Lindsey Miller
Talk Title: How scaling your revenue can help you scale your agency
Lindsey Miller is a WordPress pro by trade and a political junkie at heart. And she’s even managed to marry the two as founder of www.politicalheadstart.com. When she’s not traveling the world with her husband and two tiny humans, or helping save the world, she can be found creating magic for customers at Liquid Web’s Managed WordPress Hosting as the Partner Marketing Manager. She’s a native Oklahoman, a former sorority girl (I know, right?) and as a whiskey enthusiast, her Old Fashions are legendary.
Joseph LoPreste
Talk Title: Web Accessibility made easy for WordPress
I am co-owner of a web development company located in St. Pete Fl. that has a passion for web accessibility and WordPress.
I bring over 12 years of business and technology experience to the company and I have 2 amazing daughters that give me purpose.
I believe that I can help the disabled community by explaining and teaching how easy web accessibility actually is to implement for developers, designers, and agencies. The people who build and maintain over 1/3 of the internet.
Zack Katz
Talk Title: Running a Plugin Business Q&A
I’m Zack Katz. I have more than 20 free plugins in the WordPress.org plugin directory. I developed one of those plugins into GravityView, a premium WordPress plugin that has sold more than $1.4 million. I am a WordPress core contributor, a WordCamp volunteer, a husband and cat parent.
Erin Flynn
Talk Title: It’s the end of web design as we know it (and I feel fine)
Erin has been making websites since 1999, started her own web design and development company in 2012, and has taught over 10,000 students. She’s spent the past seven years figuring out the business part of running a freelance web design business so that you don’t have to.
Here’s the deal: running a truly profitable web design business takes more than design and coding skills. You’ve got to have the business skills nailed down too so that you have smooth processes, happy clients, and actually have a business that makes money without working all the time. That’s where Erin comes in.
When she’s not teaching designers or working with her own design/development clients, Erin can be found exploring the mountains near her home in Aspen, Colorado. Find out more at erinflynn.com.
Mia Mian
Talk Title: WP DIY Gone Awry… NOW, WHAT?!
Startup and Tech Enthusiast byways of San Diego, CA.
WordPress was my true entry point into the world of development and I wouldn’t have it any other way… from working in agencies to now as a client facing lead for a WP development firm. I’m stoked to represent and advocate for the non-technical WordPress user.
Micah Wood
Workshop: Building Your First Site
Micah is a WordPress Developer at Bluehost. A professional WordPress developer for over a decade, Micah has worked on sites for Fortune 100 companies, has released over a dozen WordPress plugins, is a frequent speaker at WordCamps, co-organizer of the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, is a co-host on the WP Square One podcast, and shares his knowledge by blogging on WordPress development topics.
Katherine McGraw Patterson
Talk Title: Lunching with Lions: How to Survive and Thrive at Networking
Katherine McGraw Patterson offers clients expertise and knowledge gained over 20 years’ experience in marketing support for professional services firms. She first established an independent consulting service in Hong Kong in 1999, and after several years of success in the international market, Katherine returned to the U.S. in 2002, where she applied this critical experience in addressing the marketing needs of small businesses here in the U.S., and founded Smart Fish Marketing in 2006. Since then, she has helped small business and entrepreneurs in a myriad of industries across the US, Canada, and the world in developing their brands and creating stunning marketing materials that attract customers and drives revenue.
Today, KP empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners to transform their business through greater profit, greater clarity, and greater satisfaction by helping them build actionable strategies in their business. She uses her personal and professional experience to help bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to by identifying a clear vision and a solid strategy to achieve proactive growth.
KP is passionate about helping business owners understand how their unique talents, brand, and ideal audience influence everything they do in their business – from marketing and messaging, to products, pricing, and services delivery, through to networking and how they show up in the world. She encourages her clients to operate with a clear awareness of their goals and objectives, so that they can be purposeful and intentional about the actions they take in their business.
Ryan Kanner
Talk Title: Data Structure Design For WordPress
Ryan Kanner is a Senior Software Engineer for NerdWallet, a company focused on financial product recommendation in San Francisco, California. At NerdWallet he works on their content platform team building the infrastructure to deliver content to services across NerdWallet, and support a team of content creators. Ryan has been working with WordPress for 10 years and has been an active community member for most of that time. Currently, the organizer for the WordPress Denver Meetup, Ryan enjoys giving back to the WordPress community through organizing and speaking at events, as well as open source contributions.
Matt Kopala
Workshop: Stop Guessing: Diagnosing and Fixing WordPress Performance
Matt is the founder of SiteDistrict, a powerful & flexible WordPress hosting platform. He has a degree in Computer Engineering, and started off his professional career as a member of the design team for AMD’s first 64-bit processor. Matt is passionate about understanding and helping people solve technical problems. He feels that WordPress hosts should do as much as possible to provide good performance, security, and automation, so that you can focus on your business while your host takes care of the rest. He enjoys travel and previously spent 3.5 years backpacking non-stop across South America, Oceania, and Asia.
Olivia Omega Wallace
Workshop: The One Thing Successful WordPress Builders MUST Have! Brand Message Workshop
As an independent branding consultant, coach and speaker, Olivia Omega Wallace is the Co-Founder of Wallace Marketing Group and the author of Beautifully Branded: The Girl’s Guide to Understanding the Anatomy of Brand You. She has built hundreds of WordPress websites and always starts with brand strategy with her clients before jumping into themes. Olivia encourages creative entrepreneurs to walk in their God-given entrepreneurial purpose by empowering them to create an authentically unique brand…from strategy to execution and through messaging, identity and branded online experiences (websites).
With 20 years of corporate branding, social media, advertising and digital marketing experience, Olivia has influenced the global brands of Frito Lay, Pepsi and Starbucks among others. She is a mom, wife, disco ball enthusiast and has been featured in USA Today, Entrepreneur, Business Week, People and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Niki Mosier
Workshop: Technical SEO Basics
Niki Mosier got her start customizing WordPress websites for small businesses. She has been doing SEO at the agency level for 9 years, with some freelance work on the side. Niki loves the challenges that both local and technical SEO bring. Being able to get results that improve revenue and other business goals for clients is one of the best parts of the job. Niki is a technical SEO manager Seer Interactive. When she’s not working, she’s out enjoying the Colorado mountains or watching the Green Bay Packers.
Matt Lacuesta
Matt “built” his first website 20 years ago with Geocities and
has since spent the past decade working as an SEO to improve organic visibility for the brands you see on the shelves in stores and for the businesses you drive by every day in cities across the country.
Matt heads up the strategies that elevate partner visibility in organic search at Location3. He leads the SEO, Local and Content teams to develop data-driven strategies that keep partners at the forefront of the complex and everchanging organic search landscape. As part of the company’s strategy group, he also identifies cross-channel opportunities so campaigns are truly integrated and working in tandem.
Raquel Landefeld
Talk Title: Becoming a Community Builder: A WordPress Story
Raquel Landefeld* is a serial volunteer with a young soul. In 2010 she co-founded Mode Effect, a Phoenix-based WordPress agency that specializes in WooCommerce integration. Intentional about community building, she believes that wherever her feet are is where the building happens. Currently, she is active in several communities from tech to government to neighborhoods and more. You can usually find her organizing a WordCamp or volunteering pretty much anywhere.
On the personal side of her life, she is a wife & mum, an active dancer, a music lover, an amateur photographer, and has a 20-year-curated Wonder Woman collection.
*Loves doing cartwheels
Patrick Rauland
Talk Title (Joint Talk): 10 Things I Learned After Launching My First eCommerce Store
Patrick Rauland is an eCommerce Educator & Entrepreneur. He’s written books, created video courses for LinkedIn Learning, he helped run WooConf all three years, and he’s the co-founder of WooSesh. He’s obsessed with eCommerce & entrepreneurship. He wants to help you succeed. He’s also launching his own physical product Fry Thief early 2019.
Tessa Kriesel
Talk Title: Building Gutenberg Blocks with ACF
Building community and teaching come naturally to dog-lover and Developer Outreach Manager at Pantheon, Tessa Kriesel. She wears many hats in her life — all with sass and finesse — including founder of Outspoken Women and Coders of TMRW.
Tessa has spoken on many topics, including helping beginners with their development workflows, mentorship, building communities, and shedding light on continuous integration and deployment. She has also been a panelist on a wide range of topics at Conferences and Meetups.
When Tessa isn’t working on her development chops or mentoring junior developers, she is using her extroverted super hero skills to make people feel welcome and included at whatever event she attends.
Topher DeRosia
Talk Title: Introduction to the WordPress HTTP API
Topher is from Grand Rapids, Michigan where he lives with his wife, 2 daughters, and 2 little dogs. He’s been a web developer for over 25 years, a WordPress developer for 9 years, and currently works for BigCommerce bringing better ecommerce to WordPress. Topher also built the official International Space Station Windows95 Desktop Theme.
Angela Bowman
Talk Title: Everything You Wanted to Know About WordPress But Were Afraid to Ask
For many people, WordPress is a bit of a mystery starting with this very confusing question, “Do you have a WordPress.com or WordPress.org site?” What does that even mean? And why does it have to be asked?
In this session, we will talk about “What Is WordPress?” from an ontological perspective. Is it a content management system (CMS)? Is it a website? Is it a company? Is it a secret society of people who wear t-shirts with the letter W emblazoned on them and carry around weird stuff animals that look like Peka Choo but aren’t?
After we get through that, we will talk about how WordPress (the CMS) works. We will start from the beginning, right from the moment you install WordPress. What happens after you click the WordPress installer at your web host (if you have self-hosted WordPress)? We will look at the WordPress database, the WordPress application files, and all the stuff you might upload to your WordPress website and where it actually winds up.
Through this session, we will reveal the secrets of developers. What are they actually doing tinkering with your theme files or building plugins? We will take a look at your theme files and how they work along with the WordPress application and various plugins to display the content of your site.
This is a talk for beginners, so don’t be intimidated to attend. This is where you can uncover the mysteries of your site and be a more aware WordPress user.
Diane Whiddon
Workshop: Creating a Website that Sells
Diane loves awful action movies, fantastic cheese, online marketing, WordPress, and helping small businesses get bigger. She runs her own coaching company at dianewhiddon.com, and you hear her wax (marketing) poetic on her Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing, The Inspired Biz Minute.
Jeff Gamet
Talk Title: Must-have Tools for Podcasting in WordPress
Jeff is Smile’s TextExpander Evangelist and formerly the Mac Observer’s Managing Editor. He has been podcasting for years and is currently co-hosting The iOS Show, and is a regular guest on The Big Show and The Mac Show. Jeff previously hosted TMO’s Daily Observations podcast and co-hosted Apple Context Machine. He’s also the author of “The Designer’s Guide to Mac OS X” from Peachpit Press, and has presented at events such as Macworld Expo, the RSA Conference, and the Mac Computer Expo. In all his spare time, he plays in Colorado’s mountains and makes guest appearances on several other podcasts, too. Jeff dreams in HD.
David Wolfpaw
Workshop: Let’s Build Our First Plugin!
David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.
Nathan Ingram
Talk Title: Surviving a Crisis of Confidence
Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar. He is also the host of the WP Business Podcast, which offers news, tools and insights for people who build websites for clients using WordPress.
As the founder of >ADVANCE Coaching, Nathan works with WordPress solopreneurs and business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.
Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he has been an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham for several years.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.
Michelle Schulp
Talk Title: You Don’t Need A Designer
Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.
Now, she collaborates on projects with clients ranging from solopreneurs to enterprise. She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”
Ashish Kalsi
Talk Title: Best Practices for Securing Your Site
Ashish is a senior outreach strategist for Trust & Safety at Google, helping web creators in securing their websites. He also leads multiple programs for journalists, children, seniors and other at-risk users to help them stay safe online. Previously, Ashish has worked on the Search Trust & Safety team fighting spam and abuse on Google Search. He is a second generation Googler and worked with Google in India for over 7.5 years prior to his recent move to California.
Dave Warfel
Over the past 10 years, I’ve worn just about every hat in the web design world. And I’ve finally found the two that fit just right.
- Building digital products
- Educating others
So that’s what I do now—sell WordPress themes & plugins and teach beginners how to build & manage their WordPress sites.
I volunteered for WordCamp Denver in 2018, had a blast and wanted to get more involved. So here I am planning the parties for 2019 🎉.
My company, Escape Creative, just turned 10 years old. Here’s to the next 10 of hopefully working smarter instead of harder.
Outside of the WordPress world, you’ll find me hiking/running the Colorado mountains, bouncing off the walls of my CrossFit gym, writing down my thoughts and trying to save the world with as few things as possible.
Shayda Torabi
Talk Title (Joint Talk): 10 Things I Learned After Launching My First eCommerce Store
Shayda Torabi has been called one of the most influential Women in WordPress. She’s currently the Co-Founder of RESTART CBD, a THC free CBD wellness company. She’s formerly held positions at WP Engine and WebDevStudios. Additionally, she runs a popular travel and lifestyle blog called “With Shayda” which has afforded her the opportunity to work with brands ranging from Soul Cycle to The Westin. Shayda has spoken at over a dozen WordPress related events, and has been to over 30+ WordCamps globally. When she’s not busy traveling the world, you can find her in her hometown of Austin, Texas pursuing her passions for fitness, wellness, and self care.
David Ryan
Workshop: Take Command With Custom WP-CLI Commands
Dave Ryan is an Interdisciplinary WordPress Developer at Bluehost, where he focuses on helping build WordPress and supporting the WordPress community.
In the past Dave has worked for large publishers and universities, scaling high-traffic WordPress sites by blending his skills in information design, journalism and web development.
Dave lives in Phoenix, loves a good taco and will like every photo of your dog on Instagram.