WordCamp Phoenix 2013

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StickerGiant is two businesses in one. We are a printing company that prints stickers and labels for thousands of customers all over the United States and Canada. We also have a fun online sticker store that has over 26,000 designs from bands to sports and everything in between. Our selection of Embroidered Patches is vast.

Bold Avenue is a boutique design agency committed to making your day with fabulous service and effective design. We take a collaborative approach to design and manage the details of your print projects, so you can relax.  Although we’re a small business, we’re able to harness the power of a much bigger firm through strategic partnerships and collaboration. We excel at putting all the pieces together to get your project done right and on time.

Check it out, another great person added to the roster!

In 2010 Natalie MacLees worked as technical reviewer on WordPress 3 Complete by April Hodge Silver and in 2012 she published jQuery for Designers with Packt Publishing. A WordPress enthusiast and one of the people who leads the Southern California WordPress User’s Group, below is what she will share at WordCamp this January.

What will you be speaking about?
Setting up a WordPress site the right way

Who is your target audience?
Business owners, bloggers, etc

What do you hope attendees will get out of your session?
I see a lot of people “start” their WordPress site by spending hours, days, or even months combing through themes and having nothing to show for all the time they’ve put into their sites. In this presentation, I will walk people through setting up a WordPress site from scratch the right way – focusing on getting the content and audience right first, then worrying about the look and feel. People will be more productive and able to get sites up and running in a fraction of the time and will spend less time in the theme search phase. I’ll also include tips on choosing the correct theme and plugins.

Tell us about yourself and how you use WordPress.
I am a front-end web developer, UI designer and founder/CEO of the interactive agency, Purple Pen Productions. Together with Noel Saw, I head up the Southern California WordPress User’s Group, now numbering over 1000 members, where we offer workshops, help sessions, and meetups. I use WordPress almost exclusively for building sites for my clients, and also for my own projects.

What is your favorite WordPress plugin and why?
Wow – picking just one plugin is tough. And even though there are lots of really amazing plugins out there, I think I’m going to have to go with the one I seem to use the most often and am most grateful for – WP DB Migrate. Yep – it’s not flashy, but this little plugin has saved me so much time – it makes migrating a site between servers/domains or from my local environment to production a snap.

Do you have a WordPress hero or a person that has made an impact on you?
You mean aside from Matt? 🙂 Aside from Matt, I’d have to go with Michael Fields. I almost skipped his presentation called ‘Theming for the Masses’ at WordCamp LA 2011 because I thought I was an expert on theming already. Then Michael showed me just how much I didn’t know – I was blown away by his presentation and learned so much that’s been incredibly helpful. I very much admire his passion for WordPress and the community surrounding it.

Tell us your favorite WordCamp Story.
I’d imagine that most people’s favorite WordCamp story is the story of their first WordCamp and my first WordCamp was San Francisco in 2005. I’d worked with WordPress only a tiny bit, and I’m not even entirely sure what prompted me to decide to travel to San Francisco for the event, but I was blown away by the people I met. So many passionate, committed people, who seemed dedicated to helping each other out. And don’t even get me started on the talks. So many things to learn about WordPress – I had no idea. It was after that first WordCamp that I moved away from being just an occasional tinkerer to being a WordPress evangelist.

Connect with Natalie: @nataliemac

Developers rejoice, we have some great people leading the 301 class this year. Like who?

Kurt Payne, senior php developer at Go Daddy. Starting his tenure there as an internal hosting tools developer, Kurt moved up to lead developer, and eventually became the team’s Software Development Manager. Kurt has also worked on internal tools for the productivity apps team. In June 2011, Kurt started contributing to the WordPress core.

Josh Hansen also work at Go Daddy and specializes in WordPress security. Kurt and Josh will be helping with the 301 class as well as presenting a session for developers on Saturday.

Here’s what they had to say about the upcoming WordCamp:

What will you be speaking about?
Local Environment and Security & Hackers

Who is your target audience?
Developers – Plugin authors

What do you hope attendees will get out of your session?
We will show several of the most common vulnerabilities found in plugins and themes. We will exploit these vulnerabilities live and then show how they can be prevented with correct coding.

Tell us about yourself and how you use WordPress.
Kurt contributes to core and unit tests. He works on the P3 Plugin and helps out with WordPress projects in Go Daddy’s hosting department.

Josh is the Manager of the Customer Security Products team at Go Daddy and specializes in WordPress security.

What is your favorite WordPress plugin and why?
Kurt: My favorite plugin is Core Control. I need to see what HTTP requests are going in and out and to spy on cron!

Josh: Google Authenticator – because two factor authentication should be everywhere.

Do you have a WordPress hero or a person that has made an impact on you?
Josh: All of the security experts who responsibly report to the WordPress security list. Everyone listed on releases like this: https://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/wordpress-3-3-1/

Kurt: I lose plenty of technical discussions to Andy Nacin. I am not even ashamed about it anymore; he’s just right. A lot.

Tell us your favorite WordCamp Story.
Kurt: At my first WordCamp, in Philly 2011, I met Aaron Jorbin — a core contributor to WordPress. He graduated from my Alma Mater, and knew my brother’s girlfriend, and one of my coworkers. I just ran into him by chance 1,000 miles away from home at a WordCamp during a hack day. It just reinforced how small the world really is.

Josh – I hope to get a good story out of my first WordCamp in Phoenix 2013!

Connect with Kurt: @k_payne

It’s the age old debate, does form or function rule? Do you find yourself firmly in one camp? (Yes, we went there!). Sara Cannon will explore the topic and how with WordPress, the possibility to have both has never been easier to achieve.

Whether you design or develop using WordPress, this session is a must! Sara is a WordPress core contributor working with the UI group and has great insights to share, read more about her and the topic below.

What will you be speaking about?

Designer vs. Developer – creators in WordPress

Who is your target audience?

Designers & Developers: creators

What do you hope attendees will get out of your session?

Some of us are designers, some of us are developers: We are all creators. The Venn diagram overlaps more than we think. Let’s explore these roles, WordPress, and how we can stretch ourselves to create amazing beautiful sites both in form and function.

Tell us about yourself and how you use WordPress.

I have a passion for art, design, and typography which I utilize as a Partner and Creative Director for Range – A design and development shop specializing in WordPress. I’m based out of Birmingham, AL, and I am a WordPress core contributor working with the UI group, organizer of WordCamp Birmingham, a lover of open source, my dogs, and a good beer. You can find me tee-heeing on twitter @saracannon or writing on my blog sara-cannon.com.

“Life is short, art is long, typography is everything, code is poetry.”

What is your favorite WordPress plugin and why?

Menu Humility By Mark Jaquith: Prevents plugins from injecting themselves as top level menus before your content menus. It shoves them to the end which is good for ux.

Connect with Sara: @saracannon

We’ve got a great group of experts from all walks of the WordPress community ready to blow your mind, really.

Like who? How about Ruth Carter.

We asked Ruth, whose ebook, The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Fired, Sued, Arrested, or Killed is an Amazon Bestseller to share her thoughts on WordCamp Phoenix 2013…read on!

What will you be speaking about?
The Legal Side of Blogging – 10 Questions to Ask Before you Hit “Publish”

Who is your target audience?
All Bloggers

What do you hope attendees will get out of your session?
As a blogger, I’ve had a lot of questions over the years about what I can and can’t say on my blog. I’ve learned that most of the mistakes people make with their blogs are misstatements or inadvertent mistakes. Unfortunately, these mistakes can be costly if it results in a lawsuit.

I want to teach attendees about the most common mistakes people make with their blogs and give them these 10 questions that they can review before they publish any post to help them stay out of trouble.

Note: I’m submitting two applications to speak, but I would prefer to only present once if I’m selected to speak. I wanted to give the organizers two options.

Tell us about yourself and how you use WordPress.
I started blogging in 2009 when I was a law student at ASU. Now I’m a licensed attorney and I own Carter Law Firm in Phoenix. My firm focuses on social media law, intellectual property, business formation and contracts, and flash mob law. I also wrote the book The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed.

I have two WordPress sites: my personal blog (undeniableruth.com) and my law firm’s site (carterlawaz.com). I write blog posts for them every week. I love how easy it is to use WordPress to post blogs and also to create a custom website.

What is your favorite WordPress plugin and why?
I love Akismet because it does an awesome job keeping spam off my blog and I love Sociable because I think it’s a great tool to help build connections between bloggers and readers.

Do you have a WordPress hero or a person that has made an impact on you?
My friend Jeff Moriarty set up both of my sites and taught me the majority of what I know about WordPress.

Connect with Ruth: @rbcarter

Phoenix WordCamp is happy to announce a true rockstar presenter: Jake Goldman

Just in case you didn’t know…Below is more about Jake.

Jake has been building websites since the mid 90’s, and has built web-based solutions for Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Navy, major universities, and high profile non-profits. His analyses have been quoted on high profile websites like c|net and the Winsupersite.

Jake started working with WordPress in 2006 while managing the interactive division of a 100-man contractor. In 2009, while employed as Technology Director at a Providence-based agency, he refocused his professional attention on the platform, releasing free plug-ins, diverting new projects to the platform, and engaging the community. Jake’s leadership helped transform that agency from a 3-man team serving a niche CMS to an open source software agency with 10 employees.

In February 2011, Jake founded 10up with a vision of a distributed, elite team that could build beautiful, easy to manage websites on the web’s best platform – WordPress.

Between leading the charge at 10up, Jake is a writer and expert reviewer for Smashing Magazine (the web’s top new media publication) and teaches WordPress development at Boston University. Jake has spoken at WordCamps around the country, including Chicago, New York, Orlando, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Miami. He helped organize the first WordCamp Boston in 2010 and founded the WordPress Providence Meetup.

Jake is a core contributor to WordPress and maintains some of the highest rated plug-ins on the official repository. Cumulatively, they have been downloaded over 250,000 times.

Connect with Jake: @jakemgold

Check back for a complete listing of speakers for WordCamp Phoenix 2013.

A huge thank you to the WordPress community for the amazing response to the request for Speaker Applications for Phoenix WordCamp 2013. The sheer number and quality of submissions is indicative of the talent and commitment of the WordPress community. Due to the overwhelming response, the selection committee has quite the task ahead. Rest assured we will complete this process as quickly as possible and look forward to an AMAZING WordCamp – thanks to all of you!

Phoenix WordCamp 2013 Committee Hard at Work

Are you interested in speaking at WordCamp Phoenix 2013 but have been putting if off? Don’t worry, some of the most talented people are procrastinators and wear that badge proudly. But you can’t procrastinate much longer. Monday night at midnight (PST) is the cutoff for submissions for WordCamp 2013. We have some great submissions so far, but we would like to hear from you. In particular, we would like submissions on using WordPress for specific industries or businesses (ie. WordPress for Non-profits, Creatives, etc.) If you are using WordPress in a niche market or for a specific purpose or function, we would love to hear what you are doing.

So don’t wait any longer. You have the weekend. And really, it’s not that bad. Just click the button and start typing. Throw your hat in the ring and help make WordCamp a fantastic learning experience.