Topic: Herding Cats: How Project Management can Help Build Your Best Customer Experience (and then Make it Better)
Ani King is Liquid Web’s Managed WordPress project director, with ten years of experience building customer-centric support teams. A STE(A)M enthusiast, Ani works with school-aged girls to promote the use of technology and design in concert. Her other great passion is for literature and she operates Syntax & Salt: Stories as founder and Editor in Chief, which showcases new and established authors. Ani is a Michigan native, and she loves exploring the state with her husband and kids, though they usually leave the cat at home.
How did you get involved in WordPress?
I started using WordPress about five years ago, mainly as a blogger, and to experiment with themes and design. I was never a particularly gifted hand-coder, but I wanted to be able to have a professional looking site.
What do you do with WordPress?
I currently run two personal sites and an online literary magazine with WordPress. I work directly on site design, layout, content, and marketing.
In addition to that I work on the Managed WordPress team at Liquid Web as a project director and support team leader. Most of my focus at work is ensuring that we’re making good decisions for our Managed WordPress customers from an experience and support viewpoint.
What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?
When I first started using WordPress most of my experience was searching forums for answers to my many How Do I? questions, and finding that people were exceptionally helpful and detailed. When I moved into my current position and attended my first WordCamp (Ann Arbor 2016) I quickly learned how supportive the WordPress community is of itself, and that really influenced my desire learn more and become more involved.
Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?
In particular, I love how much the WordPress community does to share knowledge and help give a leg up to others through individual and group experience. My hope is to both impart a few things that could be helpful, and to learn as much as I can.
Why did you decide to speak on project management?
Project management is a (boring) mystery to a lot of people, but at its heart the focus is organizing so that you don’t lose time and money through poor planning, and with so many people using WordPress to launch businesses, large and small, or an online presence, and the ever growing importance of customer experience, I wanted to help pass on some fundamentals that I think can benefit those who don’t have the for a project manager.
What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?
Simple ways to better organize around customer experience when planning projects or changes. Basics of project management can be used by anyone to make life easier.
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 11-12. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!
