Speakers

Jon Brown

Jon Brown started his journey with WordPress more than 10 years ago with a simple travel blog on WordPress.com. That first foray evolved into becoming a freelance WordPress developer and the beginings of a location independent lifestyle. Jon is now the owner of 9seeds a distributed WordPress focused web development agency. At the start of Jon’s path with WordPrerss was the Orange County WordPress meetup group and WordCamp Orange County both of which were full welcoming guides into the world of WordPress. A few years later Jon moved to Maui, Hawaii where he started paying that generosity forward founding the Maui WordPress meetup group and 5 years later organizing the first ever WordCamp Maui. Now Jon is a back to digital nomad living, traveling the globe, attending WordCamps as far flung as Bangkok and Warsaw while running 9seeds from wherever he can find a hammock with decent wifi.

Kyle Putnam

Liam Dempsey

Having started his creative life as a print designer, Liam Dempsey likes to call himself a designer who codes. Working online and in print, Liam runs a small international marketing and design consultancy, LBDesign. Through LBDesign, Liam works with businesses and non-profits across the US, the UK and Africa. Liam is also the co-founder and organizer of the Philly ‘burbs WordPress Meetup. A co-organizer of WordCamp Philly, he served on the organizing team for the inaugural WordCamp US.

Bradley Cummins

CU Boulder Alumni and earning a Web Design and Development accredited certificate from Miami International University, Bradley now designs and develops many multi million dollar E-commerce solutions. Co-founder of WM.Digital, a creative agency based here in Miami, Bradley loves all things digital, breaking legacies, and interactive experiences that will inspire and engage users.

Miles Lifton

Miles, who is currently 10 years old, lives to learn about tech. With several years of study already under his belt, Miles specializes in C++ and web development languages, but also finds time to study object oriented programming.

Miles contributes as a passionate committee member for Be The Difference Foundation, Sophia’s Hope, and Polyblox Totems educational toys.

When hanging out at home, Miles can be found solving Rubix cubes of all shapes and sizes, practicing American Sign Language, and working on his newest web project using WordPress www.LanguageIsNotaBarrier.com a site devoted to helping people around the world foster world peace. You can find him on Twitter at @KidCoderDev.

Andrew Wikel

Andrew Wikel is a WooCommerce ninja at Automattic. He is committed to open source values and loves working with WordPress. He fell in love with WordPress in 2008, and has been working with it in some capacity since then. A husband, a father, a WordCamp addict, a coffee snob, lover of shiny things, and a California native living in Illinois.

Sherry Walling

Dr. Sherry Walling is a licensed psychologist and the co-host of the ZenFounder podcast. Her life’s work is to help high-performing professionals maximize their potential while maintaining life satisfaction and a sense of personal fulfillment. She consults regularly with entrepreneurs and founders regarding burnout, team conflict, depression, existential angst, major transitions, and personal balance.

Sherry is a graduate of UC Davis and Fuller School of Psychology (both with highest honors) . She has a PhD in clinical psychology and two master’s degrees. In addition, she completed residential fellowships in prevention research at Yale University School of Medicine and trauma research at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Boston University School of Medicine. She is an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco.

Married to a serial tech entrepreneur, Sherry has a unique combination of psychological expertise and 17 years of experience in the trenches of the start-up world. She loves bringing these two worlds together on the podcast, in her consulting work, and as a speaker.

Sherry is a lifelong California girl currently living in beautiful (but chilly) Minneapolis. When she’s not in the consulting room or chatting it up on skype; Sherry can be found on her paddleboard, building sandcastles on a beach, or dragging her two young sons on some kind of mischief-filled adventure.

Karim Marucchi

Karim Marucchi is the CEO of Crowd Favorite and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group. In the past 20 years, his career path has encompassed a variety of opportunities including founding startups, working for large web agencies and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in taking digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the necessary foundation and institutional knowledge in leading Crowd Favorite into the growing multinational organization it has become today.

Mason James

Mason James is a native Floridian who got his start volunteering for WordPress support in various forums in 2008. After freelancing and working for various other companies, in 2012, he started WP Valet. With a focus on first-class customer service and iterative, measurable improvements, Valet quickly gained a reputation for being a trusted partner to their clients. Today, Valet provides development, insights, and peace of mind to WordPress site owners around the world.

Jodie Riccelli

A lover of all things Philadelphia, intrigued by the constant expansion of the tech world, Jodie Riccelli began using WordPress in 2006. Her (now) husband had suggested she create a website for their music consulting business, and one Saturday morning, she awoke to find a new laptop loaded with video tutorials and manuals. She spent the rest of the weekend teaching herself to use the platform and created her first functioning website.

A graduate of Millersville University, Jodie brings 15 years of sales and marketing experience to WebDevStudios. Entrepreneurs in the real estate, music, technology and education industries have recognized her marketing expertise and ability to restructure and systemize businesses. A self-proclaimed foodie and music aficionado, she now lends her creativity to create unique web strategies and solutions for clients.

Jodie participates on the organizing team for WordCamp US; sits on the advisory committees for PHL Live Center Stage, the PHL Diversity Board and the Blackboard Labs board; and is a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Recording Academy. A devoted book hoarder and nomadic soul, she shares comedic screw-ups of life’s little experiences on izzabeth.com and has been known to get lost in old bookstores in disregard of the lack of shelf space at home.

Diane Kinney

Diane Kinney is the Creative Director and co-founder of The Versatility Group, a full service firm providing websites and other online solutions for 15 years. She is an award winning designer focused on WordPress design and development, graphic design, and marketing services. In her previous corporate life, she led large scale application development projects, managed multi-disciplinary teams, and oversaw Operations including marketing, customer service, and business development.

She gets excited about applying the lessons from her diverse background to web and marketing projects.

Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith has been working with and contributing to WordPress since 2004. He is one of the lead developers of the WordPress core and offers freelance WordPress consulting services through Covered Web Services with a focus on scaling, security, and custom functionality. Mark likes patches that have more red than green, and his favorite WordPress features are the ones that you’re not even aware of. He eagerly looks forward to shooting down your feature suggestions with, “No, but it would make a great plugin!”

Victor Santoyo

Technology enthusiast and Technical Engineer for Sucuri, Victor previously worked as a desktop publisher and information analyst for several local organizations in Miami, FL. He is constantly researching the role of online security in open-source CMS platforms. When away from the keyboard, going out for long runs or watching sports with his wife and son.

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 amazing son and a rescue dog that believes he’s a human.

Peter Carabeo

App/Web Architect & Senior Developer. Mainly embedded in the Angular Ecosystem.

Michael Dyer

Michael Dyer is a co-founder and CTO of Trapezoid, Inc., a South Florida-based security company focusing on hardware trust. He is active in the local security community and is also a co-founder of DigitalEra Group, LLC in Miami.

Michael loves to teach and talk technology. He built his first “full stack” production website in 1995, and has been building connected platforms ever since.

Brian Rotsztein

Brian is a renaissance man whose passion and enthusiasm as an experienced digital entrepreneur has shined over the last two decades. His love affair with WordPress began in 2005 when he started with version 1.6. With a unique constellation of talents, he successfully multitasks between being a CEO, Internet marketing professional, author, conference speaker, consultant, content creator, mentor, photographer, web designer, and startup founder.

His highly praised book, Content Marketing Ideas, is a complete guide to content creation and maintains an influential five-star rating on Amazon. He is in demand as the head of established brands such as Uniseo.com and RedstoneX.com, Editor-in-chief of Citynet Magazine, Senior Editor at The WP Crowd, and President of the Canadian Internet Marketing Association, among other accolades. You may have caught his many appearances on CTV News or local radio shows as a go-to expert. Brian holds two Master’s degrees and has taught at Boston College and McGill University. Visit www.rotsztein.com and connect with him on Instagram and Twitter: @brianrotsztein

Jonathan Brinley

Jonathan began tinkering with WordPress websites and plugins eleven years ago, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the distributed team at Modern Tribe for six years, and currently leads a team of developers to build delightful and creative solutions on top of the WordPress platform. When he’s not coding, Jonathan is busy homeschooling his two children and enjoying the beautiful weather of Northeast Florida.

Skills

Plugin dev, Homeschooling, Percussion, Walking

Hristo Pandjarov

Hristo has been working for SiteGround as a WordPress expert for more than eight years now. He’s done it all: supported WordPress clients, built websites, designed WordPress themes. In addition to that he’s author of many online tutorials and guides about WordPress. 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.

Pascal Depuhl

Pascal Depuhl is a visual content creator at Photography by Depuhl, a Miami-based production company. He’s been capturing still images for over 25 years and even though he got into video only 5 years ago, you’ll find his award-winning and mind changing videos on National Geographic, Netflix, the BBC and many of his clients’ websites. It’s common to find him in the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of South America and it’s just as common to walk away from one of his short documentary style films with your mind blown.

Allie Nimmons

Allie is a self-taught freelance web designer and internet marketer. After attending WCMIA in 2015 and being blown away, she vowed that one day she would be a speaker at a WordCamp conference. She designs and builds sites using WordPress and focuses on SEO rich sites for small businesses and brands who may not be able to afford a custom site from an agency. When she isn’t designing and learning, she’s hanging out with her boyfriend in South Florida and listening to podcasts.

Chris Coyier

Chris is a web designer and developer. He created CSS-Tricks, a website all about building websites. Going strong for nearly 10 years, it’s a community with a blog, forum, almanac, and video screencast.

He is also the co-founder of CodePen, a playground for front-end web development. CodePen is a code editor for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript right in the browser. It’s also a community. People share what they make, write and comment about code, collect favorites, follow each other, and more. It’s a social network for front end designers and developers.

Chris is the co-host of a podcast called ShopTalk, a show about (you guessed it), building websites. Modelled after CarTalk, the show features call-in questions and industry guests. It’s going on 230 episodes!

Chris has also spoken at events all over the world and authored two books: Pratical SVG and Digging Into WordPress. The web is Chris’ life and career focus. The web is an incredible, inspiring, and empowering place and helping people know it better is good for everyone.

Krystal Galewski

Krystal works hand-in-hand with emagine’s Sales and Marketing teams to identify qualified clients in the company’s core sectors, establish connections and maintain relationships with prospective clients. Krystal served in the U.S. Navy for more than eight years, traveling the World on aircraft carriers. Upon entering civilian life, she received her Business Marketing degree from Bridgewater State University. Outside of the office, Krystal enjoys catching up on her latest business podcast or book and getting some sun with her six-pound Chihuahua, Jessie.

Leah Halbina

As a Web Strategist and Account Manager, Leah partners with emagine’s clients across the healthcare, biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device sectors to explore opportunities to enhance their online presence with activities such as web design and development, SEO, PPC, social media, content management solutions in WordPress. After attending the University at Buffalo and New York University, Leah began her career in digital strategy working with pharmaceutical companies on their digital strategies. In her spare time, you can find Leah at Orange Theory Fitness or Instagramming her 1 ½ -year- old Cavapoo, Stella Wayne Rose and 1-year old Cockapoo, Carter James.

Meagan Hanes

Meagan Hanes is a WordPress expert based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with over 20 years creating websites by hand and over 10 years using WordPress. She creates elegant, high-performance, mobile-optimized web solutions – front-end, back-end, and everything in between. You may have seen her present talks across a variety of WordPress subjects. She gives back to local communities through organizing WordCamp Ottawa 2016 and 2017, running meetups such as the Ottawa WordPress Community, and teaching others to code via Ladies Learning Code. Meagan is a part of the OTGS family, makers of the WPML and Toolset plugins.

Melanie G Adcock

Melanie Adcock has been designing websites for more than fifteen years and has been using WordPress exclusively for the past six years. Her current clients include several small businesses, continuing care retirement communities, churches, and faith-based ministries. Melanie also mentors and consults with other WordPress enthusiasts. Twitter: @mgacreative

Skills

HTML/CSS
Responsive Design
Theme Dev

Mike Herchel

Mike Herchel is a front-end web developer at Lullabot and has worked on prominent projects such as the Syfy network, SpaceX, Principal Financial, and more. He’s been passionate about web development since creating his first website in 2001.

Mike started using Drupal in 2008, and has been involved in the Drupal community since 2010, and is one of the organizers for the annual Florida Drupalcamp conference. He enjoys presenting at conferences, sharing knowledge as much as possible, and writing about himself in the third person.

Outside of the digital world, Mike loves everything outdoors including hiking, fishing, kayaking, college football, and hammocking. He owns an awesome telescope that’s over 30 years old and uses it as much as Gainesville, FL’s swampy weather will let him.

Naomi C. Bush

Naomi’s been working with WordPress as a professional developer since 2005, and you can find her at gravityplus.pro, where she specializes in quickly delivering custom business applications at a fraction of the cost, and curating The Gravity Guide. She contributes back to the WordPress project through the core code, the codex documentation, free plugins, organizing the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, organizing WordCamp Atlanta, and speaking at WordCamps.

Paul Gilzow

Long Bio: Paul Gilzow is the lead programmer for the Division of Marketing and Communications at the University of Missouri, where he has worked as a Web applications programmer since 2005. Certified by the SANS Institute in Web application security, Paul frequently works with campus IT security to deliver presentations to fellow developers and assists in triaging and cleaning up compromised sites on campus. He is also heavily involved with his local OWASP chapter and teaches classes on secure coding practices to local areas businesses and organizations.

Pete Nelson

Pete is a full-time senior web engineer with 10up. He’s been working with WordPress the past 5+ years, but has been doing web development professionally since the mid 90s, and is the creator of baconipsum.com

Rachel S Lucas

Rachel Lucas is the co-founder of WPBICO, an All-In-One WordPress platform which provides every tool (domain names, business email, premium themes & plugins, hosting and training) needed for a professional WP website at an affordable price. A techie at heart, Rachel brought to web development a sophisticated level of creativity inspired by her design background.

As a female minority in tech, Rachel strives to serve as an inspiration for other young ladies in her demographic to find the joys of coding. Always traveling but currently based in the beautiful city of Miami, Rachel has merged her love of crochet and web design to create a platform that teaches young girls to explore their creativity through the timeless art of crochet.

Rebecca Gill

Rebecca is a Michigan native and president of Web Savvy Marketing. She has as a well-rounded business background within SMB and enterprise organizations, as well as over fifteen years of experience in sales and online marketing. She provides one-on-one SEO coaching, teaches group on-site workshops, and is an SEO instructor at diyseocourses.com and seobootcamp.com.

Shayla Price

Shayla Price creates and promotes content. She lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Originally from Louisiana, Shayla lives in the Fort Lauderdale area. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice

Shelly Peacock

Shelly Peacock is the founder of the Spinbird Group, a WordPress Consulting and Design Group. She has a “full-stack” professional background of over 15 years which includes sales, marketing, and social media training. An active member of the WordPress community, she has traveled and spoken at WordCamps both nationally and internationally. Her favorite things? Hole-in-the-wall eateries that rock and creating artwork … with blowtorches and with code.

Shilpa Shah

Shilpa Shah is co-founder of Hummingbird Web Solutions and focuses on CyberChimps, a WordPress Themes Store.  She was bitten by the travel bug early on and was lucky enough to have a job (in her earlier corporate avatar) that took her to various countries, meeting some truly wonderful people everywhere! She loves dancing in the rain, and trekking and camping in the wild. She has recently taking a liking to running, strictly for fun – and that means not tracking any metrics of any sort. She believes running marathons should be a by-product of and not the goal of running.
Shilpa is based in India and you can follow her on Twitter @IdleGazer.

Tanner Moushey

Tanner is a web developer and entrepreneur located in the small town of Granite Falls, WA. He’s passionate about using technology to promote community. When he’s not tracking down new leads or coding, he loves playing music and spending time with his wife and four (soon to be five) kids.

Tara Claeys

Tara Claeys, of Design TLC and Nice Work, LLC, provides custom website and graphic design services, with a focus on creating effective, clean and personalized communication platforms for small to medium businesses. Tara has a marketing background, combined with several years working with WordPress, helping her find solutions for complex marketing communication and website functionality challenges.

Tara is the proud recipient of the Arlington, Virginia Chamber of Commerce 2016 “Best Technology Business Award.”

When she’s not working, Tara enjoys cycling, running, watching movies and spending time with friends and family.

Tracy Apps

Tracy (or @tapps) is a Visual/UX Designer for Cornershop Creative and loves solving problems creatively. Her overlap of skills in design, user experience, strategy, front-end development, photography, video, and traditional art help her not only think outside the box, but to stay miles away from the box altogether!

With over 20 years of web development experience, and over 15 years of client work under her belt, Tracy approaches design very strategically, thinking from all angles to ensure a consistent and effective creative solution… not just something that “looks pretty.”

She also could probably deadlift you.

 

Skills:

skills: design/UX, HTML/CSS, photo/video, tying a bowtie without a mirror

Troy Dean

Troy Dean is co-founder of WP Elevation, the world’s largest business community for WordPress consultants and freelancers. He is also co-founder of RockStar Empires, an online education platform that helps entrepreneurs use the Internet to scale their businesses. He is a proud university dropout and freaking loves the Internet. He is also a voice-over artist, singer and guitar player. He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife, who runs a psychology podcast on WordPress, and his dog Lucy who is more of a Drupal kinda gal.

Jayvie Canono

Jayvie likes to call himself an accidental careerist in web development: he graduated college with a biology degree but life had other plans for him. He started developing static websites in 2002, and has been an avid user of WordPress to this end since its first release.

Since then, he’s found himself a happy little corner in an integrated marketing company in Baltimore, where he uses WordPress beyond site integration.

Since 2010, he’s spoken at WordCamps in Raleigh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Miami. His talks focus on the human, empathetic side of the development workflow, to foster a seamless relationship between client, design, and development.

 

Skills

developer operations, marketing and communications, information architecture, powerlifting

Jason Mazier

Jason Mazier is the President of Mazier Media, a marketing agency based in Fort Lauderdale. Jason was born and raised in New York City. In his 17-year career, Jason worked on multi-channel marketing campaigns for such clients as Boyce Technologies, LLERO Magazine, Broward Center for the Performing Arts, LiveNation, Holy Cross Hospital, Huntington National Bank, and JPMorgan Chase Bank. Jason is also the founder and host of devLatino – Digital Empowerment Voyage, a podcast highlighting Latinos in technology and the digital space. Follow him on Twitter at @jasonmazier

Eduardo Carreiro

Eduardo Carreiro is a Brazilian web designer and social marketer. Your first site was in 1998, for a pharmaceutical company. He lives in the USA since 2007, when a company hired him in Brazil to develop websites in Portuguese. Since then, he improved his skills, leading projects in WordPress websites for multinational companies and Digital Marketing strategies. Recently, he opened your own company.

Skills

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Internet Marketing and Business Development

Diana Espino

Diana Espino is a Software Architect and Zend Certified PHP Engineer with 15+ years experience in Full Stack web development. She specializes in large-scale web applications, modern PHP and JavaScript frameworks, growing engineering teams, and creating great engineering culture. Recently, Diana was recognized by Google as a Passionate Woman in Technology. Her passion has helped produce 2 of the Top PHP Conferences in South Florida – SunshinePHP and WordCamp Miami.

David Johnson

David is a Growth Engineer, geek, podcaster, and serial entrepreneur who has trained thousands of small business owners and sales professionals on how to find and attract customers in a changing marketplace dominated by Google, Facebook and other 21st-Century phenomena. His clients include multinational conglomerates, Mom & Pops, and everything in between… even household names like Ziglar, Inc. In 1998, David founded Grow The Dream, a boutique marketing agency that helps businesses grow by providing marketing strategy, content marketing services and more. David has been actively using WordPress since 2006.

Christie Chirinos

Christie Chirinos is a Partner in & the Business Manager at Caldera Labs, a WordPress plugin company. Caldera is the company led by Josh Pollock behind Caldera Forms, a leading drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress, and a handful of other free and premium plugins. She has been selling online since 2007, having worked on ecommerce sites, monetized blogs, technology strategy for nonprofit organizations, and now, digital downloads. Christie received her Master of Business Administration degree with a specialization in information systems management from Florida State University, and is currently based out of New York City.

Carrie Dils

Hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, Carrie Dils is a fixture in the WordPress community. In addition to helping organize her local WordCamp and meetups, Carrie enjoys attending and speaking at WordCamps around the US. For many years she’s provided consulting and front-end development services as a freelancer and she now teaches others how to do the same through her courses at Lynda.com and her book, Real World Freelancing.

Brian Messenlehner

Brian is the Co-Author of “Building Web Apps with WordPress,” published by O’Reilly Media. He’s the Co-Founder of AppPresser, a series of WordPress plugins used for building native mobile applications. He’s the Co-Founder of WebDevStudios, a WordPress development agency. Brian started his career as a software developer for the United States Marine Corps and has been building custom web applications for over 16 years. Brian enjoys pushing WordPress to it’s limits and believes it’s a great tool for building simple websites to building enterprise level web solutions. You can follow Brian on most social networks @bmess.

Auston Bunsen

Auston is a self-taught programmer, polyglot (PHP, Ruby, Python, JS) & 2x CTO. He’s currently the head instructor at Wyncode Academy, where he helps people develop and refine programming abilities over 10 weeks.

 

Skills:

Skills: PHP, Ruby, JS, Python, CSS, HTML, Rails, Django, CodeIgniter, Magento, WordPress, Express, React, Angular 1.

Andrew Taylor

Andrew currently works for Pantheon helping agencies 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.

Amanda Giles

Amanda Giles is WordPress Evangelist and Enthusiast who loves converting people to WordPress. She’s been developing websites since 1994 and has been building WordPress themes since 2009. She hails from New Hampshire where she founded the Seacoast NH WordPress meetup in 2011. She works as an independent consultant and also as part of Spark Development, a small agency focusing on WordPress web development. You can often locate Amanda by her loud sneezes and it’s likely because of these sneezes that she leads such a blessed life. Find her on Twitter: @AmandaGilesNH or @SparkDevs.

Aleksander Kuczek

Aleksander is CEO of Perfect Dashboard. Additionally, he is an OpenSource CMS aficionado, Joomla Extension Directory team member, and a WordPress Directory aspiring team member. A frequent speaker at WordCamps and Joomla Days around the world, Aleksander has more than 10 years of experience in freelance & agency business. Originally from Poland, this foodie & computer games freak is very excited to visit Miami!

Carl Alexander

Heya! I’m Carl. I’m a PHP developer from Montréal, Canada. I live and breath advanced programming topics (and memes). I share a lot of my passion for those topics on my website where I publish articles on a regular basis.

It’s my way to help you with these hard-to-learn topics. That’s also why I’m excited to speak at WordCamp Los Angeles. It’s another way for me to help you.

Besides that, I’ve been a WordPress Montréal organizer since 2010. I also help organize other WordPress events during the year.”

 

Skills

– Cosmic cat alignment
– Apex developer of industry
– Master of recursion
– Master of recursion

Note: The double “master of recursion” at the end is intended lol

Pirate Dunbar

Ptah Dunbar is an air-traveling, one-eye Pirate, sailing the high seas of the Web over the past 10 years. He speaks over 10 languages, teaches students how to code and is on a mission to create empowering software that impacts a billion people within the next decade.

Ptah has given 5-star presentations tech talks (English and French) at technology conferences like WordCamp Europe, Day Camp 4 Developers, and Startup Weekend Luxembourg where his team ContinuousPHP won the grand prize and launched successfully.

Ptah’s current focus is on improving software quality at scale using AI systems, organization’s human development programs, and time-to product/market fit. When he isn’t traveling or contributing back to local communities, you’ll often find Ptah learning about ALL THE THINGS and spending quality time with his friends and family.

Follow Ptah on Twitter @ptahdunbar and subscribe to ptah.ai to learn more about his story and adventures.

Karla Campos

Karla Campos is the CEO of Social Media Sass a company specializing in digital marketing training and education. Social Media Sass has trained individuals in topics like WordPress, Joomla, social media, crowdfunding, blogging, content marketing, and SEO to name a few.

Karla is a speaker, the winner of a Small Business Influencer award for 2013. Karla has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, T51, NBC6, Social Media Today, and the Sun Sentinel. Karla is the author of Social Media Fame.

On her spare time Karla likes to build websites for her startup ideas and writes for different blogs. Karla holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Technical Management.

Connect with Karla on Twitter @SocialMediaSass

Dr. Nancy Richmond

Dr. Nancy Richmond is a professor and leading speaker in social media, personal branding and marketing. Her passion is to empower and train leaders in effectively leveraging social media for their careers and business. She teaches social media classes for the College of Business and is the co-founder of the Social Media Association at Florida International University

Dr. Richmond has worked with leading universities including MIT, Harvard University, Florida International University and Northeastern University.

Nancy has a passion for social media with over 80,000+ followers on Twitter, 5,000+ connections on LinkedIn and 7,000+ followers on Instagram. Nancy’s most recent project and research #LeadersGetSocial explores how leaders can use social media to succeed in their careers and organizations.

Zac Gordon

Zac Gordon is currently preparing the JavaScript for WordPress Master Course.  Previously, Zac taught WordPress for Treehouse, the online technology school.  Zac has years of experience teaching WordPress and JavaScript at the high school and college level.  In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students.

Nizar Khalife Iglesias

Nizar Khalife Iglesias is the Lead Instructor at Ironhack Miami and has been a Web developer for over 8 years. He teaches people what coding is and how to code. Nizar also writes software for the server, command-line and browser, usually in his preferred language: JavaScript. He loves learning and speaking about code and tries to stay active in developer meetups in South Florida.

Aside from that, Nizar is from Puerto Rico and enjoys video games, film and cookies.

Alex Oliveira

As a hands on leader of multiple successful companies, Brazilian-born and South Florida-raised Alex Oliveira has helped clients advance their businesses and brands by building and executing interactive marketing campaigns for over 15 years.

With a heavy emphasis on Lead Gen, Alex has created a name for himself as a well-respected marketing technologist and entrepreneur. From small to Mid-sized companies to non-profits and Fortune 500 brands like Ford and Allstate, Alex enjoys a diverse portfolio of clientele.

Alex’s other passions include adventuring with his wife and 3 kids, giving back to the local community and having his morning coffee with a side of NPR.

Chris Christoff

Chris is a partner and lead-developer of MonsterInsights the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. In his free time, he works on fixing WordPress core bugs and security issues. His code runs on over 2 million websites.

Kimberly Lipari

Kimberly Lipari is Co-Founder and Director of Operations for valet.io, formerly WP Valet. Valet started life as the original support company and has evolved into a full service agency that provides full Development, Design, and Site Management. Kimberly has written for WP Elevation, presented a webinar, and spoken at various WordCamps about team and client interactions. She was recently featured in an Online Summit called ‘Tracking the Dream Team Code’, helping business owners build the best teams possible. In her downtime Kimberly is usually managing her circus of three kiddos. She cooks and listens to audiobooks for therapy and loves any excuse to get outside and do something fun. She lives just outside of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Steven Alig

Steven Alig spends his days planning applications and web projects with WordPress. He has been developing and designing websites since 1997. In 2004 he started his own agency. South Florida Web Studio has changed and adapted many times over the years since its inception and it continues to deliver quality web projects for a variety of clients. Since 2010 WordPress is the exclusive platform of choice for Steven and his agency.

He is a community volunteer serving on various Web advisory committees for Broward College and Broward Schools, as well as an organizer for Creative Mornings Fort Lauderdale, and WordCamp Miami. Steven also coaches soccer for both his daughters’ recreational league teams.

 

Skills

SEO, Content Marketing x2, Analytics

Anthony Miyazaki

I build people brands. I do this for my students, my employees, my clients, and anyone who crosses my various social media paths. I also direct the FIU Master of Science in Marketing program, which focuses on Digital Marketing, Brand Development, and Marketing Analytics. My team and I have used personal/professional branding to move this program from zero to over $3.5 million in annual revenues in a one-year period, and on an advertising budget of $0.00 (yes, zero). I also teach two courses in the program, lead the academic Marketing Department, and post a new #MarketingMinute video on YouTube every Monday (be sure to subscribe). Find me at the conference and convince me that I should interview you for our new interview series.

John James Jacoby

Project lead for BuddyPress and bbPress. WordPress contributor, BackPress supporter. Cranky driver. Puppy whisperer. Naps required. Currently the Director of Web Engineering at 10up.

Josh Pollock

Josh is a WordPress developer and educator. He is Founder/ Lead Developer/ Space Astronaut Grade 3 for Caldera Labs, makers of awesome WordPress tools including Caldera Forms — a drag and drop, responsive WordPress form builder.

Also, he is a WordPress core contributor, the author of The Ultimate Guide To The WordPress REST API and a member of The WPCrowd.

Patrick Rauland

Patrick is a web enthusiast and loves sharing all sorts of content online. He writes tutorials for WooCommerce, tutorials how to paint toy soldiers (yes for real), and has taught a number of online courses and even written a book. He’s the Product Manager for #WooCommerce at @Automattic, poly, and the guy who makes crazy sound effects.

Louise Treadwell

Louise is an eternal web development geek and social media junkie. She’s a native of Metro Detroit and an alumnae of the University of Michigan. She learned about the human side of computer science while earning a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science and has fined tuned her web developer skills over the course of a 20+ year career building, breaking, and fixing sites for a multitude of startups. She’s never had a “real” job and thus is quite well-versed on the realities of being a successful freelancer and small business owner. Louise loves coffee, is full of useless facts, and is eagerly waiting for her shot on Jeopardy. She lives in South Florida with her three bouncing boys and her husband.

Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi is an award winning young entrepreneur with several 7 figure online businesses. He was recognized as the top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by United Nations. His work has been featured in Forbes, Inc, Washington Post, FoxBusiness, Entrepreneur, Wired, and many top publications.

In 2009, he created WPBeginner which is now one of the largest free WordPress resource site on the web. In 2011, he created a site called List25, an extremely popular site that within 3 months of launch was receiving 5 million page views per month. List25 has over 2.1 million subscribers and 470 Million video views on Youtube.

Aside from these, Syed is also the founder of WPForms, MonsterInsights, Soliloquy, and Envira Gallery.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer in Minneapolis (formerly Chicago). Her formal education is in design, including print, branding, packaging, etc., plus studies in Psychology and Sociology. Together, this resulted in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress theme development and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the open source community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and other events around the country.

Adam Soucie

Adam Soucie is a WordPress developer and the CEO at Dinosaur Iceberg, an Orlando-based digital creative agency. He is part of the WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando organizing teams and recently joined the WordPress Accessibility Team.

David Laietta

David Laietta is an organizer of WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando. He has been using WordPress for nearly eight years now, and builds custom themes and plugins for clients. David is a co-founder of Dinosaur Iceberg, a creative agency based in Orlando. In addition to WordPress, David is passionate about open source software, online freedoms, internet culture, and constantly learning about the world. He looks forward to chatting with you at WordCamp Miami or on Twitter @davidlaietta.

Shawn Hooper

Shawn is the Director of IT at Actionable.co, and lives in Ottawa, Canada. His current mandate is the development of the distributed company’s internal business systems and processes, which rely heavily on the integration of various services’ APIs (including WordPress REST) to automate regular processes for this distributed company.  Shawn has over 20 years of experience as a web application developer, and has been working with WordPress since 2009.  This is his third time speaking at WordCamp Miami.

Scott Mann

Scott is the Founder and Creative Director of Highforge, an Orlando-based service agency focused on helping medium and enterprise businesses in a few key industries lead and succeed online. He’s an Emmy-award winning commercial writer that’s sold millions in projects and generated hundreds of millions in new revenues for clients since 2001. He’s been managing commercial WordPress projects since 2009. He loves to solve problems, make clients happy and help creatives achieve their destinies. He digs racquetball, travel backpacking, scuba, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, festivals, Bob’s Burgers, fine tequila and a non-profit called Be the Match that helps save lives. Ask him why.

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 Jupiter, FL where he is happily married to wife 1.31, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT.

Sandy Edwards

Sandy Edwards has been working in the online marketing space for over 5 years. She started at a niche firm that utilized WordPress to create sites quickly utilizing several options frameworks. Today, she works with LivePulse Web in a capacity to manage projects, and other technical tasks. She loves to give back by teaching kids about coding, WordPress, and other technical skills. Sandy is very active in the Orlando WordPress community and is excited to see what 2016 will bring to the tech space in Florida!

Chris Wiegman

Chris is a developer for UF Health at the University of Florida who has been working on WordPress since 2008. Over the years Chris built one of the largest security plugins on WordPress.org as well as numerous other plugins, themes and other solutions. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has presented at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University and other University courses ranging from computers to aviation.

WordCamp Miami 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!