uProfile October 2024 - Erica Quessenberry

Erica’s first foray into the Umbraco Community

In thinking back through my journey in the Umbraco community, I’m really left with thoughts on how far this community has come in the last 15 years. There’s this feeling that we’ve grown, learned, adapted, and changed together.

My first big dip into the community was attending Codegarden with my then boss in 2012. That’s the year they killed v5 in the keynote. Talk about awkward. There were probably around 300 attendees, of which maybe five were women. I was so full of nerves I threw up the first day and maybe talked to a grand total of four people the entire week. Maybe that’s TMI, but large groups, especially when you’re a minority, are intimidating as hell, no matter how friendly, and I think we need reminders of that sometimes.

Despite my rocky start, I kept coming back and was eventually able to carve a niche for myself, and dare I say, maybe even wield some influence over the trajectory of the community? 2012 me would never have thought I had that in me. It just goes to show you never know what will happen if you open yourself up to something new.

A turning point for me was in 2016 when I spoke at uWestFest (the original Umbraco US Festival) about the ROI of gender diversity in tech and was asked to bring it to Codegarden. From the women attending CG that year, I was thanked for taking on the elephant in the room. And from the men, well, mixed responses. It was those negative responses that lit the fire under me and gave me purpose within the community. I wanted those that came in after me to have a better experience and find their place faster than I was able to. Afterall, this is all of our community and it is what we make it.

CG16: Building an inclusive community: the ROI of gender diversity in tech

Hard work and perseverance created great opportunities!

Since my awkward entry into the community in 2012, I have gone on to found Skrift Magazine with my lovely friends and colleagues Janae Cram and Kyle Weems, I’m on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) community team, and I’m a member of the new Umbraco US Foundation. Just this month we resurrected the community-led US Festival; it was a labor of love and turned out amazing! I have also been speaking quite a lot this year at various conferences, including Spark, Codegarden, the US Festival, and the upcoming UK Festival, and attended CODECABIN for the first time! It’s been a busy year!

The US Foundation team. Photo by Matt Nikkila

It's all about the people!

For me, it’s the friendships I’ve made over the years that have kept me coming back to the Umbraco Community. There are some amazing people in this community and I am a better person for knowing and learning from them.

Would I recommend getting involved with the Umbraco Community?

Yes, yes and yea again! I think anyone using the Umbraco CMS will get more out of it when they’re also a part of the community. And despite how much I’m involved in now, I am very introverted and not a joiner by nature. Everyone has their unique journey, but for me 1) I took a chance on this community by continuing to show up even if it was as a wallflower, 2) studied and then emulated my best friend (who is on the total other end of the spectrum as an extrovert) on how to strike up conversations with strangers, and 3) said yes to every opportunity that came my way. Want to start a magazine? You betcha. Want to speak at Codegarden? I’ve got just the topic. Want to start a festival in the US? Sign me up. Putting yourself out there is no easy thing, but though it was hard, I’ve found it highly rewarding and have been able to build my career because of it. Oh, and I made so many wonderful friends along the way!

Erica pictured with so many different Umbraco friends, from all over the world.

Community-Work-Life Balance

Skrift is an ongoing passion project, so the work there is never done. I am continually reaching out to people to see if they’d like to write and share their knowledge, what they are working on, their struggles and triumphs, and their perspectives on development and life experiences. We believe the more we share with and get to know each other, the stronger, more empathetic, and more open we’ll be as a community, which not only helps us grow personally, but professionally as well. If you’d like to write, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

In the DEI group, we are gearing up for next year’s agenda and what we are calling “diversity releases” — an initiative where we aim to amplify the diverse voices and perspectives within the community. Each quarter will have a topic related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and we’re encouraging community members to share their stories, experiences, and ideas across a range of formats — blog posts, articles (write for Skrift!), podcasts (be a guest on Candid Contributions!), YouTube videos, etc around that quarter’s topic. We want to celebrate all the ways we’re different, so I hope people are willing to join us on this endeavor by sharing their stories and experiences. You can read more about the initiative in our announcement.

Work-wise, lately I’ve been moving quite a few sites to Umbraco Cloud. All of the sites share some amount of content so instead of recreating that on each site, it’s being stored in NetSuite and pushed to each site as needed, while their individual marketing pages and branding lives in Umbraco.

It’s always been my goal to move outside the US again (I lived in Scotland for a couple years). I’ve been indecisive about where I want to go, so until I decide and can make that happen, I will continue to travel the world, experience new cultures, meet new people, hike new terrain, and seek to understand new perspectives all while looking for the next place I want to live.

The Pyramids in Giza, Egypt; hiking Pen y Fan in Wales; Pont du Gard, France; Antigua for my birthday

A few things you might not know about me...

I love to quilt. It’s something I picked up not long after I got into the world of web design as an offline creative outlet. There’s just something satisfying about picking out fabric, coming up with a design that suits it, and putting it all together. It’s definitely a labor of love. In 2015 I took a bunch of old Umbraco t-shirts and made a quilt for one of the bingo prizes. I’ve been told it’s somewhere around HQ still, but I haven’t seen it in years. While I am still super proud of it, looking back at photos, I can see how much my skills have grown.

Clockwise from the top left: The Umbraco t-shirt quilt, the last quilt Erica made — a wedding gift for her bestie, her latest quilt in progress (she draws out potential quilting patterns on her iPad), the Christmas quilt that took her 6 years or so to make.

I LOVE to travel and my bucket list is mostly just filled with all the places I want to travel to. I’ve always had the goal of getting to all 7 continents. Antarctica was going to be in early 2021, but we all know how that turned out. And now I’m reading about how the uptick in tourism there is harming the environment, so mixed feelings on still going some day and my bucket list might go unfulfilled. BUT, while they might not be new continents, I did add three new pins to my map this year including Antigua 🇦🇬 in the Caribbean, which was some place I’ve always wanted to go for a birthday adventure (hurricane season be damned!).

My pin map! Definitely so many more places to explore

My hidden talent is convincing people that tofu is actually amazing and plant-based eating is super good. I threw a fully vegan brunch when my bestie got married this year for 10 of her non-vegan, out of town friends. I didn’t advertise it as vegan, and I don’t think any of them realized it until my bestie said something after. Those mini frittatas y'all just devoured? Tofu. Those muffins and cakes? No dairy, no eggs. And it’s all still so delicious and satisfying. I’ve been vegan for well over a decade and it’s taught me to be a better, more creative and sustainable cook and I love to show people that vegan food can be and is amazing when done well (though I will admit it’s not always done well).

The vegan brunch spread

Stay in touch!

I have a love/hate relationship with social media and try to abstain from it as much as possible. But you can find me on LinkedIn and I do post occasionally on Instagram. I have a whole bunch of reels in my head that I want to make, but likely never will because they take me too long! 😆

Is there someone you'd like to nominate for a uProfile?

Do you know someone who deserves a spotlight on their Umbraco journey? To nominate a friend, peer, or colleague, reach out to Lucy Brailsford in the DevRel Team at community@umbraco.com and explain why!