Author Archives: Emily Barney

Sunday Architecture Walk (at Lunch Break)

View a custom Google map of the buildings on our tour here:
http://goo.gl/maps/LzEsQ

We’ll be meeting downstairs in the lobby area at 12:45

A few glimpses of the buildings on our tour:

From Clare Parkinson:

My architectural history professor, Richard Betts, used to say that in terms of architectural influence, Chicago is the third great city in the world, after Athens and Paris. Chicago is where modern architecture – steel-frame construction, the skyscraper – was born at the turn of the 20th century. There are still a few lovely buildings from this time, and some nice examples of the architecture of later times as well. Continue reading →

Foundation Friday – WordCamp Chicago 2013

Foundation Friday was divided into 4 tracks by experience level. We sold out very early, but to make sure those of you that attended and those of you who didn’t have the opportunity can review, we wanted to post the links to sessions with pictures and twitter reactions here:

2 million Blackhawks fans can’t even slow it down. pic.twitter.com/RpIPPVlNmP

Jessica Yaeger @sincerely_jess_
I have never been around so many people in one location willing to help each other and share what they know. Kindness swoon! #wcchi

Ed @edpastelak
Learning good stuff at #wcchi already and we’re barely a few sessions into the weekend! Does not disappoint for my very first WordCamp! Continue reading →

Meet our 2013 Organizers!

We’re so excited that WordCamp is almost here! If you have questions about WordCamp while you’re attending, we’ll make sure there’s always someone at the registration desk, but do feel free to ask any of us as well!

Aaron Holbrook – Lead Organizer
Michelle Schulp – Co-Organizer, Head Minion, Graphic Monkey, Location Scout, Print Lackey
Heather Acton – Co-Organizer, Lead Advisor
Sylvia Lima – Volunteer Coordinator
Kari Sharp – Foundation Friday Organizer
Christopher Schulp – Location Manager
Dustin Filippini – Advisor
Emily Barney – Social Media, Speaker Interviewer & Photography
Ryan Erwin – T-Shirt Wrangler
Andy Nathan – Speaker Committee, Runner
Joshua Alexander – Speaker Committee, Runner
Ana Kelly & Rick McGrath – Speaker Reception & After Party Organizers
Brian Heitz – Sponsor Liaison
Clare Parkinson – Eatery and Restaurant Liaison

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WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Chris Ford

Chris is the creative director of Creativity Included, a one-woman studio where she uses both sides of her brain to help clients develop design strategies and systems that provide measurable results. She believes that you should treat content as a user interface element, copywriting is as important as design, you should use agile design practices to spend more time designing and less time doing production work, and typography and white space are 90% of a successful design solution. The only thing she takes seriously is design.

She will be presenting a session titled “What’s So Great About Agile Design?” on Saturday, June 29.

Interview with Chris: Continue reading →

WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Kiko Doran

Kiko Doran –

Kiko’s curious mind has driven him to learn as much as he can across a vast array of platforms. He has studied music, graphic design, photography, and holds his MBA.

Following his inquisitive nature as well as the strategic thinking honed during his 11 years in the US Air Force, Kiko founded InGroup Consulting. Over the 4 years in business, Kiko and IGC have found WordPress to be the best platform to showcase their capabilities.

When not traveling between satellite offices in NJ, Los Angeles, and the Twin Cities; he sits on the Information Technology Advisory Board at Century College. Kiko also organizes a WordCamp and a WordPress Meetup in the Twin Cities.

Kiko will be speaking on the WordPress Business Owners Panel on Sunday.

Interview with Kiko: Continue reading →

WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Andy Stratton

Andy Stratton –

Andy is a freelance WordPress developer, founding principal of WordPress agency Sizeable Interactive, and founder of WordPress maintenance and support service WP Maintainer.

When he’s not busy perfecting websites, Andy is often found exercising his dog, learning about fitness and training at the gym and enjoying animals, art, film, music and philosophy. He fancies peanut butter and jelly more than he should.

Interview with Andy:

Why do you use WordPress?

Its community. WordPress the most user, designer and developer-friendly piece of open source content management software I’ve ever worked with

What do you like best about WordCamps?
Learning. Speaking is great, but I love learning something new and useful; I especially love it if someone improves my process or thoughts with comments during my own sessions!

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Use the Codes and make friends at Meetups and WordCamps!

What is a common problem you see in WordPress sites, and how would you avoid it?
Feature bloat in themes leading to slow load times, confusing custom admin interfaces, etc. Don’t use them, support GPL-compliant themes that are built for singular purposes and save a site: Hire a Developer!

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
http://make.wordpress.org and email subscriptions. Niche blogs, Twitter and friends.

Share an example of a really great (creative, cool, unusual) use of WordPress you’ve seen recently.
My team at Sizeable recently build a job search aggregator using the LinkedIn API on WordPress for the AARP WorkReimagined partnership. This was pretty cool and we had a hand in building the site!

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Become an expert in WordPress and specialize. Design, development, power user, etc. Don’t try to do everything for everyone and refrain from building franken-plugin sites!

WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Becky Davis

Becky Davis –

Becky is a solopreneur WordPress theme designer/developer who works out of her house in Lincoln Square. She is very active in the local WordPress community and hosts the Northside WordPress meetup.

She will be presenting a session title From pixel to user – creating themes that satisfy the design and are usable on Saturday

Interview with Becky:

Why do you use WordPress?
Because all of my clients said they wanted to edit their own sites. It’s a great framework that as a developer allows me almost unlimited flexibility.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
The community is what makes WordPress great and WordCamps are a big part of that. I always come away with new friends and at least one “ah ha” that makes the whole weekend worth it.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Going to meetups and learning from others is what saved my life in the beginning. Never stop researching, there probably is a way to do it.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Stick with it, don’t be afraid to ask questions; that’s what the community is for and don’t forget to track your time! (How else will you know what to charge?)

WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Matthew Boynes

Matthew Boynes –

Matthew Boynes is a lead developer at Alley Interactive. The only thing Matt loves more than developing on WordPress is helping others develop and solve complex problems using WordPress. When he’s not coding, you’ll often find Matt engaged in some outdoor activity like hiking or skiing.

Matthew will be speaking on Object-Oriented Custom Post Types, Taxonomies, and Post Meta during Foundation Friday.

Why do you use WordPress?
I use a hammer for nails, a screwdriver for screws, and WordPress for content-oriented websites. Most projects that I work on revolve around content, and WordPress is the best tool for that job. WordPress allows me to create a wonderful environment for my clients to create and manage their content. It’s simple, friendly, and easy-to-use, even for those unfamiliar with writing for the web. If I’m building a web application like a to-do list, I’m probably going to use something different. But 99% of the time, I’m building a website for content.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
Sharing ideas and helping others. It’s wonderful seeing how others are solving problems using WordPress.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
WordPress Answers (the WordPress StackExchange site).

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
I browse the WordPress Subreddit and WordPress Answers daily. Any new information about WordPress pops up in one or the other quickly. Also, newsletters like wpMail.me.

Share an example of a really great (creative, cool, unusual) use of WordPress you’ve seen recently.
I promise I’m not really as arrogant as this makes me seem. My company, Alley Interactive, just redesigned kff.org on WordPress and it is the most fascinating use of WordPress I’ve seen. First off, it has one of the best WordPress search experiences in existence: http://kff.org/search/. We also developed a few new plugins for the site, the best of which is Field Manager. Field Manager allows you to create complex editing environments that go well beyond what every other plugin allows.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?

If you’re not using WordPress Multisite in your development or hosting, you’re wasting time and energy.
The coding standards are important! Adhere to them religiously. http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Coding_Standards
Give back. There are countless ways to do so: contribute to core, help enhance the codex, answer questions in the forums or on WordPress Answers.

WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Monte Martin

Monte Martin –

As digital marketing consultant I spend most of my time glued to my laptop, but when I get a free minute I usually spend it on my bike. I love cyclocross, mountain biking, my wife, and my jack russell, (not necessarily in that order).

He will be presenting a session titled “Optimizing your site for (business) performance” on Saturday.

Interview with Monte:

Why do you use WordPress?
It both easy to use and extensible. You can start with a small site and WordPress will easily grow with you.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
The variety of attendees. It attracts all types of nerds, from the creative recluse to mathematical geniuses, and average business users still feel right at home in the mix.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Be very careful when selecting the peripherals that support your site, ESPECIALLY your theme. There are lot of really great themes out their. There are just as many, if not more, that I wouldn’t wish on my direct competitor. Look for something that is lightweight and add functionality via plugins. Don’t look for a theme that does everything you want and more.

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
Code Poet Newsletters and Twitter. I don’t do enough development these days to actively stay on top of all the latest stuff.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Make sure your clients can measure the success of what you do for them, and measure what matters to them. If you don’t know how, don’t miss my talk!

WordCamp Chicago 2013 Speaker Interview: Brian Richards

Brian Richards –

Brian is a developer with WebDevStudios, creator of the StartBox Theme Framework, and is currently pioneering WPSessions.com.

He will be presenting as part of the Commercial Themes & Plugins Panel on 6/29/2013.

Interview with Brian:

Why do you use WordPress?
WordPress is the most attractive CMS to me because it has the largest and most flourishing community, in my experience anyway. I really enjoy using it to build seemingly complex systems (think application famework) that magically become quite simple thanks to all of WP’s robust APIs.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
WordCamps are my favorite event of the year, bar none. I truly enjoy meeting and interacting with the people whom I typically only converse with online. Bonus: learning great techniques from my peers.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Immerse yourself in our supportive community. Find a few people who seem to know more than you and ask them where they learned what they know. Connect with a local meetup group, scour WordPress.tv, follow other WP users and devs on Twitter, and grab a well-liked WordPress book.

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
All of my WP news comes through my highly curated list of people I follow on Twitter. If you want a shorcut to great content, just follow most of these people: https://twitter.com/rzen/following

Share an example of a really great (creative, cool, unusual) use of WordPress you’ve seen recently.
The projects I’ve been working on with WDS have really blown my hair back as to what is possible with WordPress. Two of my favorites are Web Apps for YMCA in New York called Y-MVP and a similar solution for the Dallas Museum of Art called DMA Friends. Both of these are powered by a WP Plugin we helped write and release for Cred.ly called BadgeOS.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Connect with as many local developers as you can, and follow as many WP developers on twitter as you can stand. I’m constantly turning down work and see so many people looking for help. Also, read Jarrod Pyper’s interview for more great advice!