Rose Fields –

As a kid, my dad called me the chief cook and bottle washer because I was the one in charge of the kitchen. Being in charge of website development, social media and support is a whole lot better than being in charge of the kitchen!

Social Web Dzine is the realization of my dream to be a work at home, single mom. I’ve spent the past 9 years refining my business goals and raising four children. Today I focus on creating customized websites for local business and non-profit organizations. When I’m not at my desk, you’ll find me vegging out to an NCIS marathon with my kids!

Rose will be presenting a session titled “Save Your Site – Stop Hackers at The Door” for Foundation Friday.  

Interview with Rose:

Why do you use WordPress?
It’s a beautiful, flexible way of creating websites that my customers love.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
I love the whole atmosphere of WordCamp. I’ve attended three WordCamps and have learned a lot of great information. But the networking and sharing information with other developers and attendees was just as important as the sessions.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Backup your website… regularly! I use BackupBuddy and it’s an important aspect of my business.

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
Twitter – I follow a lot of people and they all seem to have a variety of sources for information.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Webdesign.com is a great resource for any new WordPress developers just starting out. Professor Benjamin shares a lot of knowledge on a weekly basis and has helped me grow my business a lot.

Jeremy Felt –

As Director of Web Engineering at 10up, Jeremy works every day with an amazingly talented team to create, deploy, and sustain some of the biggest WordPress sites on the web. He has been creating things on the Internet for well over 15 years and has constantly strove for better ways to publish and maintain user generated content. A native to the Chicagoland area, Jeremy now lives on the west coast in sunny Portland.

He will be presenting “Hi WordPress, Meet Vagrant” on Sunday.

Interview with Jeremy:

Why do you use WordPress?
I really buy into the principle that content creators should own their data. From my perspective, WordPress is the most approachable, extendable, and reliable way to accomplish this. On top of that, the community around WordPress is second to none. It really is a great example of what many people can do with open source software.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
Coming out from behind the Twitter handles and Web URLs to meet members of the community face to face.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Look for a WordPress meetup and get involved with the local community. Having people to talk to about WordPress will advance the learning curve quickly.

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
I keep an eye on #wordpress-dev throughout the day and try not to miss any big blocks of time. When I see a ticket that interests me, I’ll bookmark it to check back in later. Our #team10up room will often fill in the blanks with anything WordPress related if it was exciting. And of course the WordPress crowd on Twitter does a great job of spreading the word.

Share an example of a really great (creative, cool, unusual) use of WordPress you’ve seen recently.
I’m a bit biased as we build creative, cool, and unusual uses of WordPress every day at 10up. Global News (http://globalnews.ca/) is one of the more recent 10up projects that really blew me away. The management of regionalized content and the various tools in place to break news are amazing behind the scenes. I’m also a big fan of Quartz (http://qz.com). A lot of interesting things were done with the interface and the mobile experience keeps me coming back more often than usual to look for new content.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Be involved with the community. If you’re siloed off by yourself, you’ll miss an extremely important perspective when building things with WordPress.

Cliff Seal –

I’m a UX Designer at Pardot, but I’ve been in WordPress every working day for at least the last four years. Personally, I’ve been designing and developing WordPress sites for years as Logos Creative, and have been working on awesome projects like MusicGrid.me. I live in Atlanta with my wife, April, where we do young urbanite-y things.

Cliff will be presenting a session titled “No one cares about your content (yet)” on Saturday.

Interview with Cliff:

Why do you use WordPress?
WordPress has the best combination of performance, extensibility, community, and intuitive design.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
I enjoy shaking the hands of people I’d previously only known through a computer screen.

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Start doing things you know you can’t do— eventually, you’ll be able to do them.

What is a common problem you see in WordPress sites, and how would you avoid it?
The biggest issue I see is, as a WordPress ‘expert’, showing users and first-time developers the possibilities of the platform while understanding that constraints and best practices are always needed.

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
WPDaily.co. I do write for ’em, but I get my news from there, too, for the most part. The rest comes from following core contributors on Twitter.

Share an example of a really great (creative, cool, unusual) use of WordPress you’ve seen recently.
Paul Clark’s presentation from WordCamp Phoenix this year stuck with me for sure:
How WordPress Saves Lives – Freedom, Hope and Custom Post Types.

On a far less important note, I’ve been doing some crazy stuff with WordPress for MusicGrid.me.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Always challenge your own knowledge and skills— there’s something new you can find out about WordPress every single day.

Brad Griffith –

Brad is a PHP developer for Delta Systems. Delta specializes in developing custom themes and plugins to expand the capabilities of WordPress for large projects. We’re currently working on an open source project called Dewdrop  that makes it easy to use Zend Framework components for WordPress plugin development.

Brad will be speaking on ECommerce Functionality on Friday and Writing high-quality WordPress plugins on Saturday.

Interview with Brad: Continue reading →

Suzette Franck –

Suzette Franck is the WordPress Evangelist at (mt) Media Temple, where she educates and advocates for WordPress and the WordPress Community. She typically attends 2-3 WordPress Meetups a week, and has spoken/is speaking at 6 WordCamps so far his year: Phoenix, San Diego, Miami, Reno, Orange County, and Seattle. She blogs frequently at suzettefranck.com about WordPress and is a regular contributor on WPWatercooler.com.

She enjoys teaching about the wonders of WordPress and finding better ways to do things with it. She loves learning about web development and digging into code, which she has been doing for over 18 years. She discovered WordPress 5 years ago and has used it to create over 200 websites with a variety of designs and requirements, mostly with hand-coded custom themes, and is showing no signs of stopping.

She will be leading two introductory sessions in the 101 track on Foundation Friday, “Domains & Hosting” and “Resources For Reaching Your WordPress Potential.”

Interview with Suzette: Continue reading →

Drew Poland –

Drew is a WordPresss developer and entrepreneur from Baltimore, Maryland. Co-Founder of WP Maintainer and ZenFreelancing.com.

Interview with Drew:

Why do you use WordPress?
Beyond the obvious (quality of code, community, support, open source), it’s user friendly for my clients and infinitely extendable.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
My favorite part of WordCamps, is the interaction and meeting new people from all over.

Mika Epstein – 

Mika Ariela Epstein is better known as Ipstenu, the Half-Elf Support Rogue. Working for DreamHost, she solves any WordPress problem that comes up, and still finds time to slash unasnwered WordPress.org forum threads by night and wrangle plugins by day. A self-taught guru on Multisite and .htaccess, she has a passion for writing and technology and blogs about them on her own site, as well as for DreamHost.

Mika’s session on Sunday was titled Why Your Website Isn’t ‘Set it and Forget it’.

You can view her slides online here: https://speakerdeck.com/ipstenu/why-wordpress-is-not-set-it-and-forget-it

Interview with Mika:

Why do you use WordPress?
I use WordPress because I enjoy using it to manage my sites. I keep using it because it rocks.

What do you like best about WordCamps?
The social aspect. Meeting people to talk about WordPress teaches me almost as much as debugging!

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Just breath! Everything is scary when you look at it all for the first time. Take it all one bite and a time, and you’ll eat the elephant just fine.

What is a common problem you see in WordPress sites, and how would you avoid it?
Too many sites try to do everything they can just because they can. Limit yourself. Start reasonable and build up!

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
I get emails for every trac comment and commit, as well as follow all the make/wordpress sites, and a ton of other WordPress sites.

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Don’t be afraid to fire your customers!

Tobias Bäthge –

Tobias Bäthge is a PhD student in the field of “Control Theory and Engineering Cybernetics” from Magdeburg, Germany. He has been working with WordPress since 2006 and is the developer of two popular WordPress plugins. When he’s not on the computer, coding or supporting his plugins, he’s probably somewhere out on the baseball field, practicing with his team.

Tobias spoke on Saturday morning about his “Tales of a Plugin Developer, or Don’t repeat my mistakes, please!”

Here are his slides:

Interview with Tobias: Continue reading →