We caught up with Brian Krogsgard, one of our awesome international speakers for this year’s WordCamp, to find out more about who he is, where he comes from and what he’s going to be speaking about.

For a few years, web development was purely a hobby for me. I was one of those guys that had ideas for various websites and I would hack away trying to build them myself. What I quickly learned was that building websites was fun, but my ideas weren’t particularly good.

After graduating from college with an Industrial Engineering degree, I took a fairly traditional job route. My web hobby kept tugging at me, so much so that I started digging into learning web development more seriously.

As I learned to make websites, I had a desire to share what I was learning. Similarly, I started to realize just how large of a community surrounded the WordPress project. I was able to engage with the same people whose blog posts and tutorials I was learning from, and the access to their knowledge amazed me.

I started writing some tutorials about WordPress myself in order to share with other people who may be beginners like me. And I even blogged about “news” as a contributor to a popular WordPress blog, simply as a way to further learn about the products and services that existed in the ecosystem and I was using in my work.

Eventually, I knew this was the industry I wanted to be working in full time. But I didn’t know how that could happen. I still had no real concept of how web development agencies and marketing firms were using WordPress for client work. But then I saw an advertisement for a local agency looking for a WordPress developer.

I felt knowledgeable about WordPress, but I didn’t feel particularly ready for “the big leagues.” I had built sites for friends and family in my spare time, but most of what I had to my name were blog posts and industry knowledge.

It was enough.

Since I made that leap, I’ve learned so much, stayed involved, kept blogging, and refined my craft. To this day, I consider what I’ve learned by blogging about WordPress to be my most valuable source of knowledge and a big reason for the success I’ve had in my young web development career.

In my talk for WordCamp Cape Town, I want to tell you the story of Post Status, talk about why I think blogging is so important for your career, and share some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.