Empowering The World
Like most IT support folks, I started out helping people with all sorts of technical questions. I worked at big companies and small companies. Finally I realized no matter what size, each place had “office politics” which made it really hard for me to do what I loved; helping people. 3 years ago (June 6th, 2006), I quit my full time job and began working for myself so I know what it’s like to have to learn quickly and get up to speed.
After a few years of contracting with small business owners to maintain their computer networks, setup remote access and protect their data, I began to envision how I could help more people. Sending emails was not effective. My life coach suggested I start blogging so I launched my first blog, ButYoureAGirl.com in May 2008. It was hard at first to get going (and still it at times!) but I kept taking the time to put instructions, screenshots, videos and opinons into my blog posts. Now I have several blogs, am active in social networking and real life which I very much enjoy!
The Birth of Freshworkshops
I taught some classes at a local community education program in St. Paul, Minnesota. That meant Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I also taught “Intro to Windows XP” and Internet Resources. Before that I’d taught an A+ hardware certification course at the Minneapolis Urban League. In both cases, I created the curriculum, taught the course and provided followup support to the adult student learners.
2008 brought around the idea of using this experience to teach about Joomla and other Web 2.0 technologies. I contacted local organizations that had training programs and the physical resources but they turned up their noses; “Humph”, they said, “No one in the business world wants to learn about open source, blogs or Joomla. Certainly not thing you call ‘Google Apps’”. Thus, Freshworkshops was born! More later on how I developed the site and it’s content.
Helping People All Over The World
This all started when I made a video about a year ago. I was trying to illustrate for someone how flexible Joomla was so I created this YouTube video where I talked about the difference between HTML websites and newer Content Management System websites.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAGa78MmRBA[/youtube]
The video has been watched more than 26,000 times to date and I’ve received questions from all over the world about Joomla – The Phillipines, Barbados, England to name a few!
What’s Here
For the month of July, I am going to offer a group of workshops that people have been waiting for. Many will focus on getting people up and running. August will reveal workshops that fall into a “series” such as a 4 part Joomla and WordPress sessions.
Stay in the loop by signing up to be notified about new workshops!
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