Let’s try this again. We’re re-sending this because yesterday’s post managed to go out without any of our actual speaker bios in it. Gotta love technology!
Have we mentioned lately what a crazy-amazing lineup of speakers and sessions we’ve got for you at WordCamp Seattle this year?
We’ve got your traditional, 30 minute talks-with-slides followed by Q&A.
We’ve got roll-up-your-sleeves, get-dirt-under-your-fingernails, and get-to-work, interactive working sessions.
We’ve got lightning talks so fast and furious your head will spin (not really, but at just 8 minutes each, these do promise to be fascinating, fun, and informative).
And we’ve got some in-depth panel discussions lined up that will blow… your… mind.
Today, I’m so excited to share with you our impressive slate of 30 minute talk-with-slides speakers (of which there are oodles):
Aaron Campbell
Aaron is the WordPress Security Team lead, has been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than ten years, and is currently funded by GoDaddy to work full time on the WordPress open source project. He has over seventeen years of web development experience and worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but considers both to be compliments. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, riding his motorcycle, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.
Adam W. Warner
Adam W. Warner first discovered WordPress in 2005 and has since founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners. In 2016 he brought his passion for WordPress to join SiteLock as a Product Evangelist. Adam has since delivered his zeal for WordPress to 20 different WordCamps all over the world and presented talks at 13. In addition to WordPress, Adam is passionate about his family, robots and of course, life, the universe and everything.
Amy Fawcett
As the Digital Producer at the Washington Technology Industry Association, Amy keeps the website, blog, and social channels fresh and up to date so their members know what’s going on at WTIA and in Washington’s technology community.
Ben Byrne
Ben Byrne is one of three founders of Cornershop Creative, a web services agency that plans, designs, builds and maintains websites for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions around the country. As Chief Creative Officer, Ben oversees most the design and development work that Cornershop does. His fluency in HTML, CSS and JavaScript have been put to good use implementing his designs on a variety of platforms and systems, but primarily WordPress.
Ben has a BFA in Graphic Design from Iowa State University and has been working on the web professionally for about 20 years. He has presented on the difference between print and web design, web typography, WordPress widgets, high performance front-end performance optimization and other topics at various organizations and events, including several WordCamps. Ben now lives in Santa Rosa, CA but has previously resided in six other states.
Devon DeLapp
Devon is the owner and principal of DeLapp Design, a boutique design agency founded in 2011 and located in Seattle. DeLapp creates brand identities, marketing materials, and custom-built websites. WordPress is the CMS of choice for their web projects, and their clients include Microsoft, COJK, United Creations, and Environmental Defense Fund. When off the clock, Devon can be found raising his two children and riding his bike.
Devon Persing
Devon Persing is an accessibility specialist with Simply Accessible. She provides training and assessment for clients in online retail, finance, travel, information services, and the nonprofit sector looking to integrate accessibility into their product lifecycle. Her work focuses on helping designers and developers understand holistic approaches to creating accessible experiences that benefit everyone.
Devon has more than fifteen years of experience in user experience design, web development, and information science. She has spoken at conferences like AccessU, Elements, and the Grace Hopper Celebration, and has also taught and given talks for organizations like the School of Visual Concepts and Ada Developers Academy in Seattle, and The Designer’s Studio in San Francisco. She holds an MS from the University of Michigan School of Information.
Dwayne McDaniel
I have been working in tech and open source sales since 2005.
I knew as soon as I started working with Java middleware developers I never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. I first started building in Drupal and WordPress when I needed to build projects for the San Francisco Improv scene. I fell in the love the community of developers and then found my position at Pantheon at the end of 2013.
As a Community and Agency Success Manager I have had the privilege of presenting at MidCamp (Drupal), WordCamp Milwaukee, WordCamp Baltimore, Drupal Northern Lights (Iceland), Stanford DrupalCamp and other conferences.
Outside of tech I love producing and performing improv theater. I also love comic books and karaoke!!! Reach out at http://mcdwayne.com or on twitter @mcdwayne
Edward Finkler
Ed Finkler, also known as [Funkatron](https://twitter.com/funkatron), started making web sites before browsers had frames. He does full-stack work in Python, PHP, and JavaScript. Ed is the founder and chairman of [Open Sourcing Mental Illness](https://osmihelp.org), a non-profit 501c3 dedicated to raising awareness and supporting those with mental illness in the tech industry.
He served as web lead and security researcher at [The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University](http://www.cerias.purdue.edu) for 9 years. Along with Chris Hartjes, Ed is co-host of the [Development Hell podcast](http://devhell.info).
Ed writes at [funkatron.com](http://funkatron.com).
Gian Wild
Gian has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998 and consulted on the development of the first Level AAA accessible web site in Australia (Disability Information Victoria). She has worked with the Disability Services arm of the Victorian Government for over thirteen years to keep the four iterations of the Disability Services site (Disability Information Victoria, Disability Services, Disability Online and DiVine), Level AAA accessible. She ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005 and built the accessibility tool, PurpleCop.
Gian Wild spent six years on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group, the W3C Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group and the W3C Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. She spent six years contributing to the development of WCAG2.
Jamie Schmid
Jamie is a freelance WordPress Developer and Designer. She has a background in Information Architecture, Web Development and UX design, but her true calling is having way too much fun doing content strategy and architecture for all the interesting projects that come her way. She is an organizer for WCMilwaukee and WCPortland, and lives in Portland Oregon.
Jeanie Walker
Jeanie has years of experience delivering corporate presentations, product launch announcements, and marketing training sessions to business partners and colleagues at global and start-up companies.
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.
Julie Pham
Julie Pham is Vice President of Community Engagement and Marketing at Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), which advocates on behalf of the state’s 8600 tech companies. Prior to WTIA, she worked in marketing at Microsoft and Avidian Technologies. She is a Puget Sound Business Journal 2011 ’40 under 40’ honoree and a 2015 German Marshall Memorial Fellow. She earned her PhD in history at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and graduated magna cum laude from UC Berkeley, where she studied history.
Kori Ashton
Kori Ashton has been listed as one of seven women who run tech startups in San Antonio to watch. She started her first company at the age of 12, and has had an entrepreneur’s heart ever since. She built her first HTML website in 1998, and was instantly hooked on Web design.
In 2012, Kori co-founded WebTegrity – a WordPress-focused digital marketing agency in San Antonio, Texas. She also teaches HTML, CSS, WordPress, SEO and other topics to hundreds of students at schools, colleges, and community classes across the United States. She now has over 1.5 million views from an international audience on her WordPress Wednesday YouTube Channel.
Kori has spoken at WordCamp San Antonio, TEDx San Antonio, Graduation Ceremonies for The Art Institutes, Women Veteran Entrepreneurs, UTSA Small Business events, and hundreds of WordPress Meetups and workshops.
Lorelei Kelly
Lorelei is a user experience designer for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before that she worked with clients of all sizes at a small design agency. She cares deeply about advocating for users and making things that make life better.
If the weather isn’t good enough for hiking in the mountains, you’ll probably find Lorelei knitting or reading a novel.
Matt Perry
Matt Perry is an engineer on the VIP team at Automattic/WordPress.com. In his spare time, he’s a cyclist, devotee of a certain rave-green-colored soccer team located here in Seattle, and amateur cook.
Merrill Mayer
Merrill Mayer is the owner and web developer at Kool Kat Web Designs. She works with designers to create custom solutions for small to medium sized business and non-profits. Merrill began her career studying for a master’s degree in French at the University of Michigan. There she worked on computerizing French demographic data and got hooked on technology.
Michael Nelson
Michael’s experience with software began with university assignments; then work on closed-source Java, Python and PHP; and now consists mainly of open-source work for Event Espresso developing WordPress plugins and contributing to WordPress core.
He enjoys family time (with his wife Amanda, and 4 and 1-year old girls), family history technology, and pizza.
He lives in Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia Canada
Michelle Schulp
Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.
She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”
Morten Rand-Hendriksen
Morten is a senior staff instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com with 60+ courses published on WordPress, web standards, design and UX, and future technologies. He also teaches Interaction Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and contributes to WordPress core and community projects.
When he’s not working you’ll find Morten playing with his son, reading philosophy and science fiction, talking to people about the internet and how it shapes our society, and wearing out his shoes on the ballroom dance floor.
Nathan Allotey
Nathan is a web designer and digital marketing strategist based in Houston, TX. He first started working with WordPress in 2009 after taking a position at one of the leading web hosting companies. Since that time he founded inPhocus Media, a web design studio that uses WordPress as a part of their digital marketing strategy.
He is the author of Freelance Jumpstart, a clear step by step roadmap to the business of freelancing for creative entrepreneurs. You can find Nathan teaching on business and digital marketing on his weekly podcast at nathanallotey.com.
Patrick Jackson
Patrick is the owner of Golden Path Solutions, a WordPress development business where he works with teams to create awesome themes and plugins, improve websites, and solve problems.
After graduating with his masters in Computer Science, he headed the IT department for a business specializing in geospatial technology for agriculture. He later transitioned to a project management position at a major agrochemical retailer where he earned his Project Management Professional certification.
At the start of 2013, Patrick relocated to the Pacific Northwest and founded Golden Path Solutions where he continues to pursue his passion: improving people’s lives by making super cool software for the web.
Raven Gildea
Raven Gildea began his design career back in the days of X-Acto knives and light tables. Then the Internet came along, and to his great surprise he fell in love with code. These days Raven splits his time between teaching college web design courses and building custom WordPress sites for small businesses and non-profits.
Saied Abbasi
Saied is web developer based in Los Angeles. In 2012, he founded WpHelp.Co, a web agency offering intelligently constructed WordPress sites.
Tutoring has been an intimate part of his career since the beginning. From 2014-2017, he led and created workshops at DCTV covering HTML/CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and WordPress.
Currently, he works with Ben Freda Consulting — a NYC-based firm specializing in WordPress and Drupal.
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 4 (soon to be 5) kids.
Teri Shelton
Teri Shelton is a Seattle-area WordPress developer and small business owner. She has been a WordPress developer for 8+ years and a business owner for 10. She is co-owner of River Dog Marketing, a full-service WordPress web design, marketing, and advertising firm. Teri co-organizes the Seattle WordPress Freelancers Meetup and volunteers with WordCamp. Besides WordPress, Teri loves hockey and football, cats, and traveling with her husband.
WordCamp is always fun and we’ve tried really hard this year to make it especially unique and engaging.
Tickets are on sale now.
photo credit: Pezibear