Adam Soucie
Adam Soucie is a WordPress-focused developer at Highforge, an Orlando-based digital creative agency. He is a frequent speaker at the WordPress Orlando MeetUp group, and is on the WordPress Orlando organizing committee. For more information, visit adamsoucie.com.
Alexandre Simard
We’re 2! Élise Desaulniers and Alexandre Simard
We are the founding partners of Desaulniers Simard, a small consulting firm based in Montréal, Québec, Canada. We have spoken at each edition our local WordCamp since its humble beginnings in 2009. In 2013, we organized and participated in an elections-style debate between proponents of different multilingual solutions. We should really close-caption the thing, though.
Andrew Norcross
Andrew, or Norcross, as most know him, is the founder and lead developer of Reaktiv Studios, an agency focused on solving complex problems with killer WordPress solutions. After quite a few years in the finance industry, Norcross switched to coding and hasn’t looked back. He’s got skin in both the service game— Reaktiv Studios is a WordPress VIP Featured Partner, helping top-tier clients with their WordPress development— and the product game, with Reaktiv’s flagship plugin, Design Palette Pro, continually being developed and supported. An organizer for WordCamp Tampa, Norcross loves to keep giving back to the WordPress community with free plugins, education talks at conferences, and core contribution to WordPress. Norcross lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife, three kids, and smelly old basset hound.
Cal Evans
Many moons ago, at the tender age of 14, Cal touched his first computer. (We’re using the term “computer” loosely here, it was a TRS-80 Model 1) Since then his life has never been the same. He graduated from TRS-80s to Commodores and eventually to IBM PC’s. For the past 13 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux, OSX, and Windows. He has built a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications. When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, he enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”. These days, when not working with PHP, Cal can be found working on a variety of projects like CoderFaire. He speaks at conferences around the world on topics ranging from technical talks to motivational talks for developers. If you happen to meet him at a conference, don’t be afraid to buy him a shot of Bourbon. Cal is based in Nashville TN where he is happily married to wife 1.30, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT.
Chris Christoff
Former lead developer of Jigoshop (forked to make WooCommerce). Chris helps make Easy Digital Downloads and many of its extensions. Plugin developer at AwesomeMotive, which runs WPBeginner & List25, and makes several well-known WordPress plugins like Soliloquy Slider, Envira Gallery, and OptinMonster. Full time student at the University of Florida. His code runs over a million online stores.
Chrissie Scelsi
Chrissie Scelsi is the principal of Scelsi Entertainment and New Media Law with offices in Orlando and Port Charlotte, Florida, where she focuses her practice on entertainment, intellectual property, internet, technology, and business law. Ms. Scelsi has served as in house counsel for an international game based-simulations company, where she was responsible for advising on software licensing matters, trademarks, copyright, and corporate issues. She served as an editor of the book Computer Games and Virtual Worlds: A New Frontier in Intellectual Property Law, which was published by the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law, and is a chapter contributor to The American Bar Association’s Legal Guide to Video Game Development. Ms. Scelsi has written and spoken extensively about matters at the intersection of law and new technology, and is the author of the PunkLawyer blog. Ms. Scelsi received her B.B.A. in marketing from Loyola University New Orleans, a J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law, and a LL.M. in entertainment and media law from Southwestern School of Law.
Darcy Sullivan
Hi my name is Darcy! In 2011, after a decade in corporate America, I jumped ship to start my own company, Propel Marketing & Design (http://propelyourcompany.com/), with the simple vision to help small businesses and entrepreneurs propel their companies forward. Among Propel’s many services we offer, we focus on training small businesses to take ownership in their own marketing. This training includes web marketing, social media, WordPress, SEO, and much more. Details can be found online at http://propelyourcompany.com/events/. I have attended WordCamp two times and loved it. I would be honored to get the chance to help educate others in the WordPress community. Although, I have submitted an outline for the topic of Content Marketing, I would be open to discussing other topics as well. You can find any previous or upcoming speaking gigs or training sessions at http://propelyourcompany.com/events/. Additional bio details can be found on my LinkedIn profile at www.linkedin.com/in/darcymsullivan/. Thank you for your time and consideration.
David Parsons
David Parsons (http://davidparsons.me/), a Computer Science major at the University of Central Florida, has been working with WordPress for over six years now. His passion for the web originally started by making a simple website with WordPress. Over the years he has been branched out his skill set with responsive design, web apps, SEO, theme development, plugin development and Compass & SASS enhanced stylesheets. Recently David has been spending a lot of his spare time speaking at local events such as the local Orlando WordPress Meetup Group, BarCamp Orlando, BarCamp Tampa and more recently WordCamp Miami.
David Rogers
David Rogers is a community organizer and nerd wrangler, instructional speaker, application developer, professional freelancer, and dad.
David Wood
David Wood is a web developer with over 5 years of development experience. He has spent much of his career working with WordPress, writing everything from custom plugins and themes to highly specialized code for unique situations. When he is not working he enjoys reading, gaming, and occasionally going hiking. He also finds writing about himself in the third person to be a strange experience, one he tries to keep from repeating.
David Yarde
David Yarde is an award winning multi-disciplinary creative with a passion for creating more than just pretty pixels on a screen. He specializes in User Experience Design and Branding and has spent over 10 years working on projects for both national and global brands such as; Nabisco, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Tijuana Flats, Avis and many more, to uncover problems, and implement solutions. When David isn’t working on Sevenality, he spends much of his free time developing resources to help individuals master their fears of living life or growing a business, and supports them as they excel in their craft.
Élise Desaulniers
We’re 2! Élise Desaulniers and Alexandre Simard
We are the founding partners of Desaulniers Simard, a small consulting firm based in Montréal, Québec, Canada. We have spoken at each edition our local WordCamp since its humble beginnings in 2009. In 2013, we organized and participated in an elections-style debate between proponents of different multilingual solutions. We should really close-caption the thing, though.
Elizabeth Pampalone
Elizabeth Pampalone has been creating websites for over 14 years. After finishing a Web Programming Degree at the University of Cincinnati, she ended up in a cubicle as a software developer. When this did not suit her, decided to go it alone and set up shop in Jacksonville, FL. There, she found her passion and a town that needed what she had to offer. She loves to run her business while helping and encouraging the local small business community. She is an active member of SCORE, as well as the leader of 3 networking organizations. She helps run several small business for local owners in addition to being on the advisory boards for several government websites. When she is not pursuing her career, she is out ballroom dancing or sharing a relaxing evening in St Augustine with her husband.
Eric Binnion
Eric Binnion is a core contributor to the open source WordPress project and a Code Wrangler at Automattic where he primarily works on O2, a backbone based communication tool built for WordPress. When not busy at work, Eric is also finishing a Bachelors in Computer Science at Midwestern State University and spending time with this family. You can find him over at http://manofhustle.com or on Twitter at @ebinnion.
Erik Lindgren
With master’s degrees in English, Computer Science, and International Business, I’ve decided to marry the three by creating an online store of my writing using WordPress. Rather than give part of my profits to Amazon, a publisher, or an agent, I will build up a body of writing on my own site, and then start a social media campaign to promote it. I’m currently in the writing and building phase. I’d love to share my experience so far, and get feedback on the direction I’m heading. During the day, you can find me at Motorola Solutions in Plantation, Florida, where I work on our latest software products.
Hristo Pandjarov
Hristo’s done it all: supported WordPress clients, built websites, designed WordPress themes, wrote tutorials, dug deeper into SEO and developed his own WordPress SEO plugin. He’s been fortunate to have his passion for all things WordPress and his job overlap at SiteGround, where he develops and implements various in-house performance boost solutions to help make WordPress websites faster and more secure.
Ivan Lopez
I am currently a Web Engineer at 10up. I started building website as a freelancer in 2006 while attending college, immediately after taking a course on HTML and CSS. I’ve been working with WordPress for about 4 years now making custom themes and plugins. I’ve had the opportunity to work with several web agencies in the Central Florida using several languages (in addition to PHP), including ASP, ActionScript 3, JavaScript and some C#.
James Tryon
After surviving the corporate cubicle life of pixel pushing, James made his way back to sanity and to what he loves — creating things with purpose – with the attention to detail like a true craftsman. Co-Founder of Easily Amused, Inc., he has an eye for design, usability, and know-how to build it all if needed. An avid collector of random awesomeness and thrift-store artifacts, James is always finding something interesting to spark his creativity.
James is currently Creative Director of WP Valet and helps run the Orlando WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Orlando.
Jeff Matson
Jeff Matson is a technical content writer and SEO for InMotion Hosting, specializing in WordPress-related tutorials and news. His content reaches millions of users and has been featured on sites such as Post Status and WP Tavern. In his off time, he hosts the WordPress After Hours Google Hangout on Friday nights with Jeff Chandler for uncensored, unrecorded, WordPress shenanigans.
Jesse Petersen
Jesse embraced his true geek nature in 2008 and left an office job as a desktop publisher and editor to be a full-time WordPress community member and formed Petersen Media Group in early 2009. He meets the needs and exceeds the expectations of his growing network of friends who desire websites that they can maintain and has amassed a returning client base of over 200 clients from Australia to Hawaii and many places in between. With consistent referrals from StudioPress and Copyblogger Media, Jesse is highly sought-after by speakers, authors, and small businesses who want a clean, robust, and elegantly planned online presence. He isn’t flashy, but “does the ordinary extraordinarily well – every day.” Jesse and his wife live in Tampa, FL. No pets. Eighteen foster children since 2012, adopting one. They love road trips. You can follow him on Twitter @jpetersen.
Jessica Stewart
Jessica, a graduate in Video Game Design at UCF, found her calling as a web developer with BrandCo after dabbling in WordPress. She also finds it strange to talk about herself in the third person
Jonathan Brinley
A WordPress plugin developer and penguin fanatic, Jonathan began full-time freelancing in 2009. He works with his wife, Stephanie, at Flightless, and spends most of his day hacking WordPress for Modern Tribe or homeschooling his two children. http://xplus3.net/ • https://github.com/jbrinley
Joseph Herbrandson
Project to project, I taught myself to build websites as a kid and never stopped tinkering. Always fascinated by security concepts and practices, I’ve have grown to love the journey of trying to understand every technology out there, and fitting it in to the grand secure plan. I am a researcher and account manager with Sucuri, and I work with malware and WordPress security issues on a daily basis. I’ve cleaned thousands of infected websites, and my passion is helping people up their security.
Josh Pollock
Josh is a WordPress developer and blogger, core contributor and the community manager for the Pods Framework. In addition, he is a contributor to Tuts+, Torque, Smashing Magazine, Elegant Themes Blog and WPBeginner. Josh taught himself PHP and WordPress development while he was working on his masters thesis on open source solutions for sustainable design.
Josh Shashaty
I’m a backend WordPress developer. I’m the lead dev of custom development at WP Valet and have used the methods/tips in my talk successfully with this team and other agencies we’ve worked with.
Karena Kreger
Karena Kreger, Open Sky Web Studio With a unique combination of technical skills and a strong design eye, Karena has over a decade of experience in building her clients’ compelling, professional web presence. Karena runs Open Sky Web Studio in Jacksonville, FL, specializing in WordPress websites for small businesses and organizations since 2009. A member of the WPJax Meetup, Karena is a teacher at heart, striving to provide a creative and educational experience, without the scary tech talk.
Karim Marucchi
Karim is the Founder and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group, the parent company of boutique professional service organizations with offices in Los Angeles, Denver, Arizona, Bucharest, Las Vegas, New York and Rome.
Over the last twenty years he’s run startups, taken companies public, managed mergers and acquisitions, and led professional service organizations across the globe.
Today he’s the CEO of Crowd Favorite, the first premiere WordPress agency for the Fortune 500, where clients such as National Geographic, DirecTV, Lexus, Motorola, and major entertainment studios count among the company’s client roster.
Kimberly Lipari
Kimberly Lipari is the co-founder and Director of Operations at WP Valet. Her primary role is determining how the business is working as a whole and defining the bits and pieces that make it run on a daily basis. She is mom to three little girls and lives in Louisiana.
Lenny Gale
Lenny Gale is the creator of Life is NOYOKE. He is a health crusader, daily blogger, and entrepreneur.
Before starting learning WordPress, Lenny, a Certified Public Accountant, worked for five years as a traveling financial consultant building financial models for Fortune 500 companies. In 2012, he left his well-paying job and unhealthy lifestyle to start Life is NOYOKE, a grass-roots initiative to make our world healthy again.
Lenny’s favorite foods are grapefruits, egg whites and scotch. He also loves dogs.
Liz Murphy Thomas
Liz Murphy Thomas is a Professor of Digital Media – Web Design at Florida State College at Jacksonville. She holds a BFA in Creative Photography from the University of Florida and an MFA in Photography and Digital Imaging from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She works in the mediums of photography, video, digital media and alternative materials including fiber arts. Liz has taught digital media and photography at several institutions in Florida, Illinois and Tennessee. She has served as the faculty advisor for the student newspaper, The Campus Voice, since fall 2014.
Mark Jaquith
Mark is a Lead Developer on the WordPress core and a freelance WordPress consultant with a focus on security, scaling, and custom plugin development. He first used WordPress in 2003, and really didn’t care for it. But in 2004, he was won over, and has been developing on it ever since. Mark’s personal goal is to bring intuitive, low-cost web publishing to everyone who has anything to say.
Lead Developer
WordPress
http://wordpress.org/
Mason James
Mason is the Co-Founder and CEO of WP Valet where he’s made an art of making people happy with their WordPress experience. He has a passion for creating solutions and truly loves it when a plan comes together. When not connected to a computer he’s probably playing music, video games, or with his puppy, Penny (photos available on request).
Max Lutz
Max Lutz is from Winter Park Florida. He graduated from the University of Central Florida in Marketing. Upon graduating, he spent his time freelancing as a web designer and graphic artist for a wide range of local business in the Orlando area. He joined forces with the BrandCo team in the beginning of 2014. When he is not at BrandCo, he can be found at an Orlando Magic game or at home watching some awesome television series like the Wire or Game of Thrones.
Michelle Schulp
Michelle is an independent graphic designer, recently relocated to Minneapolis from Chicago. She was formally schooled in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the WP community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and events around the country.
Nile Flores
Nile Flores is a sassy Southern Illinois mom who has been a long time WordPress designer, developer, and blogger. Her website is Blondish.net. She focuses on building websites that convert. Nile’s biggest passion is helping people rock out their websites. Her website assists in helping over site owners by talking about blogging, WordPress, social media, SEO, and web design. Nile also dedicates time to running a large and rapidly growing WordPress community on Facebook called All About WordPress. When Nile isn’t online, she’s reading, writing poetry, practicing kempo karate, and having fun raising her son.
Rich Robinkoff
While working towards a career transition into technology (where his real passion lies), Rich stumbled upon WordPress, and let’s just say it was love at first site! Since then, he has submerged himself in all things WordPress; developing WordPress sites and attending WordCamps and meetups while discovering his own WordPress voice. When he’s not knee-deep in achieving Career 2.0, Rich works full time in Supply Chain and teaches Web Development at a local Community College, evenings and online.
Samuel Sidler
Sam is a Ninja Wrangler at Audrey Capital focused on improving WordPress and wordpress.org
Scott Mann
Scott’s the founder of Highforge. He began the agency from his dorm while designing in photoshop and coding sites on notepad in 2001. Since then he’s been cast on reality TV, backpacked through Costa Rica and Nicaragua on many occasions, antagonized countless balloon animals and has built hundreds of successful businesses online, many of which were developed exclusively on WordPress.
Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner and List25 an extremely popular entertainment site with over 1.2 million subscribers and 200 Million video views. Syed’s work has been featured in NYTimes, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo Small Business, Wired, Mashable, and countless other well-reputed online magazines.
Thomas Griffin
Thomas Griffin is the CTO and Partner at Awesome Motive and has built popular products such as OptinMonster, Soliloquy and Envira Gallery. He’s contributed to both WordPress Core and the Genesis Framework by StudioPress and is an active member of the WordPress community. His WordPress products have seen over 1 million total downloads and he loves to help people find success by using WordPress.
Tom Townsend
Tom Townsend is the President and Founder of SMBsocial an Inbound marketing SW company that provides Digital Presence Solutions to SMB’s (Small Medium Business). His team helps solve real business problems with creative applications and platforms built on WordPress. He has been working with WordPress since 2007. As a co-organizer of WordCamp Tampa and Tampa Bay WordPress Meetups he continues to learn and share his passion for all things WordPress.
Topher DeRosia
I’m a full time WordPress developer at http://XWP.co ( formerly X-Team WP ), and have been working with WordPress full time since 2010. I started with PHP in 1999, HTML in 1995, and Gopher in 1994. I’m from Grand Rapids MI, but get work work from wherever I wish.
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon is currently the WordPress teacher at Treehouse and an experienced professor of web design and development. He enjoys teaching people how to use WordPress in order build cool things, improve their jobs, and better their lives. When not working with the web he likes traveling, yoga and off grid living.