SPEAKER INTERVIEW: Dresden Shumaker

This is a series of interviews with the speakers of Digital Family Summit, June 29-July 1.
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Dresden Shumaker is six foot tall, plaid-clad, and relentlessly in search of the world’s best peppermint mocha. She blogs daily at CreatingMotherhood.com. A former Hollywood insider, Dresden now spends her days working in PR and new media for a Philly tech startup and her evenings negotiating with her three year old son about the number of toys he may bring into the bathtub. For sport Dresden helps bloggers create perfect frames for their content by assisting with web and graphic design. Dresden is a single mom and lives in a multigenerational home in Philadelphia.

twitter: @Dresdenplaid
website: CreatingMotherhood
session: Secrets of Professional Blog Design, Saturday 6/30, 4:00 pm

How did you get involved with blogging/digital media creation?  What’s your story?
I gravitated to blogging as a way to chronicle experiences in my life – specifically becoming a single mother by choice. I evolved into the world of design professionally once my readers started noticing that I liked to change the look of my site so often. I started creating original mastheads and graphics for other bloggers and the money I earned helped me afford to continue fertility treatments. I have been blogging for 7 years and get HUGE pleasure out of helping other bloggers have perfect spaces to share their voice.

What are you going to speak about at the conference?

I will be part of a team discussing blog design – what works? what doesn’t work? what simple changes can you make that will change how your readers engage…

If you could travel back in time and give your teenage self some advice, what would it be?

Write it down. Every experience, every heartbreak, every triumph – keep writing it down. It took me a while to make writing a routine for me and I wish I had begun the habit when I was younger.

What’s your favorite technology tool to help you blog/write/tweet/edit ?

I am a self-hosted wordpress girl – have been as soon as I learned that blogging on other platforms meant that I did not own my content. As far as technology that helps me – I create posts with photoshop, wordpress, my laptop, and streaming Aretha from my iphone.

Any advice for young bloggers/digital media creators?

At the other end of your computer, behind the words on the screen, there is another human being. Always remember that – we are not machines, we are people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Adam Gertsacov is the co-founder and co-organizer of Digital Family Summit.  He wears many hats, including those of a professional clown, an author and publisher, an artist/educator, a non-profit administrator, a P.T. Barnum impersonator, a flea circus impresario, and the esteemed hat of the Clown Laureate of Greenbelt, Maryland.