Author: richgraphics2008

Adam W. Warner discovered WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since. To feed his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners.

He is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that also happens to be his job title with SiteLock.com.

Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything. @SiteLock

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Wow. It’s hard to narrow it down to one thing but I’ll try. One of the best experiences I’ve had is with the infinite flexibility of the software.

Along with small business sites and blogs, I’ve utilized WordPress to build private Intranets, digital asset management systems, commercial and residential product portals, membership sites, software sales tools, and much more.

Along with being able to power just about any site one can imagine, WordPress also has a powerful and giving community of people willing to help elevate each other.
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Mike Tanner is a writer, consultant and community builder in Halifax, NS. He has written for publications such as Yummy Mummy Club, Hustle & Grind and CBC while building his small digital agency, OneRedCat, over the past 5 years. He is also a full-time stay at home father of two and a director with Pocamp Halifax. When he’s not writing, building or breaking up toddler fights, he’s typically controlling a Level 11 Ronin in Dungeons & Dragons, trying to figure out how to do yoga or playing/designing board games. @oneredcatmedia

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

My best experience with WordPress has been getting to take clients visions of what they want and seeing them go live. The idea that WordPress can do WHATEVER THE HELL I NEED IT TO.

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A coder for over a decade, I started tinkering with WordPress in 2005. My primary inspiration for learning to code was my passion for logic puzzles. Needless to say, troubleshooting is my favourite part of my job (along with implementing good UI!) In the past I’ve spent my time teaching others how to use WordPress, developing child themes and forking plugins. I’m currently living in Fredericton, NB and working as a front end developer for Lookbooks.com. In my spare time I attend a weekly bad movie watching club and play video games. @fevered

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Attending WordCamps!

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Sarah Rennick”

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 code. @Spinbird

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Making an awesome living from home

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As founder and creative director of Tomodomo and Van Patten Media Inc., Chris Van Patten has helped build communities and websites for Broadway performers, small businesses, tech news publications, and countless others. Trained as a designer, Chris focuses these days on user experience and technical strategy, serving as a mediator between client dreams and technical realities. While living in Buffalo, NY, Chris created “BfloFRED,” the Buffalo Front-End Developers meetup (later expanded to include sister meetups in Manchester, UK and Toronto, ON) and co-organised Buffalo’s inaugural WordCamp. He regularly speaks at events around the world (including eleven WordCamps in cities around the world), and writes at chrisvanpatten.com. @ChrisVanPatten

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Working with the WordPress community, whether releasing plugins, contributing code, or tutoring young developers is so rewarding. The community is so open, diverse, and really has a conscience. I think that makes WordPress really special.

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Chris Van Patten”

Meagan Hanes is a WordPress expert based in Ottawa 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. 🙂 @mhanes

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Seeing how important, valuable, and cherised the community is! At the end of the day, people are what make WordPress work. So it’s great to have events like these, where it’s easy to put the computer aside (GASP!) and connect face to face.

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Christina owns and operates a creative design and commercial photography studio called Varro Creative based in Calgary, Canada. She has over 15 years of experience in graphic and web design, and has primarily focused on WordPress based projects for her web clients for the past 7 years. She has spoken at WordCamp several times, and is excited to collaborate and share knowledge with others in the WordPress community. @varrocreative

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Learning how flexible it is, and how to take advantage of it as a business tool

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Christina Varro”

Now living and working in Chicago with GE transportation and the US railroad industry, Anthony helps build great digital experiences and software through usability research, IA concepts, and prototypes.

Outside the office, you’ll find him spread across regional meetups and conferences—evangelizing IA/UX, accessibility, and a variety of open source dev projects. Most recently, he organized WordCamp Baltimore. He’s currently organizing World IA Day DC and WordCamp Chicago, while unofficially advising the first-ever WordCamp DC. He’d divulge something funny from his past, but these days the Internet does a better job of surfacing our embarrassing moments; find him anywhere by Googling “anthonydpaul”.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

I’ve been a member of the community for many years and sharing stories and learning from each other is the biggest perk.

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Anthony D Paul”

Montrealer Kathryn Presner thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012. She’s currently Theme Whisperer on the Theme Team, where she helps folks with customization, configuration, and troubleshooting. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress and encouraging new public speakers at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress obsessions include vintage Pyrex mixing bowls and growing garlic. @zoonini

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

I get tremendous enjoyment from helping WordPress users make their sites look like and do exactly what they want. Whether it’s as a volunteer in the WordPress.org forums, in person at a Happiness Bar, or in my daily work as a Happiness Engineer, helping people one-on-one with WordPress is so satisfying.

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Gavin is a Lead Developer at NATIONAL Public Relations, webmonkey, Apple fan, games nerd, coffee-fiend, and CMS critic. @gavinanderegg

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

WordPress and I have a complicated relationship. I like it best when I can ignore anything to do with themes and just focus on plugin development.

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Gavin Anderegg”