This past year, I’ve participated in a number of different meetups and speaking engagements all of which are oriented around blogging, WordPress, development, or something similar.

Generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed the events that I’ve attended. I always try to keep it really laid back (I make a lot of my presentations in Paper, even), and do what I can to make the events more of a discussion rather than a lecture.

For the most part, it goes well, but yesterday was a bit of a different audience: high school students.

WordPress in High School

The Next Generation of WordPressers

When I was in college, I served as a teacher’s assistant for a few semesters and during which I held recitations and office hours. Talking to a group of your peers about a subject that you’re passionate about – or at least somewhat interested in – is relatively easy.

But high school is a bit different. After all, I remember what was like in high school and I don’t know if I’d want to speak to myself.

Yesterday wasn’t like that, though.

Espousing Wisdom?

Ideas, Branding, and Impact

Instead, I had the pleasure of speaking with a group of students about WordPress, Standard, Blogging, personal branding, and its impact both academically and professionally and they were completely engaged in the topic.

Specifically, I hit on the following points:

  • 8BIT is a startup that my partners and I built to focus on building products for digital publishers. Our ultimate goal is to create a working environment that gives us the feeling of looking forward to going into work that most people have to going home at 5pm.
  • Standard is our flagship product and it’s built on the WordPress philosophy of “decisions, not options.” We want to make sure that we do everything we can to prevent the user from failing all the while empowering them to level-up their presence online.
  • Personal Branding isn’t so much about a little image or icon – like a product brand – that’s associated with who you are, but what you’re publishing on the Internet, how it can affect you academically and professionally, and how it can do so both negatively and positively.

I had a great time – the students asked a lot great questions, were engaged with the content, and seemed to be genuinely curious about how blogging, social media, and other online tools are relevant to their future.

Permitting things pan out well, I – along with the rest of the team – should be able to speak more regularly about the above topics in future semester.

Definitely looking forward to getting WordPress in the hands of the next generation.

Man. That makes me sound a bit old.