A special note to my faithful readers, subscribers and lurkers:  I am going to do something a little different with this interview.  Instead of Part I and Part II, I’m going to spread the questions and answers out over the next few weeks.

Why?

Because Lorelle has a lot to share with us.  Even though she gave me permission to edit her responses in the interest of brevity, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I felt that I’d be doing her grave injustice if I edited anything out; I also did not want to subject any of you to information overload.

You see, as an interviewer, I’m in a rather interesting position.

I want the person who is being interviewed to know how just much we appreciate the time they spent with us but I also have the job of making sure that your time here is well spent with the hectic lives you all seem to lead.

Therefore, for the first time since I’ve started the Stephen Hopson Interviews, I am breaking up this interview (you’ll see the irony of those words “breaking up” in just a moment) into 4, maybe 5 parts with about 5 questions each.  That way we get everything she wants us to know in digestible bites.

Okay?

It’s a win-win situation.

Having said that, let’s welcome LORELLE to the set of Stephen Hopson Interviews!

1. One of my favorite questions when I want to learn about someone is by asking them to give me their 5 second introduction when I pose the question: “What do you do for a living?”

I have to respond by asking what you want and who you are before I respond to that question. It would take a long time to tell you everything that I do, so I would love to not waste your time by knowing more about you before I answer. See, I wear many hats, and all make money. I’m the queen of diversification.

Money consistently comes from my web consultancy clients. I have a long waiting list of clients who hire me to break things for them. I never thought I’d ever say that when I grew up.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to get paid to break things!”

So my five second answer would be: “I’m an expert at breaking things. Got anything worth breaking?”

I am an expert at breaking things and telling clients how to fix them. I translate the user experience into actionable improvements for the user experience. That’s a mouthful, that’s why I tell people “I break things.” Much easier.

Actually, breaking things is easy. Translating how I broke it and making clear recommendations on how to fix it is hard. I then go a step further and offer serves on technical documentation, writing about how to use the program without breaking it, a service many pay highly for. Few people have the skill, as well as the courage to take on such a challenge.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up and say to a client, the one paying my bills and holding future checks: “This sucks.” Most people dance around with pretty feedback, mixed with soft and gentle, politically correct nice-nice, padding the real criticism - and the truth.

Luckily, my clients come to me because they know in 30 seconds they will get what they can get from someone else in a hour. I don’t waste time. “This sucks and here is why. Now, let’s talk about how to make it better and improve the value for the user.” From there, they get a better picture of the potential for the product or service, how to make it more user friendly, thus more marketable. They bring me in during the alpha/beta testing phase or during remodel to fix things before taking it to public beta. This shortens the beta time and gets it out faster to the public.

I also make money from professional speaking, much like you do, Stephen. I speak before private and public groups, businesses, associations, and clubs about a variety of subjects. Over the past few years, I’ve become the expert representative on blogging and WordPress - web publishing - though I’m also a professional traveler, nature and travel photographer, and writer, covering those topics with equal passion.

Again, I approach my talks with the premise of “breaking and remaking” the subject matter. For instance, I love to talk about WordPress as an amazing free program that gives anyone in the world a platform upon which to take their soap box. Either on the free WordPress.com hosted blog service or with the free WordPress self-hosted version, anyone can have their say.

WordPress isn’t perfect, which is why they have such amazingly active WordPress Support Forums, so it’s part of my work when talking about WordPress to tell people how I broke it and how I fixed it, thus, show them how to blog and use WordPress better. The more you learn about the technical side of using WordPress, the more concentration time you can spend on developing content and not messing around with your blog’s look and gadgets. Recently, I stunned the crowd at WordCamp Dallas when I bashed WordPress in front of WordPress lead developers during my talk on WordPress tips. Matt Mullenweg laughed and said he expected no less from me. Nor do my clients.

I also am a technical writer, sharing my insights on breaking and fixing things, and write for the Blog Herald, Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, Woopra, and a variety of other online and print magazines, publications, and blogs.

Of course, I don’t always call it “breaking and fixing.” I tend to say official sounding business phrases like “technical tips and how to’s” or “educational guidelines,” but trust me, it’s about breaking and fixing - understanding how to do it right because you’ve broken it. Then how to do it better.

My last hats are as a teacher and workshop leader on nature and travel photography and writing, as well as self-improvement and motivational speaking. As WordPress and blogging are getting the most attention right now, those events come fewer and fewer, but they are my passion and I hope to get back to them soon.

Stephen’s Response:  Well, you certainly do wear many hats my friend.   I think your 5 second introduction, just to make things interesting and stir up curiosity is to say “I get paid to break things.”  Then leave it at that - see what they say.  More than likely you’ll get a “HUH?” look.  Then they’ll be compelled to say, “Well, what things do you break, exactly?”

2. Tell me in 3 to 5 sentences something we can’t read in your bio or at the “About Page” at your blog Lorelle on WordPress.

Three or five sentences? Oh, come on, Stephen. We’re storytellers. How dare you limit me!

Actually, I live a WYSIWYG life. It says it all, but there are a few things people miss, especially the last paragraph in the main section:

Lorelle is currently back in the United States after five years spent living overseas avoiding terrorists and political leaders in the Middle East, and has been found in Hurricane Alley swinging a chain saw and shovel helping the recovery from Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Katrina, and whatever hurricanes kept coming. She recently moved closer (Oregon) to her native Seattle, where only earthquakes and traffic jams can terrorize her.

I have a wicked sense of humor. My friend, Liz Strauss, challenged me to let a little of that wickedness show over the holidays recently. I was actually sick to my stomach to expose that part of me because it is so easy to misinterpret in print. I’m terribly satirical and people just don’t get it when it’s black letters on a white page. I’d so love to write like Terry Pratchett who is a master of comedic satire.

I gave in and wrote 10 Really Rad Righteous Blogging Tips by my alter-evil twin, Lorraine. Liz came up with the name and mistakenly called her my “alter-evil” and that was so freakin’ funny, I had to use it. I was so nervous but it worked and people GOT it. I’m constantly surprised at who finds that and really gets it and links to it. Totally stunned. What a stretch to take that part of me and make it public! Wow!

Since I’ve broken your five sentence limit (I told you I break things), I’ll add that I’m very serious about taking “me” out of Lorelle on WordPress to keep it all about “you.” I write most of the posts in second person singular to keep them totally inclusive. It isn’t about how “I do it” but how you do it, as if I am sitting down next to you as you work through the issue. So what you don’t see on that blog is me, the real me, not just the illusion of me, which is actually closer to the truth than you might think.

I am all about YOU. For me, it’s not about the numbers. I don’t care if 2 or 2,000 or 20,000 people visited my site today. Don’t care. If I helped one person blog better, use WordPress better, understand a complex subject for the first time, cleared the air, whatever - I’m SO HAPPY. I live for the comments that say, “I’ve been looking everywhere and I found the answer here. You make so much sense. Thank you.” Goal accomplished.

Stephen’s Response:  I liked in particular your last few words about not caring how many visitors you get to your blog.  That attitude is quite opposite of most bloggers out there - they’re all stats freaks, myself included.  But it’s funny because as a speaker, I actually don’t look for standing ovations.  I have this mindset that if I can make a difference for one person in the audience, then I have done my job.

But with my blog, I gotta tell you, I love watching the traffic spike upwards.   Yes, I admit it!

3. How long have you been blogging at “Lorelle on WordPress”?

Lorelle on WordPress was launched about a week before Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Donncha O’Caoimh, the master behind WordPressMU and WordPress.com asked me to break it as an early beta tester. I did. In more ways than one.

My main blog, Taking Your Camera on the Road, was started in 1993, if memory serves. It was one of the first public “amateur” sites on the web as part of CompuServe’s first plunge into offering websites. Since I worked with several forums on CompuServe, and used to run an advertising, printing, and graphics design business, I was a natural choice. As self-hosting developed, we moved out of CompuServe’s arms and on its own, and it continues on today.

When I speak at blogging and web technology conferences, it’s amazing to watch the hands drop after the three year mark. Then zero out to maybe two or three, then one other person whose been “blogging” for more than 10 years. At the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) last year, Liz and I had a debate over the definition of an “elderly” blogger. We finally decided that an elderly blogger was someone blogging over the age of 50, 60, or 70 - whatever your cut-off point is for “old”, and that an elder blogger was someone who had been blogging for a very long time. I’m an elder blogger, but elderly will knock on my door soon. Then what will I be? An elderly elder blogger? That sounds like a bad tree gone wrong.

So I tell people I was blogging before blogging had a name. We had all kinds of names for it back them. Journaling. Storytelling. Self-publishing. Web publishing. Online diary. I liked online journaling the best and I hoped that name would stick as it has such power, but weblogs came out of the dungeon of weird and odd name calling which converted to “blogs” and we’re now stuck with a name that makes people cringe and often mistake for logging, though slowly the perception is changing.

As well as breaking things, I want to be in charge of naming things!

Stephen’s response:  You, an elderly blogger?  Oh good Lord.  You look nothing like an elderly lady.  NOTHING!  But if you’re elderly, then I’d have to consider myself an infant.  I’ve only been blogging since April of 06, which would make me a child blogger.  LOL.  But I’ve been doing some fast growing up lately though.

4. How did you come up with that very smart branding name of a blog title? It’s like you’ve branded yourself like what Oprah, Ellen and Barbara (Walters) have done for themselves. Anyone whose head is not in the sand would know who “Lorelle” is. If not, they have to be shot on sight! LOL.

Oh, funny. If you say “Barbara” I think of Striesand, not Walters, even if a letter is missing in the name. So much for name recognition.

In the early days of WordPress.com, EVERYONE was calling themselves X on WordPress. We still have Matt on WordPress (which Matt Mullenweg has renamed Matt on Not-WordPress for fun), Mark on WordPress for WordPress and B5 developer Mark Jaquith, Westi on WordPress for Peter Westwood, Barry on WordPress for Barry Abramson, the server whiz who keeps WordPress.com rockin’, and the lead developer for WordPress, Ryan on WordPress for Ryan Boren, though most of these have fallen by the wayside as the testing of these WordPress.com sites has mostly ended, though Mark and I keep ours active. Andy Skelton was one of the few developers and testers that didn’t go the “on” route and just called his “Andy Skelton” - he’s always breaking the rules.

So there was no branding involved. I was asked to test the service and I knew that in order to test it, I had to produce content that would break it. Since I was, and still am, heavily involved in writing WordPress documentation on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, there were a lot of articles I’d written that just weren’t in line with the WordPress Codex Guidelines so I thought they would be good material with which to break WordPress.com. And they did.

I did no marketing, no soliciting, no submitting, nothing. Part of the test was to see how WordPress.com handled SEO. I relied totally on built-in functions of WordPress such as pings and trackbacks and the well done SEO features in WordPress Themes as well as behind the scenes. I also had over a decade of experience understanding how keywords work with search engines, which makes SEO web writing automatic and natural for me. I rarely think about it any more, I’ve been doing it so long. I also seemed to have the news they wanted to hear on how WordPress worked.

I certainly wasn’t the first nor the only one writing about WordPress and WordPress.com, but the growing popularity and traffic told a bigger story about how powerful WordPress.com blogs are for SEO factors. There are now a lot of businesses and professionals who use WordPress.com as a CMS and blog exclusively, because they’ve learned as I did - you can’t beat it for fast inclusion in Google and positive search engine ranking. Sure, it has its limits, but if you are just marketing yourself and not doing direct advertising - it’s a powerful service to be associated with.

As for my logo, the new WordPress circle logo had just been introduced around the same time as the release of the do-it-yourself Sandbox WordPress Theme on WordPress.com and I was called upon to break it. Messing around with the logo, I remembered the first days of my life on WordPress.com and Hurricane Katrina. I took the new WordPress circle logo and twisted it into a hurricane and BINGO. It symbolized energy, forces beyond our control, strength, and my personal history with hurricanes and human and natural disasters, elements very important in a personal logo as it must represent YOU - the real YOU - the public YOU - so you own it and it is you. I could talk for an hour about designing that logo and what it means to me, it’s that kind of powerful connection, one I used to work hard to give my design and ad clients.

The same applies to your blog. If your blog isn’t you and representative of you, there is a disconnect. It’s your voice. Use it wisely, and use it truthfully. As I said in my presentation at Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) in Chicago recently, “How do you know when a blogger is faking it?” Ah, you know! You can spot it in an instant. It not just physical. It’s almost psychically intrinsic. Artifice reveals itself immediately. We know fakes when we see one.

I teach my web clients and students that EVERY element on their blog or website must represent them and their message. Every design, every graphic, every color, every word. ALL of it. If it doesn’t, you’ve opened the door to doubt. Authenticity wins every time.

Stephen’s Response:  I agree about using your blog wisely and truthfully.  You don’t have to write about every single thing that’s happened in your life but at least let whatever you write be a truthful representation of you and your experiences.    You’re absolutely right - you know if a blogger is faking it.  I’ve already cut out those from my RSS feed.  There are some who are “wanna-bes” and I’m not interested.

5. And even more to the point, how did you end up getting labeled “Queen of WordPress?”

Queen of WordPress. WordPress Diva. Blogatrix. Blog-a-matrix. Blog evangelist. Blogging Queen. Ah, look! Full circle. (Image Credit:  Lorena Alvarez).

I have never labeled myself these. These are labels others put upon me. Sometimes they just crack me up. Blogatrix had me laughing for over an hour. What amazingly creative folks are out there! And what work they put into putting labels on us.

It is always interesting to watch how people put you in a box. Stephen, I bet you get put in all kinds of boxes and your whole body covered with sticky labels as a child, teenager, adult, and now as a public persona. Let’s see, what box can we put Stephen in today? Oh, yeah, he’s the deaf guy who speaks so passionately about overcoming adversity or he’s the deaf guy who can fly an airplane. I’m sure you get “deaf guy” labels all the time. Ain’t that sad. You re so much more than that. Aren’t we all.

We must put people in boxes, you know, or else we just don’t understand them or what they do. I’ve been in the programmer box, developer box, advertising box, marketing box, author box, writer box, web publisher box, consultant box, photographer box, editor box…how many boxes you got?

Years ago, the husband of a friend of mine asked about how he should “box Lorelle.” He admitted that he couldn’t find a place to put me in his thinking. What box did my friend put Lorelle in? She gave the best answer. “There’s not a box but a drawer for her. It’s the miscellaneous drawer.” BINGO! Lorelle is in the miscellaneous drawer. There, next to the string, tape, screwdriver, tacks, plastic rings, bag ties, and the thingamajig. Wave to her! He figured out where to put me and life went merrily on its way.

I hate labels and putting people in boxes. That’s why blogging and the web is so exciting to me and I’ve long been one of its stanchest fans and advocates. I don’t care if you are black, brown, green, yellow, or chartreuse. I don’t care if you have eyes or ears. I don’t care if you have legs or feet. I don’t care if you are young or old. I just don’t care about the surface. I care about what’s inside. I care about what’s under the skin, no matter how much skin you have or don’t have.

I care about your words. I care about your thoughts. Your feelings. Your ideas. I want to know what you think about a subject. Not what you think you should say, and definitely not a regurgitation of what others have said. I’m so SICK of the blog echo-chamber! I want you to matter and a blog gives you a platform to have that say. Make it matter. Make the soap box you stand on count.

We live in a world where anyone can have their say anonymously or publicly. We live in a world where protests and civil rights violations in Myanmar made their way out to blogs by so many means it was amazing! We live in a world where you can be arrested for having your say in many countries people used to think were “modern” but still aren’t, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia - yet people still find a way to let their voices be heard and get the news out. The self-publishing and public platform that blogs provide gives people the incentive to find unique avenues of expression - I’m loving it!

So the labels just don’t matter any more on the web. Okay, sure they do, but only if you let them. You have to really hunt to find my picture on Lorelle on WordPress. It’s because that blog isn’t about Lorelle. It’s about you and what you came here to learn. I’ll tell you about who I am and why you should trust what I have to say, important criteria for an About page, but it’s not important for you to know if I’m white, black, or whatever. It’s not important for you to know if I’m female or not. My age and race isn’t important. Nor is my religion. None of that matters to my message.

You have to choose what matters. I know, Stephen, that your religious beliefs are critical to your work and blog. But is it important that you are a white religious person or black? Does that change things for you? Or that you are Methodist or Lutheran? Or Catholic or Bah’ai? Only if you let them and they are part of your brand. If you are promoting yourself as a black, religious figure, then sure it matters. Otherwise, who cares?

You are promoting yourself as a deaf person with “Transforming Adversity Into Success”, but you chose that box and you make that box work for you. It’s an important element of your message. It’s your brand box. Anyone can claim they are an inspirational speaker who talks about overcoming adversity, but you are living proof that physical disabilities are really ability-enhancers. You take what you have and make more than the most out of it. It makes you better. It makes you stronger.

I’ve done a lot of work with “mentally-challenged”, the politically correct term for the retarded. Adults born with Down syndrome and other mental disabilities, who have survived all odds and labels put upon them. If they have the words, or if their parents do, they will be the first to doubt the wisdom that comes with modern medicine helping us to sort out and clean up disabilities in the womb or before. Sure, it would be easier to have a “normal” child, but for them, overcoming that diversity is what makes their life special. (Photo credit:  Richard Bailey)

Years ago, standing in a hospital ward of a huge facility for the retarded, a friend and I stood in a ward filled with adults trapped diapers and baby clothes, never having reached puberty to inspire their height nor intellect due to chromosomal damage in the womb. These distorted humans continued to live, long after medical professionals said they would, cared for full-time by a never-ending stream of amazing care givers for years upon years upon years.

Overwhelmed with this view of a world few people ever see, watching a dozen “children” crawling on the floor, laying in cribs, with normal or twisted bodies of children age four and younger, with many with the heads of an adult - watching one man-baby having his beard growth shaved by a nurse - my friend looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “They are oysters. Ugly on the outside, but inside them lies a pearl of great value.”

I think we all are pearls in the oysters. There is something beautiful in all of us, hidden under the ugly. Some wear their pearls on the outside, and others wear then on the inside. The magic of a blog is that we only see the pearls, if you let us.

Stephen’s Response:  You’ve certainly seen a lot in your life, haven’t you?  Right when you mentioned about watching a dozen “children” crawling on the floor with normal or twisted bodies, my mind reached into a file that apparently I had stored away after watching a documentary of children placed in foster care.  I was stupefied to see so many abandoned kids because they weren’t perfect enough for their parents.  You’re right Lorelle - we are all pearls in the oysters.  I believe that!

You’re also right about how people like to put my “deafness” in a box.  It’s true.  But I don’t really care because like you said, it’s my “branding box.”  It helps me stand out among the pack of motivational speakers out there.  Why, I even brand myself as the first DEAF instrument rated pilot in the world.  I mean, why not?  And then when people find out that I speak as well as I do, they’re even more compelled to find out what makes me tick, sometimes leading to a lucrative speaking engagement.  So what do I care?

But it is sad that we put others in a box - it’s almost like a human survival technique kind of thing - we can’t seem, as a human race, not to label something.  It’s like going without water.

Turning to the audience:  Well, that’s it for today.  I hope you absorbed every single syllable because Lorelle is someone who can really help us cut through the crap quickly and see things for what they are.  If you’re ever in her presence, you bet she won’t let you forget it!  She tells it like it is and it’s no wonder she attracts clients by the boatload - they all know what they’re going to get and that they’re going to get what they paid for.  No time will be wasted with her.

Thank you Lorelle!  We are excited about having you here for almost a WHOLE MONTH!  That’s a first, my girl. (Continue to Part II)

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