We’re happy to announce that we’ve confirmed two great speakers to keynote WordCamp Seattle this year. Siobhan McKeown will be kicking things off in the morning, and Andrew Nacin will close us out at the end of the day.

Siobhan McKeown is a Word Ninja at Audrey Capital where she writes about WordPress, deals with documentation, and has nightmares about the Codex. She’s currently working on an open source book about the history of WordPress. She spends her days delving into the brains of its early developers and community members. When she’s not worrying about the finer details of forking and the GPL, she’s helping out with the project’s future by wrangling WordPress’ documentation.

Andrew Nacin is a Lead Developer of WordPress, squashing bugs, mentoring contributors, and spearheading new development — including leading the 3.5, 3.7, and 3.9 releases. He has strong feelings about the core philosophies of WordPress, among them “decisions, not options” and “designing for the majority” — software should be opinionated in lieu of burdening the user. In his first appearance at WordCamp Seattle since 2011, he’ll be sharing what the community has been working on, where we are headed, and how we’re going to get there. Bring your questions as there will be plenty of time for discussion.

We are very lucky to be able to offer a wonderful opportunity to WordCamp speakers this year: a speaker coaching session led by Scott Berkun. Scott is a best-selling author and speaker. In addition to his books, he has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, Forbes, USA Today, Wired, Fast Company, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post and other media. He has spoken at hundreds of events – in fact, he gave the keynote at WordCamp Seattle 2012.

Among his books are Confessions of a Public Speaker, which offers entertaining and practical advice for people who want to speak in public, and The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, about the year Berkun spent working for Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com) and how Automattic functions with a 100% distributed workforce.

This is an amazing opportunity for speakers to learn from a veteran speaker and coach. Speakers of every experience level will learn something valuable from Scott. We are very grateful to him for offering this opportunity to our speakers!

Are you thinking of giving a talk at WordCamp, but you are quite sure what to talk about?

Do you want to talk at WordCamp, but you’re nervous about public speaking?

Then come join us for our Talking About WordPress events! At these events, we will brainstorm ideas for talks you can give at WordCamp or at our regular WordPress meetups. We will generate outlines for our talks, and even get a little bit of practice speaking in front of a small group.

Please note that one of these events is for women only. Women face a few extra obstacles when speaking at tech events, so we’ll discuss those obstacles and how to overcome them.

We hope to see you at these meetups!

April 1, 7pm-9pm: Women Talking About WordPress
April 2, 7pm-9pm: Talking About WordPress