GEvents
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Aaron D. Campbell
Myths and Facts About Securing Your Site
Aaron is the WordPress Security Team lead, has been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than ten years, and is currently funded by GoDaddy to work full time on the WordPress open source project. He has over seventeen years of web development experience and worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but considers both to be compliments. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, riding his motorcycle, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.
Art Enke
Effective Technical SEO for WordPress (2017 and Beyond)
A digital marketing professional with substantial in-house and agency SEO experience. Art has lead multiple SEO teams and work sdirectly with Fortune-500 brands and high-growth accounts.
He grew WritersDigest.com (a WordPress site for the writing community) by a factor of 400% in less than 6 months and is passionate about sharing technical insights in a post Panda/Penguin world.
Contributor to the 2015 Moz Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors/contributors
Ashten Fizer
Social Media X WP: Do It Like Beyonce
Starting a career in Social Media Strategy by necessity is no easy task. Ashten began as a Deejay, and knew that she had to find new ways to create a following for herself. Once she realized she had a gift for staying a couple steps ahead of the next person, she took her Social Media Strategy skills to the Chicago political realm. It was in this function that Ashten began to flourish as a thought leader in her field. In her time, Ashten has been called on by the likes of Clear Channel nationwide to help manage On-Air Talent communities, as well as held deejay residencies for industry giants like Google and CISC. She currently works at GoDaddy in Phoenix, Arizona which she lends her Social Media and Web Hosting expertise to the Web Design Department and the GoDaddy GoTeam to engage users with targeted content.
Brandy Lawson
Create Analytics Reports that Mere Mortals Can Read, Understand & Use (Intro to Google Data Studio)
Brandy Lawson is the founder of FieryFX, a boutique digital agency and a Chief Online Officer for-hire. Her mission is to get business owners using the crap out of technology to maximize their impact (and success). Her zone of genius is marrying business goals with marketing strategies. Her super power is analogies (that is, explaining technical or complicated concepts in a way that a regular person can grasp and use them).
Growth-minded business owners hire Brandy to disrupt their hit-or-miss, inconsistent marketing and rescue their online reputation. Most are intimidated by digital marketing and avoiding technology, so she helps them execute a consistent, powerful digital presence that delivers ROI everytime.
She is a mother, wife, co-host of the Northwest Phoenix WordPress meetup, loves ridiculous shoes, captains her boat on Lake Pleasant, and doesn’t miss an episode of Jeopardy.
Carl Alexander
PANEL: How to Sanely Release WordPress Products
Heya! I’m Carl.
I’m a PHP developer from Montréal, Canada. I live and breath advanced programming topics (and memes). I share a lot of my passion for those topics on my website where I publish articles on a regular basis.
It’s my way to help you with these hard-to-learn topics. That’s also why I’m excited to speak at WordCamp Phoenix. It’s another way for me to help you.
Besides that, I’ve been a WordPress Montréal organizer since 2010. I also help organize other WordPress events during the year.
Chris Klosowski
Panel: How to Sanely Release WordPress Products
Chris is a Software Developer primarily focused on PHP and WordPress with a specialties in eCommerce and Social Media. Chris is Co-Lead Developer of Easy Digital Downloads, the easiest way to sell digital products with WordPress, and the Founding Developer and creator of Post Promoter Pro: The easiest social media auto-poster for WordPress. Currently he resides in Queen Creek, Ariz. with his family.
“I like good coffee, good beer, and good code. If you want to chat about any of those, hit me up!”
Chris Lee
Hands-Off Sales with a Hard Working Website
Chris Lee is a digital marketer with a different point of view. He believes the static “brochure” type website is the biggest wasted opportunity in small business. He rails against pretty websites that don’t deliver value.
Chris has a very different legacy from a standard web developer. His company, PurpleCRM, has been helping companies do business through implementing smart technology for 16 years. Starting on the CRM side in 2001, helping companies like NYSE, AIG, and DMB implement technology to support and automate the doing of business, they have extended to include full funnel.
Chris is a long time WordPress developer, CRM architect and Infusionsoft Certified Partner. He helped Infusionsoft launch their partner channel by writing their training curriculum and training the first partner certification classes for them. In addition, Chris is one of a small number of DigitalMarketer Certified Partners in the world.
Cory Crowley
The WordPress REST API: powering every platform
Cory specializes in WordPress development and has vast experience developing websites and web applications for clients. Cory is from Mesa, Ariz. you can learn more about him at his website cory-crowley.com.
Dwayne McDaniel
Developer Workshop: WP-CLI
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 Stanford DrupalCamp, Drupal Northern Lights (Iceland), WordCamp Europe and many other conferences. 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
John Gough
The WordPress REST API: powering every platform
I’m a principal and strategist at Higher Metric, an interactive agency focused on helping institutions of Higher Education create more meaningful connections with prospects, students, and supporters. My background is in research and design; specifically, I like thinking and talking about how people use technology to improve their work and world.
Joshua Eichorn
Love the functionality, Hate the speed, now what?
Josh is the CTO of Pagely, where he has built world class, scalable WordPress hosting stack. He has been involved in the PHP community for over 20 years, working on various OpenSource projects including PEAR and phpDocumentor.
Mike Demo
2 Sides of the Same Coin [WordPress and Drupal]
Mike “Demo” Demopoulos is a longtime lover of Open Source Software. He currently works at BoldGrid (a WordPress Site Builder) as an Evangelist. He has spoken at numerous open source events around the world. Mike is also a contributor to Huffington Post as well as other publications. He also volunteers as Treasuer for Open Source Matters.
Mindie Kniss
3 Mistakes in Online Business (and how you can avoid them)
Mindie Kniss was on the fast-track to success: a Fortune 100 career, the house, the car, etc… Then, in 2008, after being laid off twice by the same company, Mindie gave up the cushy corporate career to become an entrepreneur. Within two years, she was $100,000 in debt and faced eviction, foreclosure, and eventually, bankruptcy. Having hit rock bottom, Mindie knew there was nowhere to go but up, and has since developed a successful, six-figure coaching practice.
Mindie is CEO of Radias which offers executive coaching, retreats and international experiences for business and personal development. Mindie’s signature style combines a unique blend of spiritual direction, tough love, and business badassery. She hosts the BizReads podcast, holds degrees in theology, writing, and philosophy, and is an ONTRAPORT Certified Consultant.
When she’s not working on her multiple brands, Mindie focuses on humanitarian work for which she was awarded the prestigious Global Health Fellowship in Nairobi, Kenya. Learn more about Mindie at her website: MindieKniss.com.
Nikki VanRy
How To Bring Data To Your Writing
Nikki VanRy manages NIVAN Content, a content marketing company for highly-experienced professionals who already have too much on their plates to manage a web presence. She combines her love for data, a well-turned phase, and a background in instructional design to create content that’s accessible to readers and well-researched for even the most technical fields.
She is a proud resident of Arizona, where she gets to indulge her love of tacos, desert storms, and tank tops. She also writes for BookRiot.com and the Tucson Festival of Books, loves anything sci-fi/fantasy, drinks too much chai, and will spend all day in bed reading thankyouverymuch.
Oscar Gomez
Panel: How to Sanely Release WordPress Products
Oscar is a DevOps Engineer at Pagely and likes to work on servers and maintaining the infrastructure there.
A lot of the work at Pagely is done to help customers’ WordPress sites every day. Whether it be to debug any problems, or help with issues using wp-cli to accomplish a goal. All without ever having to login to the wp-admin panel to do the same tasks.
Rachel Cherry
KEYNOTE: In praise of the side project: How to learn new skills, make money, and have a little fun
PANEL MODERATOR: How to Sanely Release WordPress Products
Rachel Cherry is a Senior Software Engineer for The Walt Disney Company with over ten years experience in back and front-end web development and digital design. Before Disney, she spent over nine years working in higher education and is the Founder/Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the web, she enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage openness, collaboration, and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Pasadena, California but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.
Sarah James
The Art of Creating Custom Admin Interfaces
With nearly a decade of experience in the UX field, Sarah brings her expertise in user-centered design, information architecture, and digital strategy to every design problems. She has designed for small and agile non-profits as well as major health care providers and multinational corporations in both the agency and freelance capacities.
In 2015 Sarah began working with 10up, and started focusing on user experience design for both frontend and admin WordPress interfaces. She has experience creating themes, plugins, and authoring interfaces that meet both business and user needs.
When not working on user-centered design interactions, you can find Sarah brewing beer, bowling, or being a Dungeon Master for her D&D group.
Shawn Pfunder
Poetry is the One Simple Hack
Shawn’s a seasoned storyteller, writer, and performer. He’s been working with freelancers, entrepreneurs, and artists for more than 20 years, and has consulted companies large and small on storytelling, social media, and web marketing strategies. At heart, Shawn’s in it for the underdog. He believes that striking out on your own is one of the most courageous and world-changing moves anyone can make — and he believes that anyone can do it.
These days, he continues to stir things up as a Senior Communications Director at GoDaddy. You can catch him consulting entrepreneurs every Sunday night on ABC’s new show, Steve Harvey’s Funderdome.
Steve Ryan
Beginner Workshop: WordPress 101
Steve Ryan is a WordPress Engineer for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. He’s been happily hacking away on various WordPress projects for about 10 years. Favorites include being a husband and a father, basketball, tennis and Stephen King. My favorite colors are (and forever will be) maroon and gold. #goDevils