This is the first post in a series to help you get to know the 2016 WordCamp Sacramento organizing team a little better! Today we’re introducing you to Jose Castaneda.

Jose Castaneda is a member of the Theme Review team and contributes to the WordPress forums. He has been working with WordPress since late 2011, is a co-organizer for the Sacramento WordPress Meetup Group, and and loves to help as much as possible.

Be sure to give Jose at shout out on Twitter and don’t forget to use our hashtag #wcsac.

Get To Know Jose

To help you get to know our organizers a bit better, we asked them to answer a few questions…

Here’s what Jose had to say:

What was your favorite part of WordCamp 2015?

My favorite part was seeing all the people not only meeting for the first time but sharing in their knowledge and experience. I was a volunteer last year so I got to see all the faces in the sidelines and it was amazing.

Why should people come to WordCamp?

Because it’s fun. It’s a great place to make new friends, new connections, and new skills. You could learn a new way of doing something you’ve already done before.

Any advice for those attending their first WordCamp?

Don’t be afraid of asking questions and don’t be afraid of sharing those answers either. Odds are you know more than you actually do. Bring a pencil, a notebook, a camera. Fous more the talks you want to see and make new friends in-between. If there are two talks you want to see at the same time, see if somebody will ask your question during that talk. If not reach out to the speaker later on.

How has WordPress Or WordCamp Impacted you?

It’s impacted me in that I’m not as afraid to fail because I know that I can learn from it. It’s also helped me see and know that I can turn to those I met at WordCamps for learning new things as well.

The WordCamp theme this year is “discovery” — What does that mean to you?

What’s really nice is that my mentality with WordPress has always been discover something new; whether it is new function, a new hook or filter.

What does it mean in the context of WordPress?

At any WordCamp you can discover knowledge you didn’t already know you had, discover new friends or even a company you didn’t know existed. WordPress is very much like that. You can discover a great new function or even a feature that has been there for a long time you didn’t know existed.

What do you like to do for fun?

I actually love helping out on the WordPress.org support forums as much as I can. When I’m more focused I’ll take on a theme review but it is on and off. I love drawing, painting, taking photos, hiking, playing the Flamenco guitar, and just about anything artistic and love doing that with my wife and son. I really love reading the developer docs for things like SASS, CSS frameworks, Grunt, JavaScript, or things built on those.