Aaron Hockley
Aaron is a photographer with a background in technology. He started blogging in 2001, began using WordPress in 2004, and founded WordCamp Portland in 2008. He’s well-known for mixing the worlds of photography and online business, having written and spoken about these topics to various audiences over the past decade. Past speaking experience includes numerous WordCamp events, BlogWorld, New Media Expo, and many smaller groups and conferences.
Adam Silver
Adam owns & operate Silver Lining Productions based in Redondo Beach and teach a WP101 course at the local adult school. He also runs the SouthBay WordPress Meetup and produce a weekly podcast over at kitchensinkwp.com.
AJ Zane
AJ Zane is a front end developer with a background in interactive multimedia, digital marketing, and east asian studies. When not developing with WordPress, Sass, and Angular, he organizes the FrontEndAuthority.org meetup. He focuses on custom theme and plugin solutions with Zan Atlantean. He is currently hiding in the San Diego of this timeline from interdimensional robot olms. He will be presenting on how using preprocessing tools like sass, jade, and coffeescript can help with your WordPress development workflow.
Alex Vasquez
Alex Vasquez is Principle at DigiSavvy, a Los Angeles Based Digital Marketing Agency.
Andrew Bergeron
Since 1999 Andrew Bergeron has created hundreds of graphics and websites under the name Visual Rhythm. Clients have ranged from startups and nonprofits to corporations and small businesses. Originally hailing from the Green Mountains of Vermont, Andrew now lives in La Jolla, California with his beautiful wife, Arthi. When he is not listening to soul music, surfing or pondering the existence of lake monsters, Andrew is focused on discovering ways to grow his clients’ businesses using smart design and the latest in web technologies.
Brandon Dove
Brandon Dove is a co-founder of Pixel Jar and the lead developer of a commercial plugin, AdSanity. He is the current co-leader of the OC WordPress Developer meetup, and former lead organizer WordCamp Orange County. He’s an active member of the WordPress Community team, and has recently been deputized to help bring more WordCamps, to more places, for more people.
Cemal Tashan
Cemal Tashan is a Turkish-American businessman and Electrical Engineer. Being an early adapter and technology lover, Cemal has designed, developed and tested software for all kinds of computers and mobile devices since the dawn of the computer era.
He ardently believes in the participation of the seniors in today’s high-tech world.
Cemal has published three books on photography and travel.
Chris Ford
Chris became a storyteller in the third grade when she wrote and bound her first book. She became a graphic designer in junior high when she was introduced to a proportion wheel and Proper Cropper as co-editor of the yearbook. She became a computer nerd when she dicovered the Mac and Pagemaker as a journalism student in high school. When she stepped foot into her first college graphic design classroom she knew she’d found her life’s work in a field that combined all three of those passions. Over the last 18 years the tools and technologies she’s used have changed, but her design philosophy has stayed the same; she helps her clients tell their unique story: the story of who they are and why their customers will love them.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema is the CTO and Chief Strategist at Crowd Favorite. He’s also a daily blogger, a public speaker, and product strategist. He helps companies leverage WordPress, and helps WordPress companies find leverage.
Cory Miller
Cory Miller is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting-edge web design training for thousands of customers around the globe.
Named the 7th fastest growing company in Oklahoma City in 2011 by the Metro 50, iThemes employs over 20 people around the globe with headquarters in Edmond, Oklahoma.
In 2011, he co-founded The Div, Inc, a nonprofit tech foundation aimed at inspiring and training the next generation of web developers through its kid’s program, Div Jr.
He is the co-author of WordPress All-in-One for Dummies (Wiley, 2011) and is a member and current communications chair of the Oklahoma chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a network of over 8,000 entrepreneurs in 40 countries with companies that have revenue over $1 million dollars annually.
He blogs regularly about entrepreneurship and career advice at CoryMiller.com.
He is married to Lindsey Miller, who leads the Education Program at iThemes aimed at helping provide school and educators with professional web design tools and training. They have an adorable son named Caloway (born January 2013) and a little sweetheart daughter named Lillian (born November 2014), and also two spoiled dogs, Frannie and Scooter.
Dave Jesch
Dave Jesch is the Principal and CTO at SpectrOMTech.com, a web application development firm specializing in online subscription and eCommerce products. With 30+ years of software development experience working with large companies such as Disney, IBM and Symantec, Dave is the master at seamless technology integration with stability and scalability in mind. As a full stack developer with a passion in object-oriented programming, he pushes WordPress to the limit bridging traditional architectural techniques with innovative creative strategies.
Eric Mann
Eric Mann is a seasoned web developer with experience in languages from JavaScript to Ruby to C#. He has been building websites of all shapes and sizes for the better part of a decade and continues to experiment with new technologies and techniques.
Eric is a Lead Web Engineer at 10up where he focuses on developing high-end web solutions powered by WordPress.
Greg Douglas
Greg Douglas is the Founder and Creative Director of Premium Interactive and co-founder of ARC(CTRL) based in Hollywood CA. An active member of the Los Angeles and Southern California WordPress community, Greg contributes by organizing the popular Hollywood WordPress meetup group.
Gregg Franklin
Gregg Franklin is a WordPress Developer and team member over at ServerPress LLC., the creators of DesktopServer. Loves to help in any way he can solving WordPress problems.
He also can be found co-facilitating the Inland Empire WordPress meetup group and loves to travel with his wife.
Jacob Arriola
Jacob is a front-end developer in charge of bringing designs to life on a web browser and mobile device. He’s passionate about the web, and is always learning new technologies or improving how to write code. He received his MBA from Loyola Marymount University with an emphasis in technology and finance.
He works closely with designers and back end developers to make clients’ sites a reality. As a front end developer, he uses the latest HTML, CSS and JavaScript technologies to construct websites and web applications.
Jacob is fascinated with the web because of its ability to easily communicate and bring ideas to life across the world. He believes the web is a channel that helps with the manifestation of ideas.
In his free time Jacob is an avid cyclist, backyard farmer and enjoys playing golf. He also loves hanging out with his two dogs.
Jarrett Gucci
Jarrett is the founder and owner of WPfixIt.com, based on the Apple support model of offering instant WordPress support for a flat fee. Since 2011, they have serviced over 10,000 support tickets. Jarrett has taken his passion for people and excitement in technology to create success around him.
Long before he started his own business, hard work and ambition were traits that were well ingrained. By age 25, Jarrett already had been promoted to executive, sales and management positions in the fortune 500 retail industry throughout various parts of the country.
Not afraid of risk and motivated by the potential to give back, Jarrett turned his 7 year hobby of HTML and PHP play into a business. The key to his success was networking. “Getting myself out there is what kick-started my business. I didn’t make a lot of money, but it helped me create credibility and my reputation.” A few years into his first WordPress development business , he made a commitment to help others to enhance their on-line presence through the power of WordPress.
When Jarrett goes off-line, you’ll find him setting up camp and roughing it under the stars at the local beach side campgrounds with his wife Tarn and 5 daughters.
Jason Cosper
Jason Cosper works as the Developer Advocate for WP Engine. He loves digging into interesting problems and learning new things. In his spare time, Cosper enjoys spending time with his wife Sarah and very tiny dogs, grilling meats, sampling assorted whiskeys, writing cranky tweets about the Lakers and cold brewing coffee.
Jeff Turner
As founder and CEO, Jeff led his former company, J.J. Grace to Inc. Magazine’s list of the 500 Fastest-Growing Companies in America and was at its helm when it won Cisco’s “Growing With Technology” award. After the sale of J.J. Grace to Vertis, Inc. in 1999, Jeff served as Group President for their Digital Solutions Group. He has served on the board of multiple charities and corporations over his almost 30 year business career. He was also the founder of Real Estate Shows and a partner at Zeek Interactive.
Jeff is currently the President of RealSatisfied, a fast-growing real estate brand management platform. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors at MFFO.org, a charity dedicated to providing orphans and vulnerable children with opportunities to learn, thrive and achieve their highest potential, and serves on the Board of Directors for Aumnia, Inc., a full service provider of mobile internet applications and solutions.
Jennifer Bourn
Jennifer Bourn is an award-winning, 17 year design veteran and founder of Bourn Creative, a full service design studio in Sacramento, California. As a Genesis recommended developer, Bourn Creative works with clients on brand design, website strategy, web design, and WordPress, as well as a wide range of graphic design projects.
She built her first WordPress site in 2008, fell in love with giving clients the ability to make their own content revisions, and went all in with WordPress pretty much the same day.
Now with more than 300 custom WordPress sites under the belt, Jennifer now shares her expertise and lessons learned as a speaker, an avid blogger, and a co-organizer of the Sacramento Meetup Group. She also writes about the business-side of design for WP Elevation and GoDaddy and about content marketing for CoSchedule.
Joe Chellman
Joe Chellman has been using WordPress for a wicked long time, and developing themes and plugins for it for a wicked decent amount of time. He’s the supreme dictator for life of ShooFly Development and Design, purveyors of fine web goodness since 2000 or so. He’s the author of the Peachpit video course Introducing WordPress: Learn by Video, many JavaScript titles at lynda.com, and co-author of the book Getting Started with Macaw. He is a co-organizer of the Advanced WordPress LA meetup group, a past WordCamp speaker, and a working drummer. He is neither the Hair Club for Men president, nor a client.
John Hawkins
If you’ve been to a WordCamp, chances are you’ve met John Hawkins before. This self-proclaimed WordCamp addict has attended, spoken, and sponsored more than 50 of them across the US. We’re willing to bet the number is much, much higher than that, but after so many, it’s easy to lose count.
John is the founder of 9seeds, a WordPress development team based on Las Vegas, NV. He founded and frequently presents at the Las Vegas WordPress meetup group and has been the lead organizer for WordCamp Las Vegas 4 times in the past 6 years. When not sharing knowledge at an event, he also blogs about WordPress, CrossFit and just about anything else over at VegasGeek.com.
Justin Tucker
Justin Tucker is a WordPress developer based in downtown Phoenix, AZ. For over a decade, he’s been involved in web development, working with agencies in Phoenix, Orange County and Seattle.
Currently, he runs Certain Strings where he specializes in building custom theme solutions for agencies and marketing firms. He actively attends and speaks at numerous local WordPress meetups each month.
Karim Marucchi
Karim Marucchi is the Founder and Chairman of the VeloMedia Group, the parent of several boutique professional service firms around the world. Over the last twenty years he’s run startups, taken companies public, managed mergers and acquisitions, and led professional service organizations across the globe.
Today he is also the CEO of Crowd Favorite, which continues to grow beyond its current offices in Los Angeles, Denver, Bucharest, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Sydney, and Rome due to its unique blend of localized project management and high quality digital solutions.
Kathryn Presner
Kathryn Presner thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and
building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012. She’s currently Theme Whisperer on the Theme Team, where she helps folks with customization, configuration, and troubleshooting. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress obsessions include vintage Pyrex mixing bowls and growing garlic.
Levan Apriashvili
Levan is a Customer Care Manager at SiteGround and has been working there for the past 7 years. He has actively participated in the recruitment and training of the whole customer care team at SiteGround. With a passion for outstanding quality of service, his work has helped SiteGround become the highly customer-centric company it is now and maintain the high levels of quality support they provide during their steady growth for the past years.
Mendel Kurland
As an outdoor enthusiast, Mendel loves backpacking, camping, gourmet coffee, and prototyping new web apps. From scrappy beginnings as an entrepreneur and Web consultant for local businesses, he found his way to corporate America as a developer, marketer, and inventor. As a GoDaddy Evangelist, he spends his time hanging out with developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and web pros around the world and making sure their opinions and suggestions are heard.
Mika Ariela Epstein
Mika Ariela Epstein is better known as Ipstenu, the Half-Elf Support Rogue. Working for DreamHost as a WordPress Support Specialist and Manager (aka ‘WordPress Guru’), she solves any WordPress problem that comes up, trains everyone from support to marketing in why WordPress makes your life better, and still finds time to slash unanswered WordPress.org forum threads by night and wrangle plugins by day. A self-taught guru on Multisite and .htaccess, she has a passion for writing and technology and blogs about them whenever possible.
The rumor that she has dice in her purse and tinfoil in her hats is in a constant state of Schrödinger proofs.
Mike Hansen
Mike Hansen is a WordPress Developer and core contributor working on the Open Source Team at Bluehost. He is active in his local community, lead organizer for WordCamp SLC and co-organizer for the UtahWP meetup. He enjoys helping WordPress users solve their problems.
Natalie MacLees
Natalie MacLees is a front-end web developer and UI designer and is founder + principal of the interactive agency, Purple Pen Productions. She is the author of jQuery for Designers, now in its second edition. She was the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles 2014 and 2013 and organized the first bi-annual Website Weekend LA. She’s also the founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Girl Develop It, bringing affordable and accessible coding classes to the community. She makes her online home at nataliemac.com.
Nathan Porter
After 10 years in enterprise software implementation and deployment strategies, Nate ditched the suit and tie for T-shirts, jeans, and a mountain man beard. He’s totally serious about his work, though—and the beard. When he’s not teleporting to meet with clients or attending WordCamps, he can be found scanning the latest developments in software, server, and data management tools. He also spends time with Arete Imagine’s corporate furry mascot, Holly, and wife and Bridge-Builder, Marisa. He is busy planning a move from the Northeast to the mountains of Colorado, where he suspects his recovery will be complete.
Robert Donnell
I insist our clients get found on the Internet. All the hoopla and expertise matters not one bit, if we don’t ring the cash register. Great design, usability, good code and compelling content are a given, BUT with over a billion websites today, you need a competitive edge, period – end of story.
Marketing consultant with broad Internet Marketing expertise – profit maker: MBA Marketer with proven expertise creating leads utilizing SEO, Social Media and email marketing to deliver that make a difference in the bottom line. We develop these leads using marketing automation and drive them to purchase using ecommerce solutions.
My instincts and capabilities are focused on the hunt: generating relevant traffic, creating and managing leads, and building relationships using social media know-how in concert with traditional and digital marketing. I know how the pieces fit together.
I bring a unique depth of knowledge, energy and capability to bear on our customer’s behalf. As a client told us recently… we are a wizards, not whiz kids.
Bilingual, Bi-cultural – fluent in English and Spanish. We have worked, on client assignments in Latin and South American, as well as Germany, France and Canada.
Russell Aaron
Owner of GeekStreetWP.com and creator of GravityStyles.com. I love WP. I’ll DO anything for a Klondike Bar and I want to help you build the website of your dreams.
Ryan Kanner
Ryan is a WordPress Developer for Fruition marketing from Denver, Colorado. He has spent the last few years developing custom WordPress themes for clients all over the world.
Scott Bolinger
Scott co-founded AppPresser in 2013 which allows you to build iOS and Android apps with WordPress. He has been pushing the boundaries of what is possible with WordPress + mobile apps ever since. Scott attends and speaks at conferences, writes lots of code, and loves working with WordPress.
Suzette Franck
Suzette Franck has been in web development for over twenty years; she started making hand-coded HTML websites on geocities with font tags and tables back in 1995. Since then, she has taught herself CSS, Sass, PHP, MySQL, as well as becoming a WordPress expert; evangelizing and presenting at over twenty-two WordCamps across the country and multiple WordPress meetups in Southern California where she resides, about all aspects of building and maintaining sites on WordPress.
Suzette is passionate about WordPress the application as well as the WordPress Open Source Community, and loves to code and teach others the wonders of WordPress. She is a purveyor of lowbrow art, and when she is not WordPressing, she is painting or visiting Los Angeles art galleries to add more work to her growing art collection.
To see some of her personal art and crafts, please go to suzettefranck.me.
Tabby Chapman
Tabitha Chapman (a.k.a Tabby) is an Academic Applications Developer at University of California, Irvine where she works on WordPress plugins and themes for the School of Biological Science.
Tony Mazzarella
Tony Mazzarella (@tonymazz) is a Human from the Ukuu Tribe. An open-source software developer by day, he co-founded Ukuu Logic and has worked relentlessly on the UkuuPeople plugin, which was released in early 2015. After hours, he is a Board Member of DAMA International and an active member, organizer and speaker in the New York City open-source community. While there is no direct connection that we have found, Tony bears a strong resemblance to Eric the Red.
William Bay
William Bay is the Chief Flauntreprener at Flaunt Your Site.
Flaunt Your Site was born out of William’s passion for both photography, website design and SEO. After a few years of doing it solely for his own wedding photography business in San Diego, he began having other photographers request custom sites and SEO done for them. The demand was such that William formed Flaunt Your Site. And, while photographers still make up a large portion of Flaunt Your Site’s clientele, they also work with a wide range of small to medium businesses for custom website and SEO.
On a typical day, he’ll be immersed in code, dissecting Google rankings, or sneaking in a quick yoga session between client calls. When he’s not photographing, SEO’ing, or designing, he’s dreaming about surfing the perfect peeling reef breaks in the Mentawai Islands.