Latest WordCamp News

Aaron D. Campbell

AaronDCampbell.com | @aaroncampbell

Aaron is the WordPress Security Team lead, has been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than ten years, and is currently funded by GoDaddy to work full time on the WordPress open source project. He has over seventeen years of web development experience and worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but considers both to be compliments. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, riding his motorcycle, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.

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Sallie Goetsch

wpfangirl.com | @salliegoetsch

Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with ‘sketch’) has been online since 1985. She hand-coded her first HTML website in 1994. Since discovering WordPress in 2005, she hasn’t looked back. Sallie’s consultancy, WP Fangirl, places a strong emphasis on content strategy and building websites that serve the client’s business goals.

Sallie has been organizer of the East Bay WordPress Meetup in Oakland, California, since 2009, and has presented there on topics ranging from podcasting to learning management systems to e-commerce to event management. She has also taught WordPress classes for Mediabistro, acted as Technical Reviewer for O’Reilly’s WordPress: The Missing Manual, and produced training videos for Peachpit Press. Sallie is a regular panelist on WP-Tonic Live and loves speaking at WordCamps.

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10up.com | @benilfeld

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 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 has 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).

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Treighton Mauldin

pagedesigngroup.com | @Treighton1988

Treighton’s professional career started in construction management, but 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 three years, working at Page Design Group on projects ranging from simple static sites to more complex web applications with a variety of integrations.

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First, if you’re planning on coming to WordCamp and you haven’t reserved your ticket yet, you should do so soon! It helps us with planning, catering, coffee, swag, and budgeting.

Second, I LOVE reading. While I try to alternate between business books and fun books, it’s summer and I do a lot of light, pool-side or airplane reading 🙂

The most recent business book I read was The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan.

But my favorite books this past six months have bee by Rick Riordian — yes, the kids books! My kids have been hooked on the books. They love them… and read a lot slower than I do, so I read all five books in the Percy Jackson series, follow by all five books in the Heroes of Olympus series. This way, we could talk about the books, the story lines, and the characters as the kids moved through them. Plus, they’re just really great, light stories that you can finish very quickly.

To get some new book ideas, I asked our speakers to share the last they read with us. Hopefully, you’ll find one or two that stand out for you too!

Here are our speakers’ book recommendations

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Leslie Staller

visionshiftdesign.com | @lesliestaller

Leslie is passionate about sustainability, the farmer’s market, bicycling and great design. When not behind the computer working in WordPress or learning more code, you’ll often find her with a camera in hand taking close up images of nature and our abstract world.

After having her own business for 20 years supporting small business owners and non-profits as an accountant, Leslie shifted her focus and pivoted her work to support businesses online.

In 2009, Leslie discovered WordPress and now helps people clarify their message to build customized themes on the Genesis Framework merging the sweet spot between beautiful code and beautiful design to create a user-friendly site they love.

Her introduction to computers was in the early 80’s when she enrolled in her first computer programming class (yes, those IBM punch card days that often ran infinite loops after leaving out that darn semicolon). She swore off computers until she met the original Macintosh a few years later and got hooked on the infinite possibilities instead.

Accessing the internet by dial up while living in South Africa for four years, Leslie learned the importance of optimizing images for online. While internet access speeds have increased in many locations and the tools have changed, knowing how to optimize and name images is still a key component for SEO and creating a sustainable online presence today.

Leslie has volunteered in various capacities at WordCamps, meetups, non-profits and is on the leadership committee for SheSays Boulder whose mission is to up level women in digital.

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Justin Busa

wpbeaverbuilder.com/ | @mrjustinbusa

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.

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Cory Miller

iThemes.com | @corymiller303

Cory Miller is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting-edge web design training for WordPress for thousands of customers around the globe.

Named the 7th fastest growing company in Oklahoma City in 2011 by the Metro 50, iThemes employs over 20+ people, with headquarters in Edmond, Oklahoma.

In 2011, he co-founded The Div, Inc, a nonprofit tech foundation aimed at inspiring and training the next generation of web developers through its kid’s program, Div Jr.

He is the co-author of WordPress All-in-One for Dummies (Wiley, 2011) and is a member and past communications chair of the Oklahoma chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a network of over 8,000 entrepreneurs in 40 countries with companies that have revenue over $1 million dollars annually.

He blogs regularly about his adventures in life and entrepreneurship at CoryMiller.com. He is a mental health advocate, sharing his personal story and struggles, for the past several years.

He is married to Lindsey Miller, who is the WordPress Partner Manager at Liquid Web, and formerly a political fundraising consultant and entrepreneur. They have two young children, an adorable son named Caloway and a little sweetheart daughter named Lillian.

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Bridget Willard

bridgetwillard.com | @YouTooCanBeGuru

Bridget Willard started her career with office work, earned a teaching degree, but returned to the office where she carved out a career in social media and marketing and ended up at a WordPress Plugin Development Shop.

Currently, she is the Marketing Manager for WordImpress whose flagship plugin is GiveWP.com — an online donation plugin, co-host of WPblab, and co-organizer of Women Who WP Meetup.

She blogs about social media and, of course, WordPress on her site at bridgetwillard.com.

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Mike Fitzpatrick

dealertrend.com | @fitzpatrick

Mike has been a WordPress advocate since 2007 when his company, DealerTrend decided to give it a try for car dealers. As an entrepreneur, WordPress was the perfect tool for Mike to help solve the problems that car dealers were facing. Over time, Mike has tested and used thousands of WordPress plugins and themes to help get positive results. As an organizer of the Reno WordPress meetup group, Mike enjoys sharing what he as learned with passionate WordPress users.

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Dorothy Kern

crazyforcrust.com | @crazyforcrust

Dorothy Kern is the blogger behind Crazy for Crust, a popular dessert and baking blog. She started her blog in 2010 and has learned everything from the ground up, from posting in WordPress to food photography and video to SEO and social media. Dorothy specializes in recipes that are sometimes crazy, often with a crust, and always served with a slice of her life.

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Jason Cosper

jasoncosper.com | @boogah

Jason Cosper gets paid to nerd out over WordPress. No, really. It’s pretty nice work if you can get it. He also spends a ton of time with his wife Sarah and two chihuahuas, Rowdy & Gomez. Jason’s passions include hanging out in musty record stores, drinking whiskey, eating barbecue, and sampling craft beers.

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Katie Elenberger

spark27creative.com | @katieelenberger

All in. Go-getter. Laughs the loudest. With more than a decade of industry experience, Katie excels at developing effective design and messaging that cuts through the clutter and connects with target audiences. Katie’s enthusiasm for her work is contagious, her clients have noted creative talents and outcomes, personality and easy-going nature, and general feeling that she is an extension of staff as just a few reasons why they love to work with her. Plus, as an adjunct design instructor for six years, she will naturally coach you through any process.

Katie is the owner and Creative Director at Spark27, a premiere, full-service design + digital studio that partners with clients to solve complex business problems through strategy and effective communication. Katie is dedicated to the quality of her work and it shows — her designs have earned her 14 ADDY awards and she prides herself on strong client relationships by being focused on building brands with robust identities and measurable results.

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Andrew Taylor

ataylor.me | @ataylorme

Andrew currently works for Pantheon providing consulting for their agency partners and giving back to the WordPress community.

As a former web developer, Andrew spent his time on large scale projects for clients such as AMC Networks, Frito Lay, National Van Lines and more. With over 8 years of web development experience, specializing in WordPress, he is a seasoned veteran.

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Tony Perez

perezbox.com | @perezbox

Tony is one of the Sucuri Co-Founders. Sucuri is a globally recognized website security firm specializing in offering organizations a suite of security solutions for their websites. Tony has spent the better part of 7 years building an organization designed to provide value to website owners when they need it most. He has worked with 100’s of thousands of websites, helping them navigate their online security challenges, has spoken at events and conferences around the world, and is adamant in the power of education and awareness. He actively writes and shares his thoughts on both business and security on his personal website.

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