About

Lead Organizer

Raquel Landefeld is a professional cartwheeler with a young soul. In 2010 she co-founded Mode Effect a Phoenix-based WordPress agency. Intentional about community building, she believes that wherever her feet are is where the building happens. She is currently active in several communities from tech to government to neighborhoods and more.

On the personal side of her life she is a wife & mum, dancer, music lover, an amateur photographer, and has a 20-year-curated Wonder Woman collection.

Branding & Design

Anthony is a problem solving creative with a knack for Illustration, Identity, and UX Design. Formerly a UX designer at Coplex, Anthony has worked with clients like Pagely, LinkedIn, and Sequoia Capital across many different mediums.

When he’s not designing or hiking a mountain in the Arizona desert with his fiance, Anthony plays drums for his local church and spends way too much time refining his Fantasy Football team.

Sponsors

Betsy Cohen has been part of the Arizona WordPress community for nearly 10 years — as meetup host, WordCamp speaker and Organizer. She previously ran a web design agency and a WordPress support and maintenance service, and currently serves as VP of Product for FanSided. Outside of work, Betsy is raising 3 digital-age children, and enjoys such analog activities as reading, yoga, hiking. And obsessing over certain broadway musicals. And one or two TV shows.

Speakers

Carol is the Principal and co-founder of FreeUp Web Studio and runs RadiateWP maintenance and support service for WordPress websites. She is the current Arizona WordPress Meetup Organizer with a membership of 2300+ around the Phoenix metro area. In her spare time, she can be found on deck cheering on her 16-year-old at swim meets, or in the stands cheering on her 10-year-old in basketball and baseball. She is the embodiment of the term “Mom-taxi”.

Lunch & Refreshments

Cory Jenkins hails from mile high Prescott, Arizona and is a Co-Founder/Developer at Aspen Grove Studios & Managing Partner at Divi Space. He is a WordPress Enthusiast, blogger and lover of all things tech. In his spare time, Cory enjoys spending time with his kids, cheering for the Dodgers, camping/fishing, and relentlessly hunting for sasquatch.

PR and Logistics

Dave Ryan is an Interdisciplinary WordPress Developer at Bluehost, where he focuses on contributing to WordPress. In the past Dave has worked for large publishers and universities scaling high-traffic WordPress sites, blending his skills in information design, journalism and web development.

Audio/Video

Dennis Dinsmore is a WordPress developer originally from Salem, Oregon. He got his start in the creative field over 20 years ago as a screen printer. Dennis moved to Tempe, Arizona to attend Collins College in 1999 where he graduated with a degree in Visual Communications with a focus on multimedia.

A Flash developer in the 2000’s, Dennis transitioned to building WordPress sites in 2010 and never looked back. He has worked as a developer for small and large agencies in the Valley of the Sun, but now works for his freelance venture, Lights Out Interactive.

When he’s not building WordPress websites, Dennis enjoys golfing, playing FIFA, riding his beach cruiser, or just chilling at his condo with his cats, Gracie and Tiger.

Parties

Jenn fell into the world of WordPress while working at GoDaddy the last 3 years. She attended her first WordCamp in February 2018 and couldn’t wait to get involved! Jenn is rocking out being this year’s Party Wrangler.

Website

His name is Justin but everyone ends up calling him by his last name, Nealey, his whole life so he just goes with it now. Justin fell in love with WordPress over 7 years ago and finally saw what the community was like IRL (In Real Life) at WordCamp Phoenix 2017 while helping out at the GoDaddy booth as what people call, a booth babe.

He is a hosting support supervisor at GoDaddy by day, side hustler designing WordPress sites by night with a business he created called Macrify Media. As you can see, WordPress is basically his entire life right now outside of being a Dad, friend and Boyfriend!

Sponsors, Swag and Operations

Kathy Zant is new to Phoenix, but not to WordPress. Coming from the wilderness of far northern California was a big change, but the Phoenix WordPress community is making the desert feel like home. Kathy works for Defiant, the makers of Wordfence, helping agencies and enterprise users make sense of WordPress security. She’s also a work-at-home mom to two amazing kids, both of whom play music, know how to pick locks, and recognize obfuscated PHP. When not playing with WordPress, Kathy can be found exploring mountain meadows with a happy golden retriever.

Volunteers

Clancy started working with GoDaddy in customer support in 2005 and has enjoyed roles from Windows Administration to Agile Project Management. Currently based in Phoenix, AZ he is a Sr. Product Manager for GoDaddy Hosting for WordPress training and self help. In his free time he enjoys spending as much time with his 2 kids and lovely wife as possible, tending to his trees and cacti, all things Star Wars/Tolkien/Marvel/Pokémon, building Legos, and contributing back to the WordPress community. His favorite heroes are The Wasp, Captain America, and Ashoka Tano.

Budget

Nathan Atkinson is a Software Engineer at BIG YAM, The Parsons Agency.  While there he’s been able to work on tons of projects using different technologies, including WordPress.  In his spare time he helps out with tech conferences and film festivals.  He’s hyped to give back however he can to the tech community, especially here in the Valley.  It’s because of Meetups that he’s a developer.