WordCamp Sacramento, happening October 22-23, 2016 at the Harper Alumni Center at Sacramento State University is thrilled that we’ve brought together 31 different speakers from the greater Sacramento region and beyond for the two-day event centered around WordPress.
Check out all of the speakers for our 2016 event below:
Anca Mosoiu
Anca Mosoiu is the founder of Tech Liminal, where people with various skills and backgrounds come together to learn and build using technology. She is a programmer and consultant who enjoys complex, large-scale technology projects, where her curiosity and ability to translate between technical and non-technical helps teams get things done. Her enterprise clients include the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Cisco Systems, Nike and Sony.
Anca graduated from MIT, where she studied computer science.
Anca will be speaking on WordPress and the Enterprise.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Anca.
Anthony Skelton
Anthony Skelton a freelance theme/plugin developer for local small businesses and entrepreneurs. He also has a professional photography company with his wife.
Anthony will be speaking on Rediscovering Theme Settings With The Customizer.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Anthony.
Austin Gil
Austin studied Kinesiology in school, but after discovering web development, he never looked back. For about 3 years it has been an ever-growing passion of his which started as a hobby, turned into an internship, taken him into freelancing, and has now landed him as a full-time, lead developer at an agency in San Diego — Visceral.
Austin will be speaking on Web Performance: Three Stages to Success.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Austin.
Ben Byrne
Ben has a BFA in Graphic Design from Iowa State University and has been working on the web professionally for about 20 years. He has presented on the difference between print and web design, web typography, WordPress widgets, high performance front-end performance optimization and other topics at various organizations and events, including several WordCamps. Last summer Ben moved from Indiana to Santa Rosa, CA with his wife, two kids, and labradoodle.
Ben will be speaking on Making Multisite Work For You.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Ben.
Ben Ilfeld
Ben is Lead Audience & Revenue Strategist at 10up, a full service digital agency focused on creating amazing web and content management experiences with a passionate team of 135+ full-time strategists, designers and engineers working around the globe.
Ben has over 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur, publisher and innovator, that make him well suited to 10up’s monetization, content conversion, and ad ops business. He led product development, analysis and iterative design processes, while overseeing all business operations at The Sacramento Press and AdGlue. Ben has consistently stepped over the edge to experiment with new models for creating healthy media ecosystems.
In 2008, Ben launched The Sacramento Press as a new breed of local publication dedicated to rethinking how media interacts with a local audience. In just a few years, his team built an army of over 1,500 volunteer community contributors. During this time, Ben built the first independent online local ad network (SLOAN) that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars for over 60 publishers. He was also a founding board member of the Local Independent Online News publishers (LION).
Ben will be speaking on Debugging the Website Money Maker.
Carrie Forde
Carrie spent the first eight years of her career wrangling sales data in the tech industry. While on work assignment in the UK, she attended a blogging workshop where she was introduced to WordPress. After spending several weekends learning about WordPress child themes, Carrie set up her first WordPress site and realized WordPress and front-end development is where her true passion lies.
After moving back to California, Carrie had an opportunity to pursue her passion, and enrolled in the Graphic & Interactive Design program at Foothill College where she learned about the graphic design process, and how to properly write HTML and CSS. Before graduating her program, she created her first theme from scratch on the Genesis framework, and realized that developing on WordPress is what she wanted to do for a living. Carrie currently works as a Front-End Developer for WebDevStudios.
When she’s not developing websites, you can find Carrie at home cuddling with her three cats K2, Whitney, and Minnie, enjoying a latte or cold brew at a nearby coffee shop, or exploring the greater San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Darren.
Carrie will be speaking on Creating Themes with Atomic Design.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Carrie.
Cat Scholz
Cat brings her WordPress skills to authors, entrepreneurs, arts organizations, non-profits, scientists, musicians, artists, small businesses, healers and folks working for positive change.
In addition to being a WordPress developer, coach, consultant and a singer-songwriter, Catherine also enjoys being a mother to 2 wonderful children. She lives in the Sierra foothills of Northern California where she builds WordPress sites, coaches her clients on how to use them and writes, records and performs original music.
Cat will be giving us An Introduction To WooCommerce.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Cat.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema coaches companies building commercial products in the WordPress ecosystem. He’s also a daily blogger, a public speaker, and product strategist. He helps companies leverage WordPress, and helps WordPress companies find leverage.
Chris will be speaking about Five Things You’ll Discover About Yourself As You Blog Consistently.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Chris.
Colin Dowling
A longtime WordPress user and enthusiast, Colin Dowling is Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Media Temple. Before transitioning to Media Temple, Colin was previously with Enterprise Accounts and Agencies at WP Engine and was Vice President of Sales at ISON, LLC.
Colin will be speaking on Leveraging Partnerships to Grow Your Web Development Business.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Colin.
Cristina Robinson
Cristina Robinson is a Sacramento-based designer and blogger with over 10 years of experience.
Her passion for web design began in high school where she created layouts on LiveJournal, web pages on Yahoo! Geocities and managed her high school’s website. She’s been growing her skills ever since teaching herself WordPress, PHP, LESS, Sass, and design. She graduated with her Bachelor of Science degree in Web Design and Interactive Media from The Art Institute of California – Sacramento in 2012 and has worked for two local web agencies as well as freelance.
Cristina is currently the UI/UX Designer at Sacramento digital marketing agency Three29 and can be found blogging at TheLovelyGeek.com.
Cristina will be speaking on the Best Practices For Creating Content.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Cristina.
David McCormick
David McCormick is a Senior Marketing Strategist at Blast Analytics & Marketing. He’s had the privilege of working as a strategist for a wide range of clients from local to international including Healthcare.gov, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Intuit, and PayPal. David spends his days helping clients understand how to make their websites and their teams perform better. In his private time David loves adventuring with his kids, painting, trail running, and trying new restaurants.
David will be speaking on Taking The Yoast SEO Plugin To The Next Level.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about David.
Dawn Pedersen
Dawn Pedersen first learned a morsel of HTML in Y2K, and it was the sunrise of a beautiful love affair. Her passion for great user experience has led to a career as the webmaster (how’s that for a Throwback Thursday word?) for Sacramento City College, and as a web design teacher at Art Institute and other colleges. Her fondness for WordPress began with a little self-hosted blog in 2004, and she has been a WordCamp fanatic since 2011. She holds degrees in art and education, and is finishing another in biology. Dawn lives with her husband, son, and cat in West Sacramento.
Dawn will be speaking on Putting Content First in the Design Process.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Dawn.
James Hipkin
James is an accomplished, forward-thinking marketing professional with 25+ years of multi-disciplinary experience in marketing and marketing communications companies serving high-profile, global brands and B2C clients in consumer packaged goods, durables, transportation, telecommunications and financial services. He has been involved in digital for more than ten years, first as President of a direct marketing agency in San Francisco, where he led the evolution of the agency from traditional direct marketing to digital. Clients included Apple and Wells Fargo online bank. And then as the head of a mid sized agency’s interactive group, with Toyota as the main client. He joined Red8 Interactive, a long term vendor, as an owner and managing director, 5.5 years ago.
James will be speaking on Profitable Website Development: The Oreo Cookie Strategy.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about James.
Jason Cosper
Jason Cosper is currently employed as the WordPress Evangelist for WP Engine. Honestly, that’s just a fancy way of saying “I get paid to chat with people about WordPress.” Nice work if you can get it.
Jason will be speaking on Scaling WordPress With Load Testing.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Jason.
Jon Shumate
I love building on the web and mobile. I love startups (I’ve now started three of them). At this point, I feel like a salty web old timer, but with that comes hard won skills on both the tech and business fronts. I’m a builder for life, steeped in full stack web development, from interfaces and user experience to data & code architecture including API development and integration. I’m skilled with Php, Ruby on Rails, MySql, Postgres, Javascript & Node, Famous, React, Polymer and a healthy smattering of other buzzy acronyms.
Jon will be speaking about Building A Slack Bot SAAS Built On WordPress!
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Jon.
Jon Trujillo
I’m a Designer, developer and “WordPress Guy” who is also Husband, Dad and Christian. I love all things technology and constantly look for new ways to improve my skills as a creative. I love to shoot photos and I’m a habitual doodler… I pretty much just love creating. I believe creativity is a gift that will go away if not used. I cherish it too much to let it go. I have the heart of a teacher and love leading others down paths that will make them better creatives and technologists.
I’m currently the lead web designer and developer at Tytanium Ideas, an amazing social media marketing company in Lincoln California. I’m glad to be a part of the Tytanium Ideas family.
Jon will be speaking on A Full Stack WordPress Project Workflow.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Jon.
Jonathan Denwood
His friends will tell you that Jonathan’s British personality is as dry and straightforward as his business acumen. And those that know him best tell him that’s a good thing! When he’s not helping businesses succeed online, you can probably find him enjoying the High Sierras — that’s the mountain range that wraps around this magnificent region here in northern Nevada. Many times, people ask if he misses the U.K. and he can honestly say “no”, apart from his close family and friends who sill live in England. However, the two things that he really does miss are “Fish & Chips” and a good cup of tea made the English-way!
Jonathan will be speaking on the Five Steps To Setting Up a Podcast on WordPress.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Jonathan.
Justin Busa
Justin Busa is a developer and co-founder at FastLine Media, the parent company behind Beaver Builder. Prior to the success of Beaver Builder, FastLine Media specialized in a range of digital services for clients all over the world.
Justin will be speaking on Developing Custom Beaver Builder Content For Themes And Clients.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Justin.
Kevin Howe
Prior to striking out on his own to open Three29 in March of 2010, Kevin worked for two top web design and advertising firms in the Sacramento area. Kevin was responsible for managing client projects, designing and developing specs and creative as well as providing technical direction on a number of projects. That expertise was brought to Three29 when Kevin opened the company and has since built a list of clients including Facebook, Instagram, CBS Sports, iHeart Media, Mikuni Sushi, Trumpette, Ella Dining Room & Bar and many others.
When Kevin isn’t building Three29 he enjoys spending time with his wife Nicole and their sons Bennett and Sebastian, polishing his golf game or preparing his snowboard in eager anticipation of a snowy winter. Kevin often defines himself as nerdy, a bit obsessive (but in a good way), creative, fun and hard working.
Kevin will be speaking on Freelance to Agency: Peaks and Pitfalls of Growth.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Kevin.
Kim Shivler
Kim Shivler, M.Ed. has worked as a writer, instructor, developer and serial entrepreneur for over 20 years. Her business experience includes computer network and database administration, technical training and writing, project management, web development, and work as an aesthetician and spa owner. She also worked for large corporations including Tivoli, an IBM company, where she was part of the worldwide technical sales and marketing team.
Kim learned HTML in 1995 building help files as a UNIX system administrator and opened her first web development company in 1996. Since then, Kim has worked as a business owner and employee in a variety of fields including a few years as part of an IBM worldwide team. Between 2008 and 2012, she worked with a variety of Content Management Systems and ran an online membership site for skincare professionals using Drupal. In 2012, Kim found WordPress and never looked back at any other CMS. She has been creating online courses in WordPress since 2013 and currently combines her background in education, years of business experience, and WordPress experience to teach others how to build online courses, their first WordPress site, and learning platforms.
As a writer, Kim has worked in a variety of fields including software documentation and instruction, manuals for aesthetic and medical devices, and general health articles.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Master of Education degree in secondary English education from the University of Florida.
Kim will be speaking on Building A Learning Platform With WordPress.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Kim.
Mark Tilly
Mark Tilly is the CEO of Target Info, the developer of the top ranked MyCurator Content Curation WordPress plugin first introduced in 2012. Mark has over 30 years of software development experience. He founded iMany (now Revitas) with a partner in 1988 to build client server software for Pharmaceutical firms and grew it to over $30 million in sales and an IPO. He has been working with WordPress for 6 years building, marketing and supporting the AI based MyCurator plugin utilizing Amazon cloud services.
Mark will be speaking on Building A Cloud Service Into Your Plugin.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Mark.
Matt Vanderpol
Matt is a full stack developer with a primary focus on developing custom WordPress themes based on Photoshop comps. With almost 20 years as a developer in the industry, he has a strong focus on performance and process — always seeking new and better ways to accomplish a task both for the benefit of the developer and of web page visitors.
Matt lives in Nevada City, CA in a home that he and his wife designed and built. He works remotely from that home while enjoying a thriving family life with his wife and their 5 kids.
Matt will be speaking on Building Custom WordPress Themes With Sass.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Matt.
Michael Kuhlmann
Michael Kuhlmann codes and pushes pixels around for a living, while spamming his remote co-workers with giphys on Slack. He was introduced to WordPress many releases ago when he got tired of updating individual, static html documents to update a website. Since then, he’s been hooked on the entire ecosystem.
Michael will be speaking on The Dos and Donts of BuddyPress.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Michael.
Michael Shores
In 2007, Michael Shores started blog. It was wildly unsuccessful. The ultimate take away from the experience, though, was that he loved building the graphics and managing the code of the site. So he picked up all his stuff and moved to Sacramento to study graphic design at CSUS. Three years of design school whirled by, and he became a User Experience designer at CalPERS working on web projects to help state employees manage their retire benefits online. That gave way to working in the private sector as Creative Director of IDMLOCO, a web firm in Sacramento. In 2015, I took the leap and became a freelance web designer and developer, and also accepted an invitation to teach web design at CSUS. I continue to design and build websites, and teach undergraduate design students.
Michael will be speaking on The Loop And WP_Query().
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Michael.
Ozzy Rodriguez
Ozzy Rodriguez is an East Coast soul living in a West Coast world. Hailing from San Jose Ozzy is the Lead Developer at WP Site Care where he works on new project builds, digital products, and supporting customers who need a WordPress team that they can rely on. When he’s not coding you’ll find Ozzy at the ballpark, your local WordPress meetup, or catching the latest Kevin Hart flick at the local theater.
Ozzy will be speaking on Developer First Design: Make Design Great Again.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Ozzy.
Sallie Goetsch
Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with ‘sketch’) first got online in 1985, via the mainframe at Brown University. She founded an online journal in 1993 and built her first HTML website in 1994. Since discovering WordPress in 2005, she hasn’t looked back. Sallie became the organizer of the East Bay WordPress Meetup in Oakland, California, in 2009.
Sallie has produced WordPress videos for Peachpit Press, taught introductory WordPress classes for Mediabistro, and acted as Technical Reviewer for O’Reilly’s WordPress: The Missing Manual. She runs her WP Fangirl consulting and development business from her home in Oakley, which she shares with her husband and two cats. She appears regularly on the WP-Tonic Live panel on Saturday mornings.
Sallie will be speaking on Falling In Love With Flexbox.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Sallie.
Tate Barber
Tate Barber is a developer, husband, and DIY farmer. He is a 24-year-old, college dropout that began learning and making a small living off WordPress gigs. He quickly absorbed as much information and as many development tutorials on the internet as I could, and is now a Programming Analyst at WalMart headquarters.
Tate will be speaking on Local WordPress Development with Docker.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Tate.
Timofey Rytikov
Timofey Rytikov develops user interface that improves the way of life of others. Tries to contribute open source projects. He has been developing WordPress applications since introduced to WordPress. He learned Android and now develop native Android applications. Also, he believes that “code is the meaning of pixels on the screen.”
Timofey will be speaking on WooCommerce Custom Product Types.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Timofey.
Tirzah M. Johnson
Tirzah M. Johnson is a Sacramento based web designer and developer with a passion for both creative processes. Development allows her to use logic and analysis to determine the most efficient way to build a website. Design, in contrast, allows her the freedom to be creative and shake things up a bit. Often people believe you must choose one, but Tirzah believes websites should be equal in beauty and function.
She has been fortunate to have awesome mentors, teachers, and creatives to guide her as she grew into this craft. Raised to always pay-it-forward, she plans to use her experiences to create a non-profit program to teach youth in low-income areas to design and code websites for scholarships funds. Until then, you will find her volunteering as a mentor, researching posts for her upcoming blog, or drowning her brain in web design resources.
Tirzah will be speaking at WordCamp Sacramento 2016 on Creating An Active Project Management Process.
- Check out her speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Tirzah.
Treighton Mauldin
Treighton’s professional career started in construction management where he worked for a number of large General Contractors on a large variety of projects. After about eight years, he realized that his heart wasn’t in it, and decided to pursue a career in programming. He has now been in web development for about two years, working on projects ranging from simple static sites to more complex web applications with a variety of integrations. He is currently a web developer for Page Design Group in Sacramento, CA.
Treighton will be speaking on WordPress And Git.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Treighton.
Vasken Hauri
Vasken joined 10up in February of 2013 with over 10 years of experience working in technology in both the public and private sectors. Before becoming a WordPress developer in 2009, Vasken worked at Plymouth State University in several roles ranging from desktop support to systems administration, and occasionally, adjunct faculty member.
Vasken enjoys creating natural, consistent user experiences that enhance and promote interactivity through simplicity. As a developer, one of Vasken’s strengths is his ability to communicate highly technical concepts in a clear, non-technical way in order to build understanding between various project stakeholders. This, along with significant experience across several technology sectors, has allowed him to engineer successful projects within organizations ranging from small, independent businesses to public universities to online publications with millions of unique visitors each month.
A strong believer in open source technologies, Vasken has spoken and hosted panels at numerous WordCamp, NERCOMP, and EDUCAUSE events, on subjects ranging from Green Computing to WordPress-based centralized authentication systems. He currently holds a Bachelor of Arts in German Studies from Haverford College and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Plymouth State University.
Vasken will be speaking on Tips And Tricks For Debugging Like A Pro.
- Check out his speaker interview on the blog and get to know more about Vasken.