Holy moly things are happening!
We’ve already introduced you to several incredible speakers who will be sharing their knowledge and expertise with you at WordCamp Sacramento 2017, happening September 16-17, 2017, and we’re absolutely thrilled to be sharing even more talented speakers with you today … When we first talked about bringing WordCamp to Sacramento in 2013, continued the conversation into 2014, and finally gathered up a team to make the first WordCamp Sacramento happen in 2015, THIS event is exactly what I dreamed WordCamp Sacramento would be.
If you’re already getting excited just be seeing who the speakers are going to be, you’re going to go nuts when we announce the sessions, begin sharing the speaker interviews on the blog, and tell you what the plan is for lunch on Saturday — OMG, you’re going to love it. Also, be sure to watch the blog for more ticket announcements.
You’re also going to love that for the first time, we’re running a full day Beginner Track completely focused on teaching you how to use WordPress!
I could tell you so much more now, but we’ve got to get to the good stuff… announcing our next round of speakers! We’re rolling out the speaker announcements, in no particular order, and today is the third round of WordPressers who will be sharing their expertise and knowledge with you in September…
Tony Perez
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.
Jen Miller
Jen Miller believes in the value and power of the written word in sharing truth and story, in life and in business. Combining her journalism background with a passion for marketing, Jen built needsomeonetoblog.com, a blogging service focused on delivering highly-targeted, local search engine optimized blogging and page content, primarily for real estate clients.
As the business grew, Jen discovered areas that could further develop authority, garner trust, and build engagement for her clients online. Her agency NeedSomeoneTo, LLC combines these services to share engaging messages of community and industry knowledge with clients and followers.
Jen hosts a weekly podcast, Be Seen Blogging, where she delivers website content tips in under ten minutes and enjoys speaking on content strategy and community development. Dedicated to the WordPress community, Jen serves on the WordPress Marketing Team and founded WomenWhoWP.org, a nonprofit and Meetup dedicated to encouraging women in their WordPress journey.
Justin Sainton
Justin Sainton is the founder of Zao, an agency based near Portland, Oregon. As a core contributor to WordPress and lead developer for the WP eCommerce project, Justin believes passionately in the philosophy of open source software. Working exclusively with WordPress and an array of other open-source technologies, Justin and Zao have provided creative and effective solutions for a wide variety of companies and associations ranging from Amazon to PayPal to Pitney Bowes. When not building the Zao empire or spending time with his beautiful wife and four incredible kids, Justin can be found enjoying the best espresso in Portland
Mendel Kurland
Mendel loves the outdoors, so you’ll usually find him hittin’ the trails between tech events and site building. He’s also usually got my nose in a cup of single origin, Chemex-brewed coffee. As a GoDaddy Evangelist, he spends most of my time hanging out with developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and creative people all around the world to make sure their opinions and suggestions are heard.
Amber Hewitt
Amber Hewitt is a graphic designer and front-end web developer at her company, Graphicgoo, where she has created websites for a wide variety of clients for over 15 years. With a strong background in design (graphic design degree from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design), she has developed a passion for good imagery and typography in print and on the web.
Ben Byrne
Ben Byrne is one of three founders of Cornershop Creative, a web services agency that plans, designs, builds and maintains websites for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions around the country. As Chief Creative Officer, Ben oversees most the design and development work that Cornershop does. His fluency in HTML, CSS and JavaScript have been put to good use implementing his designs on a variety of platforms and systems, but primarily WordPress.
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. Ben now lives in Santa Rosa, CA but has previously resided in six other states.
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 membership websites, online courses, their first WordPress site, and full-blown 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.
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 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).
Arsen Rabinovich
Arsen Rabinovich is the founder of TopHatRank.com LLC, a Los Angeles-based, Search and Social Marketing Agency that specializes in innovative digital marketing techniques for modern brands of all sizes.
Arsen has over 9 years of experience as a digital marketer specializing in SEO, some of his clients include brands like The Walking Dead, Beyond Yoga, and Hint Water. He’s built large social communities for fashion brands reaching millions of people, strategized and executed search and social marketing companies with million dollar budgets and has helped multiple brands recover from search engine penalties and devaluations.
Tessa Kriesel
Agency and Community Engineer at Pantheon and Founder of Coders of TMRW, Tessa has been a web developer for over 10 years. She enjoys front-end development but also loves to build sites from start to finish. She started in Joomla back when it was founded and worked her way into WordPress and Drupal about 7 years ago. She enjoys teaching others to code as well as speaking at conferences and youth events. Tessa is a northern Minnesota native, but now lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and four children — three boys and a baby girl. She loves dogs and enjoys helping local organizations rescue dogs in her free time.
Nate Conley
Nate Conley is a freelance and contract WordPress developer based in Southern California, working with small businesses and agencies like Pixel Jar. Nate discovered his love of building for the web while enrolled as a music student at Missouri Southern State University, starting with front-end development and later WordPress.
Andrew Taylor
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.
Stay Tuned For More Speaker Announcements
Wow! You guys sure know how to make a WordCamp organizer feel awesome! The feedback on WordCamp Sacramento so far has been incredible and when everyone involved is volunteering their time and resources to make it happen, your positive feedback means the world, so thank you!
I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again, this is going to be our best WordCamp Sacramento yet! So be sure to save the dates on your calendar — WordCamp is happening September 16-17, 2017 and trust us, you’re not going to want to miss this show!