WordCamp Sacramento, happening September 15-16, 2018 at the Sacramento Convention Center, is thrilled to bring you another fantastic lineup of talented WordPressers to speak from not only the greater Sacramento region and Northern California, but far beyond for an incredible two-day event centered around WordPress.
Check out all of the speakers below in alphabetical order:
Alonso Indacochea
Alonso Indacochea is the CEO of 11 Online, a full service digital agency in Albuquerque, NM. At 11 Online, Alonso lives and breathes WordPress, where he and the team build, fix and maintain websites for their clients. He and his team recently launched Block Party, a Gutenberg block membership site.
Andrew Taylor
Andrew currently works for Pantheon as a Developer Programs Engineer providing consulting ro their agency partners around complex workflows and automation. He also enjoys giving back to the WordPress community through the hosting group, plugin development and speaking at WordCamps. 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 10 years of web development experience, specializing in WordPress, he is a seasoned veteran.
Ben Byrne
Ben Byrne is a co-founder of Cornershop Creative. He’s been designing on the web professionally for nearly 20 years, but he’s also been a developer for almost as long, building up extensive experience with languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, and putting them to good use implementing his designs on several CMS platforms, including WordPress and Drupal. In addition to his own work, Ben oversees the design and development the rest of the Cornershop team does, ensuring it’s up to our high standards. He enjoys sharing his knowledge, and has presented to groups of varying sizes on topics like the difference between print and web design, web typography, various aspects of WordPress, and front-end performance. Ben lives in beautiful Santa Rosa, CA.
Blair Williams
Blair Williams is a Software Developer and Online Entrepreneur. Blair has been developing websites, web-apps, and plugins for almost 20 years. Some of his past clients have included Raytheon, AMC, and FranklinCovey. For the last ten years, Blair has been focused on developing software and businesses around WordPress. He’s the creator of several popular plugins for WordPress including MemberPress, Pretty Link & Affiliate Royale and currently runs a full-time business that supports them.
Bodie Quirk
Bodie Quirk is a geeky Christian Pastor from Southern California who loves how WordPress makes it easy for anyone to share what they know and serve others with their knowledge. Despite knowing nothing about web design, he took on the project of updating his church website and although he did pretty much everything wrong, he continued to learn and improve with WordPress (mostly from the help of others). In 2016, he launched YouCanLearntheBible.com, the online home for all of his Bible teachings, organized as free online courses. He has published 6 courses with over 200 video-based lessons. He is passionate about online learning and believes that everyone knows something that someone else wish they knew.
Brian Bourn
Brian Bourn is managing partner at Bourn Creative, a full-service design agency and Genesis recommended developer. He has been working with WordPress since 2009 and has created over 170 custom WordPress sites. With a passion for business, an eye for design, and a predilection for code, he provides consulting for small to medium-size businesses, works with clients around the globe on website strategy, and brings their vision to life through UX design and development. Brian is a big believer in giving back and supporting the WordPress project and community and volunteers his time as lead organizer for the monthly Sacramento WordPress Meetup.
Chris Ford
Chris Ford is a Project Manager with a background in graphic and user experience design. She’s currently leveraging the skills learned in those roles to manage projects at Reaktiv Studios, a WordPress.com VIP partner. In her spare time she antagonizes her dog with guitar practice, grows stuff in her garden, and makes stuff with her hands.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.
Corey Walker
Corey Walker is the owner of The Marketing Specialist, a digital marketing agency in El Dorado Hills, California. She is also the co-author of Instagram for Business for Dummies, a how-to guide for using Instagram to market your business. Corey works with several clients to produce social media strategies, including creating graphics and written content, scheduling content, buying ads and tracking analytics. She loves helping businesses achieve success in the online world!
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, has worked for two local web agencies, and freelanced for a variety of local clients. Cristina is currently the UI/UX Designer at Sacramento digital marketing agency Three29 and can be found blogging at TheLovelyGeek.com.
Dwayne McDaniel
Dwayne McDaniel has been working in tech and open source sales since 2005. He knew as soon as he started working with Java middleware developers he never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. Dwayne first started building in Drupal and WordPress for the San Francisco Improv teams and projects. He fell in the love the community and then found a position at Pantheon at the end of 2013. As a Community and Agency Success Manager he has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland to MIT and Stanford. Outside of tech he loves producing and performing improv theater, reading webcomics and singing karaoke!
Emily Lema
Emily Lema, from San Diego, has been blogging off and on since she was eight. Equally she’s been speaking to crowds of people for years. She’s truly her father’s daughter. She’s excited to give her first WordCamp presentation.
Eric Debelak
Eric Debelak has been creating WordPress sites for over 10 years. He is currently a co-founder and senior developer at 11 Online, a full service digital agency in Albuquerque, NM. At 11 Online, Eric works with a variety of technology, including React.js, Python, Laravel, Android and of course WordPress. Eric also previously taught full-stack web development at Central New Mexico Community College’s STEMulus Center.
Heather Hogan
Heather Hogan has been making websites for a long time. She has taken on many roles in the communications sphere including: webmaster, designer, developer, artist, project manager, event coordinator, and marketing specialist. She has had the pleasure to work with organizations like the Sacramento Public Library, The Nature Conservancy, The World Economic Forum, Sacramento State University, and the City of Rocklin. Currently, she divides her time teaching web design at Sacramento City College, coordinating web and marketing for Sierra 2 Center, juggling freelance web projects, and making fine art.
Jake Goldman
Jake is the President & Founder of 10up, a digital agency that finely crafts websites and tools for content creators, leveraging open platforms like WordPress. Whether you’re a political junky glued to FiveThirtyEight, a car enthusiast reading MotorTrend, a Windows user who keeps up with Microsoft’s newsroom, an Apple fan reading 9to5mac daily, or if you just use WordPress itself, you’ve experienced a sample of 10up’s work. Jake grew 10up from a 1 man show (himself!) to over 140 employees with dozens of brand name clients in 7 years. Jake started focusing on WordPress in 2006, releasing free plug-ins, building websites with it, and contributing core code. He has been a writer and expert reviewer for Smashing Magazine, taught WordPress engineering at Boston University, and has spoken at conferences, universities, and programs around the country. He helped organize the first WordCamp Boston in 2010, founded Rhode Island’s WordPress meet up, and rebooted the Sacramento meet up as it continues to this day. He is a core contributor to WordPress, and maintains some highly rated plug-ins with over 500,000 active installations.
@jakemgold | @10up | LinkedIn
Jamie Bergen
Jamie Bergen is a scientist turned developer who enjoys building things with WordPress. She works for a small agency building WordPress websites and custom plugins for non-profit organizations. In a previous life, she worked as a research scientist on next-generation targeted drug therapies. Her current interests include WordPress theme and plugin development, web accessibility, and workflow best practices. In her spare time, she enjoys hanging out with her husband, daughter, and dog. She also blogs occasionally.
Jamie Schmid
Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, she has been working as a WordPress freelancer and consultant since 2012, regularly taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content. She has a background in Information Architecture and Content Strategy and a big ol’ enthusiasm for all things WordPress. Now living in Portland, OR, Jamie is a Community Evangelist for SiteLock, traveling the country and helping build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.
Jennifer Bourn
Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative, a full-service design and development company specializing in creating powerful brands and WordPress websites that deliver results. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup, and writes regularly about freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding. Today she is excited to offer courses that help designers and developers build profitable businesses while enjoying life along the way.
Jeremy Hawes
Jeremy Hawes is a project manager and front-end developer for website and software applications. He served in the military for five years, including two tours of duty in Iraq/Kuwait, where he worked in the headquarters of one of the largest transportation battalions in theatre and helped develop a convoy tracking and predicting database to help improve convoy forecasting. After leaving the military he pursued a degree in business management while help building a non-profit from the ground up, which still is running in the Del Paso Heights area of Sacramento.
After obtaining his bachelor degree he began a business in Sacramento where I offered web design contract services and helped build websites for businesses like SMUD, California Crane School, AAA Crane Services, and more. Our team grew and we became one of the lead third-party plugin developers for a software called RapidWeaver. Our company still today develops one of the largest collections of Themes and Stacks (similar to Plugins) under the name One Little Designer. In 2015, he began working for a fast growing company in Sacramento, Capitol Tech Solutions. Today he is the lead front-end developer and helps manage the design and development of websites using platforms including WordPress, Shopify, NationBuilder, RapidWeaver.
He is married with five boys, so when I’m not working I’m usually out doing some fun and adventurous kid stuff… or taking a rest from it.
Jim Kaspari
Jim Kaspari has a background in biochemical engineering and has used this strong left-brained capacity combined with right brained communication skills to help business owners understand and easily implement complex processes like website design and SEO. He has been a business coach for 12 years, coached over 500 clients in 9 countries. During this time, he observed that over 80 percent of small business owners desperately need help with online marketing, so he has dedicated his time and practice to this expertise.
Josh Smith
Josh Smith is a Software Engineer at Dice.com; a company that uses WordPress to publish some of the best tech content on the web. At Dice, Josh works with content authors, marketers, and application developers to ensure Tech Professionals can access the highest quality content. He’s created dozens of themes and plugins to help promote content for Dice. Before he was an engineer, Josh served in the US Navy for twelve years as a Navy Diver. He’s removed our country’s ships’ propellers, inspected shipping lane buoys, and entered submarines through the business end of a torpedo tube. He’s learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable, which is a large part of writing software. Josh lives in Folsom, CA with his wife and two sons. He and his family love being outdoors. They went camping six times in 2017. He likes to be outside as much as he likes to be in front of his computers. He loves cycling for hours at a time and teaching his sons the value of running long distances.
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 Lee Doyle
Justin Doyle is the Lead Designer at Tytanium Ideas Inc. He has about 13 years experience in web design. He worked for a high-end marketing company based out of Utah before starting his own company and then selling it to Tytanium Ideas in 2017. Now he spends his days applying his skills to large design projects that help scale businesses.
Kathy Alice Brown
Kathy Alice Brown has been a SEO Consultant and Blogger for over 9 years with a focus on technical SEO. She has worked extensively with WordPress sites and teaches SEO on Udemy.
Kathy Zant
Kathy Zant is a seasoned digital executive with over 20 years of web development experience for companies large and small. She’s been using WordPress for over a decade. In the last two years, she’s been a security analyst for Wordfence, developing services for WordPress users to better understand and manage their site security. She currently lives at the base of Mount Shasta in far northern California.
Kelly Azevedo
Kelly Azevedo is the founder of She’s Got Systems and an online business strategist, systems expert and implementation master. Kelly believes that every single online business needs systems to support clients, document results, and dominate in the field. Her book series Every Entrepreneur Needs Systems teaches lessons around marketing, relationships and mindset. Clients who work with She’s Got Systems build their business systems to optimize growth, time and income. Kelly frequently writes about systems for media outlets such as Forbes, the Washington Post, and Women 2.0, and her unique brand of life-work balance was featured in the New York Times.
Kenneth Schnetz
Ken Schnetz is an experienced developer specializing in creating e-commerce and site deployment tools for WordPress. Ken is especially interested in using the latest frameworks and APIs to make WordPress sites and plugins faster, easier to use, simpler to deploy, and more lightweight than ever.
Lisa Anderson
Lisa has over 16 years of product management experience. Throughout her career she has specialized in driving product strategy and go-to-market implementation of new products. At Qualpay, as Director of Product Management, she leads the team in developing and driving a vertical market product strategy, focusing on e-commerce. At her previous positions, she was responsible for managing P&L, personnel, standards committees and regulations while also creating value-added payment gateway products, innovating product suites and executing plans at Voltage Security, Visa and Cybersource. Lisa has always subscribed to a hands-on approach that supports businesses and resellers by helping them understand payments and payments security from the ground up and which pitfalls to avoid.
Marla Todd
Marla Todd is a writer and artist based in Orangevale, CA. She lives with her husband, daughter, and assorted hilarious cats and dogs. Using the pen name “Juliette Kings” Marla writes the parenting/urban fantasy blog Vampire Maman: An interesting hybrid of family and societal observations from the perspective of a mother who also happens to be a vampire. That Vampire Maman, aka Juliette, is a highly innovative and insightful writer with a gift for creating a fantasy world within a “real” world context. (From monkeybellhop.com). Marla is a founding member of the publishing group WPaD (Writers, Poets, and Deviants), and has contributed numerous stories to their anthologies.
Matt Cromwell
Matt Cromwell is Head of Support and Community Outreach at GiveWP.com and WordImpress.com. He is the author of several popular free plugins and the Lead Admin of the Advanced WordPress Facebook group (which boasts over 30K+ members). He is also a popular blogger.
Matt Vanderpol
Matt Vanderpol is a full stack developer with a primary focus on WordPress including custom theme/plugin development and performance review and improvement. With over 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 designer/developer and for users or 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 6 kids.
Michael Helmke
Michael Helmke has been building custom websites and web applications for years and has recently discovered the joy of WordPress. His work centers around helping performing arts groups promote themselves, grow their audiences and increase donations. Michael enjoys helping clients translate big ideas into reality, and making sure the technology all runs smoothly. He is also a blogger, enjoys cooking, and sudden changes in weather.
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. Michael’s been freelancing full-time since 2015.
Michelle Schulp
Michelle Schulp 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. 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?”
Natalie Bourn
Natalie Bourn is currently a sophomore in high school. She’s been a WordPress blogger for four years and writes about adventures, life lessons, her journey through school and being a teenager, and her friends and family. She has recently started a YouTube channel sharing videos about her life and travels. When she’s not busy with homework and exploring with her family, she loves to dance and choreograph, read, write, and play with her brother.
Nathan Ingram
Nathan Ingram is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar. He is also the creator of >ADVANCE Coaching, working with WordPress 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 is the lead organizer of WordCamp Birmingham.
Parisa Vassei
Parisa Vassei is a digital strategist and designer who helps clients and groups level up their online presence through user experience design, conversion strategy, analytics, and marketing automation all in the WordPress environment. Formerly the founder of Web Couture, her new Northern California-based company, Parisa Consulting, offers high level consulting and solutions for businesses hoping to enhance their digital footprints through smart quick launch WordPress websites, marketing funnels and automation, and e-learning environments. Nothing would make Parisa happier than if you asked her about her new favorite apps or her cat—not necessarily in that order.
Ray Ortega
Hobbyist podcaster turned professional, Ray converted his love of producing podcasts into a full-time career. Ray produces podcasts for the American Society for Microbiology, overseeing daily production of the ASM network of podcasts. Ray also hosts his own shows, The Podcasters’ Studio and Podcasters’ Roundtable, podcasts dedicated to helping other people start, improve and profit from their own show. Ray has been in podcasting since 2006 and has been invited to speak at conferences such as New Media Expo, Podcast Movement, Government Video Expo, and various Podcamps. He’s also the founder of the Sacramento Podcasters Meetup group. Ray enjoys introducing new people to the podcasting community either as consumers or producers in an ongoing effort to grow this new medium. To that end, Ray is also a founding member of International Podcast Day. Ray’s YouTube channel currently has over 52 thousand subscribers and over 6 million views. He loves producing both high-quality, digital video and audio and sharing what he learns along the way.
Sallie Goetsch
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 profitable websites that are a pleasure to use. 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 the WP-Tonic Roundtable and loves speaking at WordCamps.
Stacy Clements
Stacy Clements is the owner of Milepost 42, a technology partner for people who want to focus on their passion and not the “techie stuff” needed to support it. Prior to starting her business, she spent 23 years in the Air Force, the majority of that time in cyber operations. Dubbed “a fixer, a problem solver, and a pitbull”, she enjoys figuring out solutions, often using WordPress, to make people’s lives easier. In addition to building and caring for WordPress sites, she also enjoys educating people about basic cybersecurity practices to help keep the web safe.
Stewart Savage
Stewart Savage is a website designer, graphic designer, photographer, and videographer for his business, Abaton Consulting. Stewart has been involved in the technology field for over 20 years with experiences ranging from desktop support to network management. Since 2009 he has focused on using WordPress to provide a full suite of website design services for small businesses and non-profits in Davis, CA and Northern California.
Outside of website design, Stewart keeps a busy schedule. At home, he is a husband to a wonderful wife and a father to a wonderful daughter. As an artist, he shares his love for ceramic arts by teaching pottery classes at two local art studios. With what time he has left, he enjoys backyard BBQs and sampling regional craft beers with his friends.
Taylor Waldon
Taylor Waldon is the Content Writer for GiveWP, a WordPress product company focused on providing solutions for nonprofit websites. She has a passion for WordPress and over 8 years of professional experience in marketing, website content management, and article and documentation writing and editing. She spent the past 2-3 years traveling and living in various locations around the United States while supporting herself through remote content management and social media management work. Recently, Taylor resettled in her hometown of San Diego, where she lives with her two dogs and explores San Diego through mini hiking adventures.
Tyler Smith
Tyler Smith is a freelance web developer who specializes in building WordPress websites for marketing agencies and small businesses. A technology hobbyist his whole life, he became familiar with WordPress while working at a digital marketing agency. He enjoyed working with WordPress so much that after a year and a half at the digital marketing agency, he left to become a full-time web developer.
Vasken Hauri
Vasken is currently the VP of Platforms and Systems at 10up, a leading provider of digital creative services for content creators. 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.
A HUGE Thank You
All of our speakers for WordCamp Sacramento 2018 are volunteers and fellow WordPress community members! This means they are giving their time and talents to plan, prepare, and practice a presentation to help our WordPress community learn and grow for free. For those coming from out of town, they are also paying for all of their own travel expenses — so say thanks!