Check out this rockstar lineup!!!
Robert Jacobi
Tracy Apps
Tracy (@tapps) has been designing and creating the web for over 20 years, and solving user experience challenges well before the term “UX” became the big buzz-word in technology. She currently owns and operates tracy apps design, a full service creative agency based in Milwaukee, WI. Tracy’s client list is just as eclectic as she is, ranging from large corporations like Kohl’s and GE Healthcare, to colleges like Milwaukee Area Technical College, to nonprofits, churches, small businesses… and even a fiddler. She has spoken internationally about design & UX and has taught design / web development / UX at a handful of Universities in Milwaukee. Many times her approach is non-traditional, but always focused on pushing design and user experience to higher levels. She ties her own bowties, and could probably deadlift you.
Susan Hayse
Susan is originally from Lexington, Kentucky and now lives in the Chicago area. She spent 15 years in the nonprofit world as a digital marketer. In 2017 she retired and started her own WordPress business, Milkweed Web, catering to the needs of nonprofit organizations around the country.
WordPress has been a part of her life since 2007 and she learns or relearns something about it every day. She believes the secret sauce in dealing with clients is to listen, ask questions, and listen some more.
Susan is an avid cyclist and leads a beginner’s group for her local cycling club. She loves the outdoors and recently acquired a teardrop trailer with a goal to see as many National Parks as possible.
Heather Acton
Heather Acton is our founder and technical director of Helio Interactive. Heather grew up on the mean streets of Lindenhurst, IL. Like any kid with a passion for music and minimal parental supervision she learned how to pirate massive amounts of music. Turns out that deviant behavior was perfect training for today’s digital engineers.
John Jacoby
Jeff Large
Jeff is an agency owner, teacher, and podcaster. He leads his team at Come Alive Creative in producing podcasts for businesses and brands. Favorite things include family, board games, and learning something new every day.
Ryan Erwin
Ryan is a web strategist at Orbit Media Studios. Before joining the company and becoming an Orbiteer, Ryan founded a web design, development, and digital marketing company in Chicago. His passion is learning about different digital operations and applying them to Orbit’s success. His skills are rooted in analysis, strategy, problem solving and mobilizing all parties involved around the accomplishment of the objectives.
He brings years of experience with WordPress to Orbit, ranging from speaking at and organizing WordCamps to building and marketing successful enterprise websites. Ryan is the current lead organizer for both WordCamp Chicago and the hackathon for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
Ryan and his wife Buddy are very involved in several non-profit organizations and currently serves on Young Champions Committee for the “The 30th annual Alzheimer’s Association® Chicago Rita Hayworth Gala” on May the 12th, 2018.
Patrick Elward
Patrick Elward of Chicago Web Management specializes in E-Commerce (WooCommerce, Magento and Open Cart) and has worked with Allstate, CDW, 3Com and dozens of small businesses to manage their web sites since 2006.
A Certified Internet Webmaster, Patrick is able to translate the technical into easy to understand terms for the non-tech savvy. He was a speaker at WordCamp Chicago in 2016, and also conducted workshops for ‘Ecommerce for small business’ at SCORE Chicago 2012-2017.
JD Flynn
JD Flynn is a Drupal Developer in Chicago who is active in the local Drupal community by organizing MidCamp, the Midwest Drupal Camp held annually in Chicago and organizing the Drupal Chicago Meetup Group. He is also active in OSMI (Open Sourcing Mental Illness), a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on opening the conversation on mental illness.
JD has presented on Mental Illness at multiple meetups, conferences, and camps around the country. When he’s not Drupalling, JD is playing in one of multiple community bands, racing toddlers in Mario Kart, or introducing non-Chicagoans to Malort.
Joe Howard
Joe is the Head Buff at WP Buffs, a WordPress technical partner for serious website owners and white-label agency partners. He’s thrilled to be here in The Windy City to see some old WordPress friends and meet some new ones 🙂
Kim White
I first learned to build websites to show off my growing family (remember GeoCities?). In 1999 I made it my career and later returned to school to build up my skill set. I work with graphic artist, small business and non-profits to establish their place on the web.
I love WordPress and started the Lehigh Valley Meetup in 2014. Currently, I serve as a chapter leader for GDI Lehigh Valley, and on our local WordCamp organizing team.
Michelle
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?”
Jeremy Josey
Jeremy is a full stack developer from Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada who has been developing websites for over 16 years, starting with asp classic and then progressing to PHP. He is the Corporate Web Developer with Newcap Radio, who currently has 101 broadcast licenses. Additionally, has been developing themes and plugins for WordPress for over four years. Jeremy is a single father of a beautiful girl, Ava aka “The BOSS” ….if you ask her!
Warning Jeremy’s talk will not be Guten-free!!!
Sorry I couldn’t resist…. I’m a Dad!
Dane Morgan
Dane is a freelance WordPress website developer and consultant. He works with small businesses and entrepreneurs to build websites with a focus on meeting real world business goals. Dane is actively stretching out to become a more involved member of the WordPress community. When not working with WordPress he enjoys geocaching with his wife and children, cooking, and reading.
Jessi
Jessi Gurr is the owner of Iceberg Web Design in Minnesota. Her love for website development started back in 1993, when at the age of 12 she taught herself HTML and purchased her first dot-com. After working as a freelance web designer for a few years, Jessi decided to turn her passion into a career and incorporated Iceberg. The business grew slowly until 2015, when Jessi took the leap to grow her business from having just one part-time employee to a full staff of 7 full-time developers, sales staff, and a project manager. Today, Iceberg Web Design is a leading website development firm in Minnesota.
Jessi lives in Minnesota with her husband and two young boys. She enjoys organic gardening, making candles every fall, and vegan cooking (and eating!).
Adam Warner
Adam W. Warner discovered WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since. To feed his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners.
He is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that happens to have been his job title when joining SiteLock.com. Today, he’s the Open Source Community Manager there, continuing to bring his experience and knowledge of the web, business, and security to many other communities.
Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything.
Dwayne McDaniel
Dwayne has been working in tech and open source sales since 2005.
He knew as soon as he started working with Java middleware developers he never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. Dwayne first started building in Drupal and WordPress for the San Francisco Improv teams and projects. He fell in the love the community and then found a position at Pantheon at the end of 2013.
As a Community and Agency Success Manager he has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland to MIT and Stanford.
Outside of tech he loves producing and performing improv theater, reading webcomics and singing karaoke!
Reach out at https://mcdwayne.com or on twitter @mcdwayne
Andy Nathan
Andy Nathan is the founder of Smart at the Start, a digital marketing strategy company that helps small businesses grow through bite-sized internet marketing services. He successfully helped hundreds of businesses from solopreneurs to Fortune 500 enterprises in over 90 different industries over the past eight years. Additionally, he wrote the books Start Up Gap and eMarketing Experience.
Devin Sears
After giving up on his aspirations to play in the NBA, Devin has found his place in the marketing world. As the Field Marketing Manager of Bluehost, he travels the country in quest of the perfect milkshake while working with the WordPress community to help SMBs grow a successful online presence. In his free time he can be found in the middle of a marathon(Netflix, not running), cruising on his motorcycle, swinging from a hammock somewhere in nature or playing ping-pong.
Machielle Thomas
After nearly a decade in finance, Machielle Thomas turned her love for content and social media into a more fulfilling career. Machielle has written content for small agencies and major corporations, such as Golfsmith and 11 brands for Starwood Hotels. She currently manages all things content and social for Bluehost and believes that great content starts with strategy and ends with analysis. Her life passions are wedding and portrait photography, spontaneous travel, and the oxford comma—it is not optional. A southern girl at heart, Machielle lives and learns in Austin, Tx.
Joe A. Simpson Jr.
Joe A. Simpson, Jr. is a Front-End Web Developer and Graphic Designer specializing in WordPress solutions. During days he works at a top-five transit agency, fighting the good fight to ease the commute around Los Angeles County. When their lead developer and CSS specialist both left to pursue other opportunities, Joe inherited a Headway-themed design (sans child theme) and the rest is history ten years later with a blog network consisting of dozen project-specific or transit news sites.
Faced with a life-altering event last summer, he pivoted on leveling up WordPress, leveraging his creative past, talking tech and giving back. He actively contributes the Community, founding the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup and volunteering at WordCamps.
He’s eager to borrow someone’s winter wool in Chicago — he left his full-length coat in the rearview mirror when moving from blustery Highland Park, Michigan over twenty years ago for the Gateway to the Grapevine, Castaic, California.
Dan Baran
Dan Baran is the lead developer at Sun Chemical. He is focused on developing and maintaining their websites and apps. He is also the organizer of GDG Chicago. Technical related passions include data and data visualizations while other hobbies are collecting rock concert posters and traveling.
Joshua Michaels
Joshua Michaels studied architecture and visual studies at UC Berkeley where he became interested in using a systems approach to solving design problems. While doing post-graduate research in the UC Berkeley Eye Motion lab, he was introduced to the nascent World Wide Web in early 1992. He worked on the launch of Wired Magazine’s HotWired website in 1993–94 and then moved to Chicago in the mid-1990s to pursue djing as Joshua Iz and music production via remixes and his Vizual Records label. After living in San Francisco through the first internet bubble and beyond, Joshua returned to Chicago in 2009, where he has lived and worked ever since. After working as a freelance designer and developer for several years, he founded a design and development agency called studio.bio (https://studio.bio/) in 2016 that has worked with a myriad of clients including United Way of Metro Chicago, The Ounce of Prevention Fund, CBRE, Jockey International, and many more.
Jennifer Brueske
Jennifer started with Iceberg Web Design in October 2015. She has worn many hats including high school math teacher, tutor, bookkeeper, waitress, assembler of things, and administrative assistant. During her previous employment she was asked to develop and manage the company website and rediscovered her love of code. She then decided to pursue web development as a career.
Jennifer enjoys reading, gaming (board, card and video), sewing, putting together IKEA furniture, and martial arts.
Bruce Chamoff
Bruce Chamoff has been a web developer for over 22 years and has worked on over 1,000 websites. He has been labeled “Web Design Coach” and has coached new web designers on creating the best website layouts to engage site visitors. He has worked on WordPress since 2006 building themes and plugins for Fortune 500 companies. His 11 Udemy courses have taught WordPress development to web designers in over 150 countries as he loves to teach!
Jay Hoppie
Jay Hoppie is the founder of Alpha Particle, a digital product consultancy that assists organizations in the planning of web based products and business process design. With years of experience in digital product development, supplemented by his time in manufacturing and banking, Jay had has spent time scoping projects on as both a project manager and as a client of digital agencies.
Mike Hale
Mike Hale is the Founder of Stompgear, a digital marketing and website development agency, a freelance WordPress developer, and co-organizer of the WordPress Naperville Meetup. He has helped clients grow their businesses using software for almost 20 years and started working with WordPress in 2010 building custom plugins and sites built on the Genesis Framework.
Keanan Koppenhaver
Keanan Koppenhaver is CTO at Alpha Particle, a digital consultancy that helps plan and execute digital projects that serve anywhere from a few users a month to a few hundred thousand. He believes that more technology isn’t always the answer, but when it is, it’s important to get it right.
Chris Wagoner
Chris has been building WordPress sites for over 10 years. From simple info sites to complicated business automation, he has a strong understanding of the inner workings of WordPress and how it can take your business to new level. In his spare time he enjoys excessive amounts of coffee, building more websites, and learning about WordPress.
Nick Goodrum
Nick Goodrum, Director of Front End Development, has been working inside the front end world of web development for over 8 years. During his time at Americaneagle.com, his efforts to improve code approaches and best practices paved the way to being a passionate accessibility evangelist as well.
Jim Birch
Jim Birch is a Strategist at Xeno Media, Inc who specializes in planning and developing digital projects for some of the world’s best clients. He is a seasoned writer and technology speaker, the organizer of the Drupal Chicago Meetup Group, and along with a group of great and talented individuals, helps organize the Midwest Drupal Camp, MidCamp.
Gloria Antonelli
Gloria Antonelli is a web designer/developer with UX chops. Gloria attended her first UX workshop “Elements of User Experience” in 2004. She infuses her skills in rapid prototyping, front end development, user testing, and ideation within the WordPress design process. Her expertise also spans CSS, IA, Content and Documentation Strategies.
Gloria started presenting about the web in 1999 at national conferences and workshops. She began working with WordPress in 2006. Happiness for Gloria besides researching UX trends is scuba diving in exotic locations.
Angelica Yarde
Angelica Yarde is the co-founder of Sevenality, a brand strategy agency, located in Orlando, Florida. She is also the owner of Studio 404 Paper and co-host of the Heart + Hustle Podcast, a weekly podcast focused on giving creative entrepreneurs the tools they need to achieve with life-work balance. She has been a designer and developer for over a decade and is passionate about helping brands achieve their goals using design and user-experience based solutions. She helps out with the WordPress Orlando meetup group and the Central Florida Branding & User Experience meetup group. When she’s not judging your type choices, she’s in the gym working on powerlifting.
Gabriel Pleszowski
WordPress developer with more than 10 years of experience. He likes to extend the limits of WP and enjoys building themes, plugins and all sorts of complicated integrations with different APIs and frameworks. Gabriel is now part of Toptal’s Core Team (http://www.toptal.com) where he works and interacts with amazing developers and clients from all over the world.
Andrew Wikel
Really likes coffee.
Has worked with WordPress for about 9 years, with roles ranging from dabbling for fun, to working full-time with WooCommerce now.
Co-organizes the Rockford WordPress meetup, and has been involved with WordCamps since WordCamp Chicago 2012.
Jeff Matson
Jeff Matson is a developer, contributor to WordPress core (along with more open source contributions than he can keep track of), and the Community Evangelist for Rocketgenius.
At Rocketgenius, he handles all aspects of promoting Gravity Forms and increasing community involvement. Recently, he re-launched Gravity Forms’ affiliate program to make it better than ever.
When he’s not working, he’s usually restoring old arcade machines or playing with his dogs, Buddy and Lola.
If you see him, stop and say hey! You can’t miss the big red beard!
T-Rave
Stacy Kvernmo
For over 16 years, Stacy has emerged herself in design and embraced the world of UI development. She enjoys the intersection of where these two disciplines meet and believes that designers and developers have the ability to change the world. She is a UX Designer and UI Developer at OddBird, who is best known for their open source tools like Susy (Grid System) and Herman Automated Style Guides. Stacy is a co-organizer of the WordPress Naperville Meetup Group which meets the third Tuesday of every month at NIU Naperville. For more, keep up with Stacy on Twitter as @stacykvernmo.
Pam Ann Aungst
Pam is the owner of Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth™ Search and Analytics. Both specialize in SEO, PPC, and Analytics. Through Stealth™, we work on a private-label basis through other agencies. Through Pam Ann Marketing, we work directly with well-established businesses and funded startups to take their search and analytics strategies to the next level. Pam regularly gives talks at WordCamps around the country about SEO and Google Analytics.
Matthew Christensen
Matt Christensen is a freelance developer and professional digital analyst from central Illinois. He has been using WordPress since 2004 when it was a great fit for his personal blog.
Since then, he has developed themes and plugins for a fortune 1000 company as well as smaller companies and organizations as a freelancer. He is currently working on a ‘trouble ticket’ plugin in between client work.
When not in front of a computer, Matt keeps busy with time with family.
Nile Flores
Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at Blondish.net, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design. Nile also works as an Infection Cleanup Specialist at WP Fix It.
She also loves contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. She loves helping people and supporting Open Source projects.
Nile founded and runs a 9,000+ member Facebook group dedicated to helping WordPressers, called All About WordPress. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user.
Joshua Alexander
Owner of Promotional Science, Inc. my company does Business, Data Science, and Technical Consulting primarily to other consulting firms. We have clients in 8 countries and growing. I’ve done work with startups all the way up to Fortune 100 companies. I’m currently pursuing a Doctorates in Business Administration focusing on Entrepreneurship and International Business and a Doctorate in Computer Science.
Christina Varro
For over 15 years, I have worked in web, digital media, and communications. I have also spent nearly a decade running my own business, managing projects for clients, giving creative direction, building websites and crafting digital media solutions using WordPress. I am passionate about sharing my experience and educating others with inspiring and practical advice, to build better websites and run their businesses more efficiently.
Austin Adamson
Austin is a Phoenix based web developer. During the day, he works as a PHP developer for a design and development company. At night, he teams up with Phoenix based entrepreneurs to help them with business development through establishing a more effective online presence. Five years ago, Austin was introduced to WordPress with plugin development and has been working with WordPress ever since.
When not writing code, Austin is usually riding around Phoenix on his motorcycle or watching Diamondbacks baseball.