Category: News

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

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Shelly Peacock”

With over 20 years of experience, Jean-Francois has been building websites best viewed in 800×600 since the early 90’s. He co-founded SatelliteWP which is a WordPress maintenance service, runs a WP consulting agency which provides development & site management services, and co-founded a firm that specializes in SAAS solutions. Speaker, teacher, dad and wanna-be runner, he enjoys sci-fi, traveling and snail racing (ok, that last one is made up).

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Meeting people that have become friends and business colleagues over the years

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Jean-Francois Arseneault”

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.

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Meagan Hanes”

Andrea is a Customer Support Lead for Rainmaker Digital, the company that owns the Rainmaker platform, the Copyblogger content marketing blog and Studiopress, the company behind the Genesis framework. She’s also a grandmother of 3, and in her spare time makes quilts from Wordcamp tshirts. @andrea_r

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Hands down, best experience is the community and attending WordCamps.

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Andrea Rennick”

Maxime Jobin is the cofounder of SatelliteWP, a maintenance service for WordPress where business owners can forget about the technical aspect of running a website and focus on their business objectives. He manages several companies in various sectors where the same objective prevails: increase productivity through automation. He acts as a speaker to share his expertise and knowledge. Focusing on efficiency and return on investment, he is an expert in the analysis and development of computerized solutions. @maximejobin

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

I’ve met people all around the world because of WordPress that I can call my friends. I am really grateful for what WordPress brought to my life. Yes, it’s a great software but it also brings people together.

Continue reading “Speaker Spotlight – Maxime Jobin”

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”