For the dozens of you who read my previous blog at the .io domain, hello! It’s good to see you again. After spending more time struggling with Jekyll than actually, you know, blogging, I decided to go back to WordPress. As a good friend of mine once said, it’s important to choose the friction in your life, and so for the time being, I’ve unchosen static site generators.
I also wanted to migrate away from the .io domain, and so settled on .tech as my new home. Maybe one day communitea.com will be available and I will pounce on it. As the sole person in the world with my name, I could have gone with monicaayhensmadon.com but let’s be honest, that is a doozy, and given how many times people misspell my last name, it’s probably for the best that I just stick with what I know, and that is community and tea.
So for those who are rightfully going “who is this person” before I have my shiny portfolio page done, here’s a brief recap. My name is Monica Ayhens-Madon, and I am an open source community caretaker/gardener/facilitator/cheerleader. I started in the Ubuntu community, and I am still there as a council rep and an Ubuntu MATE volunteer, helped with documentation for OpenMRS, have organized two virtual tea parties for conferences, helped with program committees, and served as one of the organizers for the Community: Open Source in Practice track at the first FOSSY. My husband and I live in Atlanta, and before joining the open source space I was an academic, both as a history grad student/instructor and as a writing tutor. In my spare time, I like cozy hobbies like watercolor painting, knitting, cooking, long walks on gentle trails, tea, and equally cozy video games.
At the time of this shiny first post, I am currently, like Trent Crimm in Season 3 of Ted Lasso, independent, after a year and a half at Canonical as the Ubuntu Community Representative. While I am trying to be gainfully employed by someone else yet again – and I will soon be linking my resume and portfolio to help with those efforts – I’m also exploring other options, like consulting on community and inclusive naming efforts. Because even if I was in the wrong story, as the Mo Willems quote goes, at my previous job, the community world is very, very much still the right shelf for me. My recent adventures at FOSSY, which I will be documenting (with photos!) soon, only bolstered that feeling.
So thanks (again!) for reading, look for shiny new updates soon, and make yourself a cup of tea.
Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash