Speakers

Linda Mork

Based in the Okanagan, Linda Mork is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic where she helps people with their WordPress websites using the WooCommerce ecommerce plugin and extensions. Prior to this she was a successful freelance web designer building websites for small to medium business owners.

Justyna Berzowska

Justyna is a content strategist & UX researcher at Domain7, where she spends her time interpreting user data and creating usable information structures. She is fascinated by how people use digital environments. Justyna has worked on a variety of site redesign and optimization projects, including for Regent College, the Vancouver Economic Commission and Western Washington University.

Peter Hebert

Peter Hebert is a web designer and developer, working mostly with WordPress and Drupal. He is the owner of Rex Rana Design and Development Ltd., providing services in web development, design, project management, software training and general IT consulting. Peter has worked with interactive media since the mid-1990s, and has been building websites for almost as long. He has worked as a broadcaster, graphic designer, webmaster, developer, and IT manager. He even built his own CMS from scratch in PHP (don’t do this at home!). When not in front of a computer screen, Peter enjoys walking in the woods with his Bernese mountain dog, Otto.

Aftaab Gulam

Aftaab began his career as a photographer. He traveled to Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas photographing people. His work appears in national newspapers and magazines. He is self-taught building websites. His work earned him a Webby nomination for a citizen journalism site. WordPress enabled him to take advantage of the excellent content management system. Currently, he develops websites using the WordPress platform, apps for smartphones and photography. WordPress offers individuals an autonomous way to promote their products, services, passions, and interests. He prefers WordPress over nodes like Facebook, for the freedom and flexibility. He describes himself as a creative, a problem solver, a listener and unconditionally curious.

Greg Sullivan

Greg Sullivan is a WordPress developer based in Vancouver. He’s worked with WordPress for more than 10 years, with clients ranging from print magazines and startups to online stores and event organizers.

Scott Towne

Scott Towne founded Fairfield Media Co. in 2012 with the goal of creating a digital content & design firm that is built on integrity and friendly, personal service. Scott’s mission is to create a ‘whole package’ experience for his clients so they don’t need to rack up the expense of going to different places for web design, content creation, branding, logo design and social media strategies. For more than 12 years, Scott produced and designed blockbuster video games at large software companies where he honed his skills in user interface design, project management and software development. Through those years working closely with people to make great games, he learned the importance of fostering dynamic collaboration to reach and surpass project goals. He is now using his creative and technical drive to create cohesive communication channels for small-business owners.

Karin Christen

I am the managing partner and a co-founder of the UX and WordPress Agency required+ and a co-organiser of WordCamp Switzerland. I work as a UX and Interaction Designer. I get hired by our clients to improve the usability of their web applications or help them to start a new project. My eyes always lay on the users perspective. WordPress plays a big role at our company as many of our client projects and open-source plugins are based on WordPress. I’m also a passionate surfer and mountain-biker who loves to travel while working. My goal is to bring my thoughts and process related to user experience and interaction design into the WordPress community and to inspire them with the way I’m thinking about running a WordPress Agency.

Alycia Mitchell

Alycia is the Marketing Analytics & SEO Specialist at Sucuri. She is passionate about her work, but unexpectedly her personal projects have suffered on the sidelines. Alycia shares some of her hardships and lessons learned in overcoming perfectionism and insecurity when blogging as a hobby.

Jill Binder

Jill Binder is a WordPress freelancer, workshop facilitator, and member of the WordPress.org Training team. She helped organize the first BuddyCamp, for three years she co-organized WordCamp Vancouver, and she enjoys encouraging women to level up their confidence to speak at tech events. Jill was named one of the top 100 Influencers of WordPress in 2014 by Torque Magazine and one of the top 10 Women of WordPress by CloudWays.

http://jillbinder.com

Jonathan Kay

Jonathan has over 20 years experience as a Linux systems administrator. In recent years, he has run a lot of WordPress servers. Following the age-old sys-admin adage of “If you have to do it more than twice, automate it,” he has built a lot of scripts and tools for managing WordPress servers, for both sys-admins and developers. In 2015, he released WP Stagecoach, a plugin that creates WordPress staging sites with one click. When he’s not playing with server hardware or automating his regular tasks, you can find Jonathan hiking in the Pacific Northwest with his standard poodle or instructing with car clubs at the race track.

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.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a senior staff author at Lynda.com, a LinkedIn Company, with 60+ courses published. When not creating training materials for Lynda.com, Morten teaches Instructional Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, co-organizes the Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group, and contributes to WordPress core and community projects. In his spare time he reads sci-fi and philosophy, tries to find time to play guitar, and wears out his dance shoes on the ballroom floor.

Shannon Smith

Shannon Smith (http://about.me/shannonasmith) is the founder of Café Noir Design (http://www.cafenoirdesign.com/), a boutique Montréal web design company specializing in multilingual web development. She builds beautiful, functional websites that her clients can update themselves and that are easy for search engines to find. She support things like making the web accessible for everyone, using open source software, helping organizations find greener more sustainable ways to operate through online technology and helping non-profits with online community organizing. Also poet, sewist, and mother of four.

Robert Dall

Robert Dall is a 30-something web designer, blogger and one of many WordPress core contributors. Born and raised on the West Coast of Canada, in the small seaside village of Sechelt, B.C. Robert’s passion for the visual element started with his first high school photography class. He continued with this passion by studying at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, graduating with a Diploma in Journalism Arts. The next seven years were a chaotic blur of lenses, assignments, time zones and cities as Robert criss-crossed the Arctic and Western Canada telling the stories of Canadians from the viewfinder of his camera. New horizons Homesick after years on the road, Robert returned to the West Coast in 2005 seeking to broaden his horizons, while staying a little closer to home. Studying web design at BCIT I stumbled upon WordPress.com quite early in my web up bringing. I then made the natural progression from WordPress.com to self hosted WordPress site and since then I have work almost exclusively with WordPress using it as a blog, CMS, portfolio and e-commerce. Community is Poetry One of the great benefits of WordPress is the awesome local and world wide community of designers, developers and content creators.

Max McClanahan

Masters in Computer Science from University of Colorado, Boulder. Principal Software Engineer with Digital Equipment doing database research. Manager at Ingres Database System. Director of Engineering for Datatools. Vice President Engineering for various tech start-ups. Instructor at Cal. State Hayward, U.C. Berkeley Extension and Univ. of Victoria. Currently retired.

Kelvin Cech

Five years ago I quit my office job in Edmonton to move to Vancouver and start a one-man writing company. These days Function Writing is running pretty smooth; I’m busy with blogging, copywriting, copy editing and social media. So basically I spend every single day on WordPress.

Christina Varro

Christina owns and operates a creative design and commercial photography studio called Varro Creative based in Calgary. 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 6 years. She is passionate about design and photography, and loves collaborating on creative projects and sharing knowledge with others in the web community.

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.

Ian Dunn

I’ve been a full-time WordPress developer since 2006, and my current employer donates all of my time to contribute back to the WordPress community. I’m a member of WP’s Meta Team, and focus on WordCamp.org and the Meta Environment.

Colin Dowling

Vice President of Sales – Media Temple (Current) Enterprise Accounts and Agencies – WP Engine (Managed WordPress) Vice President of Sales – ISON (hosting and IT managed services)

Nathan Reimnitz

Nathan is a certified expert WordPress developer from Scottsdale, AZ. He’s a full-time freelancer for Codeable.io, Clarity.fm, LinkedIn Profinder & GoDaddy Pro Connect.

You can get to know more about Nathan on his website or connect with him via twitter.