April Geek of the Month: Erica McGillivray
Hi everyone! Shubz here with our monthly installment of GeekGirlCon’s Staffer of the Month! For April, read about our President and Marketing Director, Erica!
Name: Erica McGillivray
Occupation: Community Attache at SEOmoz
Position in GeekGirlCon: President and Marketing Director
1: What are you geeky about right now?
I’m totally geeky out on content creation for inbound marketers lately. I know, probably seems boring. But I’ve been putting together another conference, MozCon 2012, and working with speakers to figure out their technical marketing talks. We’re talking crazy stuff like G+ for SEO, mining the Open Graph for customer personas, rapid fire link building tips, and more.
2: How did you find out about GeekGirlCon?
I heard that some women were getting together to talk about building a convention to celebrate geeky women via Twitter. I showed up to the first meeting, and here I am almost 2 years later.
3: Why did you choose to get involved with GeekGirlCon?
I believe in creating community, women supporting women, and making the geekdom friendly for all people, not just cis, het white men who are able-bodied. I’ve been a huge geek all my life and believe that women play a huge — though often overlooked or under-appreciated — role in making geekdom awesome.
4: When did you figure out you were a geek?
I’ve basically been a geek since birth, so a very long time ago. But the first time I really remember knowing the difference between geeks and non-geeks was when my cat Tasha — named after Tasha Yar on Star Trek: TNG — had kittens. I was about 8 years old, and my parents wouldn’t let me keep all the kittens. One of my mom’s friends and her children came to pick up Worf to give him a new home. I freaked out because my mom told me that they were going to rename him Rocky. Despite trying to convince them that Star Trek was amazing and Worf was a great name, they wrote about their new cat Rocky in their next holiday letter.
5: What’s the geekiest thing you’ve done?
Too many things to count?
In 2007, I went to San Diego Comic-Con for the first (and probably only) time with my friend Pearl. We were supposed to go with our other friend Katelyn; but due to being a broke college graduate, she had to bow out. She’d been pretty down in spirits as she’d had a hard time finding a job — as had many of our classmates — and had to move back in with her family. Right around SDCC time, Katelyn found a job and moved out of her parent’s house, but still couldn’t attend with us.
So Pearl and I conspired to get Cliff Simon — Ba’al from Stargate: SG-1 — to sign an autograph for her that congratulated her on the job and new apartment. Cliff found the whole shenanigans pretty entertaining. Here’s what he wrote: http://t.co/VoPoayqk. And to this day, Katelyn still finds it amusing.
You rock, Erica! Thanks for all that you do and contribute to the team and community!
Let’s keep the conversation going: What’s the geekiest thing you’ve done?
Worf was clearly the superior name for that cat… unless he had designs on running all the way to the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A name change would be acceptable only then.
What an AWESOME gift for your friend Katelyn! 🙂 We are so lucky to have you at GeekGirlCon, Erica!