/p>\n

DAVID NEEDHAM:\u00a0<\/strong>I first started using WordPress because, like many people, I needed my own website and I wanted it to be a blog. I was learning web design in college and I wanted something that would let me stretch my development expertise (or lack thereof.)<\/em><\/p>\n

NILE FLORES:\u00a0<\/strong>What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?<\/p>\n

DAVID NEEDHAM:\u00a0<\/strong>Tools like WordPress empower people. The communities behind WordPress and other open source tools have significantly influenced my life for good. I have dozens of deep friendships gained by people volunteering their time to help.<\/em><\/p>\n

NILE FLORES:\u00a0<\/strong>How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?<\/p>\n

DAVID NEEDHAM:\u00a0<\/strong>This is only my second WordCamps. Last year when I attended WordCamp Peoria I met a bunch of people I didn’t even know I was connected to! It’s really a small world.<\/em><\/p>\n

NILE FLORES:\u00a0<\/strong>What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?<\/p>\n

DAVID NEEDHAM:\u00a0<\/strong>Don’t give up! There will be times where nothing seems to be working right and there’s no solution in sight. In those situations, I’ve learned that a good night’s sleep does more than I can imagine at the time. And there’s no better way to grow while making friends than asking for help.<\/em><\/p>\n

NILE FLORES:\u00a0<\/strong>What is your favorite feature in WordPress?<\/p>\n

DAVID NEEDHAM:\u00a0<\/strong>Approachability: I appreciate the flexibility that many themes and plugins give to non-developers.<\/em><\/p>\n

NILE FLORES:\u00a0<\/strong>What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?<\/p>\n

DAVID NEEDHAM:\u00a0<\/strong>My favorites:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. WP-CFM: Export your configuration into code so you can add it to version control and easily deploy to Test and Live environments (without overwriting the database).<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. WP-CLI: WordPress at my fingertips in the command line. Not exactly a plugin, but it’s too amazing not to mention.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Pantheon Migrations (with Blog Vault): In my last job I worked for an agency that used Pantheon. Migrating WordPress sites was always fast and easy thanks for this plugin!<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    NILE FLORES:\u00a0<\/strong>What is your favorite WordPress theme?<\/p>\n

    DAVID NEEDHAM:<\/strong> There are so many it’s difficult for me to decide.<\/em><\/p>\n

    If you’d like to meet David, don’t be shy… buy a ticket<\/a> and come on out to hang with us at WordCamp St. Louis, on March 18th!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    David Needham will be presenting\u00a0Presentation Skills for Humans. He is from Champaign, Illinois, and works as an Agency & Community Training Manager at Pantheon. Here is David’s interview:   NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to … Continue reading WCSTL Speaker Interview: David Needham<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1346476,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[1054666,459755],"class_list":["post-1000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speakers","tag-david-needham","tag-speaker-interview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/files\/2017\/03\/2017-speaker-interview-david-needham-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p837Xy-g8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1346476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1009,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions\/1009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouis.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}