Interview: Sherrie Rohde

What did you dream of becoming as a child?

I think my strongest childhood daydream was to be an Olympian Gold Medalist whether it be for soccer, snowboarding or figure skating—the event seemed to change based on my stage in life.

My philosophy on life is...

Life is what you make of it, if you want to have an average life than by all means sit around and do nothing. I have huge goals so I work on myself daily whether it be through reading, association or simple steps along the way.

What is your average day like?

I start the day way too early (in my humble yet accurate opinion) but well caffeinated drawing pretty pictures at work. I code, too, but my favorite description of what I do is drawing pretty pictures. After work I generally am active for about an hour whether it's running, cross training or cycling. From there it varies depending on the day but I always find time to catch up with friends and be productive before falling asleep in a good book.

The ideal night out is...

Anything I can still remember the next day that involves being with my friends.

I'm good at...

Everything. I kid, sort of. I really believe I can accomplish pretty much everything I put my mind too, though. So I guess I'm good at problem solving and determination!

I'm very bad at...

Sitting still. I'm pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADD. In fact, an online test told me so once.

What are you proud of?

I'm proud of who I am and who I am working towards being. I'm proud of my refusal to be average.

How did you get involved in Magento?

We needed a low cost e-commerce solution at work and I happened to be on a competitor's forum where someone threw in a plug for Magento. At this point the first stable release had not yet been made but I dove right in and got my hands dirty. By the time Magento was ready to launch, so were we.

I am (still/currently) involved with Magento because...

Magento has proven to be a fantastic flexible solution to meet our constantly growing and changing needs.

What should every newcomer know about Magento?

Magento is not a click and go product. If you want to get dirty and have fun then by all means have a blast! Just don't expect to not do anything at all and then complain about it later. It is a learning curve, depending on your current knowledge, but it's totally worth it.

Which feature would you really like to see added to Magento?

To be honest, Magento has all the features we currently need. The ones it lacks I've added in on my own.

And what feature would you really like to see removed?

Nothing really comes to mind.

What is the first extension you install in Magento?

Haha ... my own. :). I actually have two extensions. One of them allows store owners to enter multiple flat rate options for the customer to select from - alternatively this can be used to select pickup locations. The other extension allows the store owner to set a minimum quantity of items in the shopping cart required in order for the checkout button to be active.

What's the first thing you would improve on magentocommerce.com?

The search functionality—it used to be so good, allowing you to pick which sections of the site to search (i.e. wiki, forums, etc), I don't know what happened to it. Also, the current captcha and I fight. A lot.

What are your future plans with Magento?

My future plans for Magento usage are to continually stay up to date with our installations at work while pursuing new innovative ways to use it for our needs as well as continual work with the Magento staff on various tutorial documents and forum moderation tasks.

Complete the sentence "Magento changes the e-commerce landscape forever because..."

...it gives you the flexibility to make it whatever you need it to be without the hassle of implementing core features upfront. Thanks Sherrie for your cooperation! Next time I'll interview Brent Peterson from Wagento Data Consulting LLC.