We’ve got three fabulous panel sessions lined up for your viewing pleasure at WordCamp Seattle this year. We’re bringing together some experts and some big names to lend their perspective to in-depth discussions about pressing issues in WordPress today.
Women in WordPress
A frank and honest discussion with women with different experience levels and involved in different aspects of WordPress – ranging from development to designer to marketer.
Bridget Willard
Bridget Willard started her career with office work, earned a teaching degree, but returned to the office where she carved out a career in social media and marketing and ended up at a WordPress Plugin Development Shop.
Currently, she is the Marketing Manager for WordImpress whose flagship plugin is GiveWP.com — an online donation plugin, co-host of WPblab, and co-organizer of Women Who WP Meetup.
She blogs about social media and, of course, WordPress on her site at bridgetwillard.com
Francesca Marano
WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround, author, educator. Francesca makes WordPress things happen from Torino, Italy: Community team representative, Meetup and WordCamp organizer.
She founded C+B, a blog with an editorial staff of more than sixty authors offering daily advice for Italian female creative entrepreneurs.
Francesca is a passionate speaker and you can find her in Italy and around the world talking about WordPress, community, open source, women in tech, small businesses.
Miriam Goldman
Miriam works for a small digital marketing agency in Canada’s national capital of Ottawa as their development lead. She has worked in a variety of different environments, and has worked with WordPress since approximately 2008-09.
Outside of her development life, she is a sensei at her local karate dojo, and is also a competitive latin ballroom dancer.
Rachel Cherry
Rachel Cherry is a Senior Software Engineer for The Walt Disney Company with over ten years experience in back and front-end web development and digital design. Before Disney, she spent over nine years working in higher education and is the Founder/Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the web, she enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage openness, collaboration, and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Pasadena, California but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.
Tessa Kriesel
Agency and Community Engineer at Pantheon, Tessa has been a web developer for over 10 years. She enjoys front-end development but also loves to build sites from start to finish. She started in Joomla, moved into WordPress shortly after and most recently has been digging into Drupal. She enjoys teaching others to code, mentoring junior developers and speaking at conferences and youth events. She is an instructor and retired Chapter Leader for Girl Develop It Minneapolis, Community Manager for Women Who Code Twin Cities, WordCamp Minneapolis Organizer and founder of Outspoken Women. Tessa is a northern Minnesota native, but now lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and three children. She loves dogs and enjoys helping local organizations rescue dogs in her free time.
Picture Perfect: Getting Beautiful Images Without Violating the Law
Hear from an image designer, a publication editor, a photographer, and an intellectual property lawyer on how to get great images without breaking the bank or violating the law. They will also offer advice on assessing your image needs, options for acquiring those images, and tips for creating your own.
Christine Winckler
Christine Winckler is an experienced web consultant who specializes in design, front-end development, and WordPress development. She enjoys supporting other professionals and partnering to bring a client’s vision to life. When working solo, she loves being the caretaker for complex websites. Christine spends her leisure time throwing tea parties and wearing funny hats.
Lisa Stewart
Lisa’s previous speaking engagements include such varied activities as speaking on a panel of small retail experts to presenting to non-profit organizations about augmenting their marketing programs. A self-proclaimed eager introvert, Lisa is currently casting her net of speaking opportunities.
Zainab Hussain
Zainab regularly advises bloggers, web designers, and other marketing professionals on intellectual property issues, particularly with respect to US copyright laws pertaining to image use and license limitations, and has negotiated licensing agreements, representing licensors and licensees in equal measure.
Managing Big WordPress Sites
An extremely engaging moderated discussion of the challenges that face large WordPress sites with 100s or 1000s of users. Learn lessons and hear advice on managing user needs and providing tools that make site management easier for everyone.
Grant Landram
Grant Landram is the Vice President of Client Strategy at 10up, passionate about web strategy, design, engineering and project management. Grant joined 10up in the summer of 2013, after running his own web development and design agency in the Seattle area, working with brands such as Nordstrom and Big Fish Games.
As a business and economics graduate, Grant found his creative outlet with the web after college and has been working at the intersection of technology and commerce ever since. Grant has been experimenting with web technologies and how they help solve real-world business problems, from building a Python-based reservation application to replacing bulky point of sales systems, to teaching himself how to develop websites and social applications.
Grant is an active member of the WordPress community, helping organize Meetups and WordCamps since 2012, as well as speaking at conferences around the country.
In his free time, Grant enjoys running marathons, cooking, and spending time outdoors with his friends, family, and pets.
Jeff Running
Jeff is a program manager at Microsoft, where he currently looks after a WordPress site that computer scientists at Microsoft Research use to tell the world about the amazing things they’re dreaming up. Prior to this, Jeff spent time at MSN.com in both editorial and engineering roles. Prior still, he spent several years managing a production and editorial team that ran Microsoft’s corporate blog and news/PR site. In all these roles, Jeff has spent an inordinate amount of time complaining about a CMS he had to use, listening to complaints about a CMS he helped build, or both. Thankfully, working with WordPress for the past year has renewed his faith that it may indeed be possible to build a publishing tool that people don’t dread using.
Rachel Cherry
Why, yes – the astonishing and multifaceted Rachel Cherry is participating in both the Women in WordPress and the Managing Big WordPress Sites panels.
Rachel Cherry is a Senior Software Engineer for The Walt Disney Company with over ten years experience in back and front-end web development and digital design. Before Disney, she spent over nine years working in higher education and is the Founder/Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the web, she enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage openness, collaboration, and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Pasadena, California but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.
Scott Berkun
Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, philosophy, culture, business and many other subjects. He’s the author of six books, including The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants.
Born and raised in Queens, NYC, he studied philosophy, computer science and design at CMU, was a manager at Microsoft (’94-’03) and WordPress.com (’10-’12), and taught creativity at the University of Washington. He’s also the MC and speaker coach for Ignite Seattle, a finalist in the Amtrak 2014 writer’s residency program, and the director of the short film We Make Seattle.
Bring your thinking caps and lots of questions to these sessions. Panels are always fun and lively and interactive!
photo credit: skeeze