Category Archives: Interview

Interview with Joshua Alexander

Interview, Speakers

Joshua Alexander – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Google+ dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Joshua will be presenting Plugins and Dashboard on Friday in the Foundation Friday 101 track.

I own a small development company in the SW Burbs of Chicago that caters to other agencies. We do custom WP work such as theme development, plugins, and modifications for other tech companies.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
WordPress is flexible and the open source nature and the community make it all worth while. The people you meet in this community are awesome and that really does help in the development and growth that WordPress sees.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
Its a great group of people to network with. For the techie crowd its great to have others that understand our language. For the non-techies its a great way to realize the technology that is available and a place to pickup techie people for your organization.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
I’m doing more web based application development now so that has been an interesting development for me at least.

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Come out to the WordCamp you can talk to those that are already running businesses in the industry. You’ll find that the community is very friendly and helpful to making sure you can get going the right way and can provide help if needed.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
I’d have to say github because of the broad code you can get and use there. Although I’ll throw a plugin for Desktop Server from ServerPress as well for local development environments.

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
Non WordPress related I’m an advocate for Autism Awareness I personally have PDD-NOS which is a form of Autism and try to break the stereotypes of what people see on television about us.

Interview with Tracy Apps

Interview, Speakers

Tracy Apps – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Google+ dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Flickr dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Tracy will be presenting how to not design like a developer on Saturday
in the Design track

Tracy, aka tapps, has been working with WordPress since before it was WordPress… and yes, apps is really her last name (because I know you were wondering).

Her formal training is in traditional art and print design, however she first started teaching her self web development in 1996 (back in the heyday of tiled background graphics and animated GIFs).

Tracy now owns Tracy Apps Design, a web creative company specializing in custom WordPress solutions for clients of all sizes.

When Tracy isn’t working on making the web a more beautiful place, you might find her playing drums/percussion with various musicians around Milwaukee, or lifting heavy things in CrossFit.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
Because WordPress is my bitch, of course.

But no, seriously… no other CMS i have worked with is as 1) pretty 2) functional and 3) easy to understand.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
WordCamp is where cool people meet and talk about cool things. Don’t you want to be cool like all us?

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
Oh I have so many, but probably one of my more recent sites, http://crossfit100.com/ would be among my favorites, just because i got to really push a lot of bounds from your traditional WordPress template. I also did the photography, so it was fun to have a greater control on the creative of the site, since the site is very photo driven.

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Don’t ever stop learning. Technologies change at a rapid rate, so being able to provide clients with the most efficient and cutting edge solution requires putting in the leg-work to be successful. Plus, it can really save a lot of extra work and headache in the future if you can provide the most clean and streamlined solution the FIRST time! (plus have happier clients)

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
the google

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I can deadlift 265lbs.

Interview with Troy Dean

Interview, Speakers

Troy Dean – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Google+ dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Troy will be presenting 101 Ways to Elevate Yourself and Demand Higher Fees on Saturday in the Business/Project Management track

Troy Dean is a WordPress speaker, consultant and coach and is co-founder of Video User Manuals and WP Elevation. Buy him a beer and pick his brain about building a business on WordPress.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
I use WordPress because it is supported by the most amazing community – and it’s damn sexy.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
It’s like walking into a room full of warm bubbles, candy and big hugs. There’s nothing better than being surrounded by like minded people who all want to help each other.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
We built the website for Studio Alto, using Advanced Custom Fields to allow the client to build up their own page templates using various content modules. And she won an award…

http://www.studioalto.com/
http://www.awwwards.com/web-design-awards/studio-alto

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Work out who you serve the best and then serve them better than anyone else. Build an audience and become so helpful that they throw money at you for your help.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
The WP Elevation Podcast 🙂
http://www.wpelevation.com/category/podcast/

or…

WP Think Tank 🙂
http://wpthinktank.com/

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I am a professional voice over artist and sang the Cadbury jingle “Wouldn’t it be nice if the world was Cadbury”

Interview with Josh Leuze

Interview, Speakers

Josh Leuze – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Google+ dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Josh will be presenting Building Your First Widget on Saturday in the Development track

Josh Leuze is a WordPress developer from Minnesota who loves making themes. He is the author of the popular Meteor Slides plugin.

When not building themes and plugins in his basement, Josh can be found doodling with his kids at the kitchen table, digging in the garden, or pedaling his bike around town.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
Because of the great community that WordPress has, and the low barrier to entry. The best part about WordPress is that anyone can come in with any level of knowledge, learn as much or as little as they want to, and be able to publish their ideas to the world.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
I would tell them that WordCamps are open to everyone and that they will get something out of it; whether their goal is to meet some cool new people, start a blog, be motivated to blog more, or build their first theme or plugin.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
Most of the sites that I work on are nebulous, intangible things that only exist online or for a faraway brick and mortar locations that I’ll never really set foot in.

So it was fun to work on a site with 9seeds for Downtown Container Park, a crazy industrial sculpture / shopping center in Las Vegas, and then actually visit the location during WordCamp Vegas last year. It was surreal to walk though the park and feel the heat off the flame-throwing praying mantis, rather than just experiencing it as a slideshow on my screen!

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Specialize. Figure out what your strengths are, what you like to do best, and focus on that. Seek out other people who can compliment your skills with their own specializations in other areas.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
Whenever I want to learn how to do something new with WordPress, the first place I go is WordPress.tv. I love being able to take a mini-WordCamp lunch break and watch a good video from someone who knows what they’re talking about!

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I’m the webmaster for StarShipSofa, a Hugo award winning podcast that plays lots of awesome science fiction stories.

Interview with Ian Wilson

Interview, Speakers

Ian Wilson – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Ian will be presenting Understanding WordPress Filters and Actions on Friday in the Foundation Friday 301 track

In past lives Ian has been a lead developer, lead designer, and Huffington Post guest blogger (among other things). Currently he runs design & code agency build/create alongside business partner Eric Lynch.

As a self taught developer, Ian started using WordPress in 2007, and immediately started looking for ways to better exploit its then more blog-oriented functionality for content management. Since then he has built a business around providing clients with WordPress powered sites that meld design and code into a seamless, intuitive, user experience.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
I use WordPress because it makes for a better experience for my users, period. I love the community, and I love developing for it, but at the end of the day it’s about providing the best and easiest to use product for my clients, and WordPress allows me to do that.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
Inspiration is a necessary part of life, and for me there’s little more inspiring than getting together with folks that share the same interests and problems and seeing how they tackle the same work you do. It opens up whole new ways of looking at your work.

Those little breakthroughs are what make WordCamp such a great investment in your professional skills, and loads of fun to boot!

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
We’ve been working on running more of our business on WordPress, and to that end I’ve been developing a CRM plugin. Basically just taking our sales process and turning into something that runs entirely on WordPress- from contact entry, to generating proposals, to reporting on close rates. If it turns out good we’ll probably release it as a premium plugin on our forthcoming plugin/theme shop.

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Network, network, network. The WordPress community is amazing, leverage that to your advantage and you’re off to a great start. Focus on making sites that your clients aren’t afraid to use- they’ll be less likely to get broken over simple updates. Then either they can update their own site, which they’ll love you for, or you’ll at least make it easier on yourself to do the maintenance work.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
The WordPress Codex! I swear I still use it all the time as a reference, few documentation repositories are as up to date and useful.

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I’ve been getting into making curry lately and it has been a complete revelation. I try to eat low carb a lot of the time, which sometimes means eating a lot of the same types of food over and over again. Curry has changed all that, so at least on a personal level, I think it’s pretty awesome.

Interview with Gregory Cornelius

Interview, Speakers

Gregory Cornelius – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Flickr dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Gregory will be presenting Taking Your JavaScript Further on Saturday in the Advanced Development track

Gregory Cornelius is a code wrangler at Automattic and WordPress core contributor. Prior to moving to Boston, Massachusetts, Gregory spent ten years pursuing music degrees at schools in Missouri, Ohio, and Texas.

Along the way, he discovered that helping folks share their ideas on the web with WordPress was invigorating and has been doing so professionally since 2008.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
I love how awesome the WordPress community is, how easy it is for users to edit content, and how it can scale from personal blogs to large complicated enterprise installations.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
WordCamps are inexpensive and are great chance to meet people in your area doing awesome things with WordPress.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
Having the opportunity to work on some of the main new features in WordPress 3.9 was

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Never stop learning and listening to users. Users will always give you clues and insights that you can use to make their lives better and solve their problems.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
The source code.

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I wrote a pretty neat piece of music Earth and Green inspired by Mark Rothko’s painting of the same name in 2006. And, then in 2009, I got married in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.

Interview with Mike Hale

Interview, Speakers

Mike Hale – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Google+ dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Mike will be presenting Content Calendars for WordPress: Tips & Tools on Sunday in the General Interest track

Mike has over 15 years of experience building custom websites and applications for everything from solo entrepreneurs and startups to Fortune 100 companies.

He started working with WordPress in 2010 and specializes in customizing themes, building custom plugins and migrating existing sites to WordPress. Once built, Mike helps his clients market their sites by providing content marketing, SEO and social media management services.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
I started using WordPress so that I didn’t have to build basic CMS functions for every website I built. I also like the availability of plugins to do most tasks. The amount of information shared by other developers also makes it easy to learn how to extend WordPress when you need additional functionality.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
The sessions are very informative, and given by speakers that actually work in WordPress every day. The chance to meet and network with other WordPress enthusiasts, users, designers and developers all willing to share their thoughts and help each other is unlike anything else! And, of course, the after parties!

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
I recently published by first plugin to the WordPress Plugin. “Genesis Footer Links Nofollow” is a simple little plugin that marks links in the site footer as “nofollow” for Genesis Framework sites.

I know this isn’t something amazing, but after building a lot of client-specific plugins it was important for me to write something that could be used by anyone and learn more about the plugin creation & publishing process.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/genesis-footer-links-nofollow/

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
If you’re a designer, learn a bit more about development, and vice versa. Understanding how the code and design work together will help your clients in the long run. Also, try to pick a niche market to serve.

It’s hard to say no to projects in the beginning, but don’t short-change the value of your services too much. Building a portfolio is important, but you also have to pay the bills!

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
The Developer community, and the willingness of people to share information about how to do many different things with WordPress. There’s so many Podcasts, blogs and forums dedicated to WordPress it’s hard to pick any in particular.

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
One of my hobbies is puppetry. I’ve made puppet parody videos that have gathered over 1.75 million views on YouTube. I’m toying with the idea of having a puppet-based web series depicting the life of a WordPress developer!

Interview with John James Jacoby

Interview, Speakers

John James Jacoby – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

John James will be presenting Multisite and Multi-network on Sunday in the Advanced Development track

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
The community is so great

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
If I were a zombie, the community would still accept me.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
BuddyPress 2.0

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Ship a v1 of your idea early, iterate constantly, and don’t be ashamed to humble-brag every once in a while.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
Core Trac

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
Not a zombie

Interview with Becky Davis

Interview, Speakers

Becky Davis – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com facebook dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com Google+ dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Becky will be presenting Project Management or How to Herd Cats on Sunday in the Business/Project Management track

Becky is a solopreneur web designer/developer who specializes in custom themes. She fell in love with WordPress in 2009 and has never looked back. She is a big advocate for training and empowering site owners and to that end speaks regularly on WordPress and web design at SCORE Chicago and runs the Northside Chicago WordPress meetup.

Her kids are both out of the house at this point, but she still takes care of the kitties and her landlord’s garden. She is grateful that winter is over and she can once again ride her bike to the grocery store and to meet friends at the bar.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
At this point I know it so well, that’s there’s very little that I can’t do with it. I also like giving my clients as much control as possible.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
Best, most affordable, most approachable tech conference around. You always learn something, meet interesting people and leave with your brain buzzing.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
lafeber.com
This is actually a collection of several sites under one corporate umbrella. We got the consumer (pet birds) side with a shopping cart and custom post types done last year. The larger membership restricted informational Vet site is getting re-done this year.

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Never discount a job and not charge what you’re worth, never stop learning and remember to give back. Doing presentations at meetups and Camps is a great way to learn more yourself and what makes the whole WP community so cool.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
Google & twitter – seriously, so many good sources, never know where I’m going to find the answer I’m looking for.

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I make some of the best cookies on the planet and over the holidays I’ve been known to go through over 5 pounds of butter. My secret? My great grandmother’s copy of Betty Crocker to start.

Interview with Travis Totz

Interview, Speakers

Travis Totz – twitter dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com LinkedIn dark blue jeans social media icons designed by icons.mysitemyway.com

Travis will be presenting Designing for Interaction on Saturday in the Design track

Partner and co-owner at Westwerk/WerkPress, Travis has been driven to build and create wonderful projects on-top of WordPress since version 1.5.

In-between working on client work and traveling the country, Travis helps organize and build-up the local, Minneapolis WordPress community through advanced user meet-ups and engagements.

Travis enjoys spending his time solving web design challenges – through design, interaction, and user experience.

Travis’ passions outside of WordPress are reading non-fiction, making music, traveling, and living a vegetarian/healthy lifestyle.

Interview:

Why do you use WordPress?
The ease of client-use. The community and amazing, passionate people that are a part of it.

What would you say to convince someone to attend a WordCamp?
There is a nearly endless amount of knowledge and connections that one can gain from simply attending a WordCamp. Engage and benefit.

What is your favorite WordPress project you have worked on recently?
The re-design and build of our own websites; Westwerk and WerkPress. It’s always fun (and excruciating) working on your own brand(s).

Do you have any advice for someone looking to start or grow a WordPress based business?
Make connections and be open to change, opportunity, and growth. Create a business plan and be smart about all of the decisions that you make. Be okay with saying “No”.

What is your favorite WordPress-related resource?
Following the best-of-the-best on Twitter. WP Tavern, and of course attending WordCamps 🙂

Tell us something awesome about yourself that is not WordPress related
I love to spend time digging into nerdy historical or science-based non-fiction books.