It is our pleasure to welcome Sherrie Rohde as a keynote speaker at Meet Magento Croatia! Sherrie is the Community Manager at Magento where she is responsible for Magento Masters, the Magento Forums, and Magento Meetups. On a mission to help the Magento community be successful in their own roles, she is focused on improving mental health and creating an inclusive environment.
This passion of hers intertwines with everything she does regarding Magento community, and we’ll have the chance to learn more about it in her “How to Avoid Burnout While Contributing” speech. In the meantime, here’s Sherrie’s story on her Magento beginnings and thoughts about the community.
Hi Sherrie! You are well known in the Magento community, but tell us, what’s your story? How did you become a Community Manager at Magento?
I started using Magento as a Developer back in 2007, shortly after the initial public beta was launched. At the time, I was working as a Multimedia Graphic Designer at a small merchant and I needed to find an eCommerce solution. Thanks to the Inchoo blog and the help of the Magento Forums, I was able to teach myself Magento and to also pay it forward by helping answer the questions of others along the way. As I became more involved in the community and continued to grow my career, I became friends with the previous Community Manager at Magento. She taught me about the career path in the community and essentially mentored me in the role, though it wasn’t until 2015 that I joined the team.
What drives you to work as a Community Manager at Magento?
Over the past 10 years, I have met so many incredible people in the Magento community. It is an honor for me to be able to do what I can to provide them with the resources and connections they need to be successful as well as the recognition and opportunities that they truly deserve.
Sometimes there is a lot of negativity around Magento. From your perspective, what’s so great about Magento Community that we, maybe, too often take for granted?
I actually think that there’s a lot more positivity than negativity around Magento. The Magento community is a very passionate group of innovators and adventurers. Whenever we’re passionate about something, all of our emotion trails through our dialogue. I consider it a very positive opportunity that we receive so much feedback from the community about what they need and what they would like to see take place.
Burnout thread: https://t.co/ruVYGjqCTd
— Sherrie Rohde (@sherrierohde) September 16, 2018
Mental health is important to you. How can we all at IT community improve mental health and create an inclusive environment?
If we’re not taking care of ourselves, we have nothing left to give to those around us or the things that we care about. This is why it is so important to do what you can to improve your mental health. While the process looks different depending on your own personal needs and your company environment, Open Sourcing Mental Illness has put together some resources, both for employers and employees, on this subject that you can check out at osmihelp.org.
What is your MM18HR presentation “How to Avoid Burnout While Contributing” about and what would be some key takeaways from it?
How to Avoid Burnout While Contributing will celebrate our community of contributors at the same time as looking into the problem of burnout in tech and giving them actionable methods to apply to their lives while contributing.
Thank you Sherrie for this conversation, we are eager to hear more at the conference! Besides presentations, we’ll have the chance to enjoy tons of diverse activities to make you remember #MM18HR for a long time. Contribution day and Pre-party at Inchoo, party at a boat, a tour of our office, a tour of Osijek where you will be guided by actors and many more! See you!
