WordCamp Orange County 2017 is proud to present the following lineup of speakers:
Amber Hewitt
Amber Hewitt is a front-end web developer who has created websites for a wide variety of clients for over 15 years. With a strong background in design (graphic design degree from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design), she has developed a passion for good imagery and typography in print and on the web.
Adam Warner
Adam W. Warner first discovered WordPress in 2005 and has since founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners. In 2016 he brought his passion for WordPress to join SiteLock as s Product Evangelist. Adam has since delivered his zeal for WordPress to 20 different WordCamps all over the world and presented talks at 13. In addition to WordPress, Adam is passionate about his family, robots and of course, life, the universe and everything.
Lauren Milligan
Lauren has worked with thousands of professionals in all stages of career advancement and has developed proven tools and exercises that enables people to reach the next step in their career. Simply put, when it comes to advancing
your career, Lauren knows what you need to do to get there.
In addition to her private coaching practice, Lauren teaches workshops at regional colleges, and dozens of business and employment support groups. She has contributed to hundreds of career-related features on WGN Morning News,
ABC News, WLS and WGN radio and in the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Washington Post and dozens of other media outlets. She’s honored to recently present for the Illinois Association of Professional Engineers (Springfield, IL), International Association of Rehabilitation Professionals (Pittsburgh, PA) and at C4W’s annual conference (Charleston, SC).
Lauren’s topics include career-boosting topics such as Resume Writing, Interview Skills and Job Search Strategies for Older Workers, and business-boosting topics such as Pitching to the Media, Negotiation Skills and Lead Generation
through LinkedIn.
Julka Grodel
Julka Grodel is a Senior Software Engineer at AddThis and has worked professionally with content management systems for over 10 years. She is passionate about writing easily maintainable and extendable code and is on a mission to make it simple to use AddThis’ social tools on single page apps and within a dynamic DOM. Julka spends most of her time on open source projects integrating AddThis tools for various JavaScript frameworks & content management systems. She is the primary developer on AddThis’s WordPress plugins. When not working, she spends her time volunteering with the Junior League, in a pilates studio, or doting over her blind cat Batman and his BFF Robin.
David Payette
In 2013, David Payette left his job at an Apple Store to start a freelance web design business called Payette Forward. Figuring that “having a blog” would sound good to potential clients, one morning in August 2013, David sat down and wrote the only blog post he ever intended to write, and forgot about it. Six months later, that blog post went viral and 5 million people read it in a week.
David relocated to Maui and worked as an SEO and WordPress consultant, occasionally publishing articles on payetteforward.com. As traffic to his website continued to grow, David stepped back from client work entirely to focus on his own projects.
Currently based in New York, David has transitioned Payette Forward from a one-man operation to a small startup with team members in the United States and abroad. He and his team have recently launched BlogWinners, an online course that teaches people how to replicate David’s formula for success so that they too can enjoy the freedom of a decentralized lifestyle.
Michelle Schulp
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?”
Brian Clark
Brian Clark is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Rainmaker Digital, the company behind Copyblogger, StudioPress, and the Rainmaker Platform. Clark’s other projects include the personal development newsletter Further, and Unemployable, a resource that provides smart strategies for freelancers, consultants, coaches, and entrepreneurs.
In January of 2006, Brian started a one-man blog called Copyblogger, which quickly evolved into an influential digital trade magazine for the online industry. Both the Guardian and Advertising Age have recognized Copyblogger as one of the most powerful and influential blogs in the world.
Copyblogger never took venture capital and made it to 8 figures in annual revenue without advertising. It’s the Copyblogger audience that has been the catalyst for the multimillion dollar tools and training company he heads today. It’s this success that’s made Brian one of the recognized pioneers of the $44 billion content marketing industry.
Ethan Grey
A Senior Product Manager at Media Temple, a Los Angeles-based company providing premium web and cloud hosting solutions and services, Ethan leverages his experience in product management, business analysis, commerce and monetization to oversee the product and go-to-market strategy of Media Temple’s managed WordPress hosting solutions.
Russell Aaron
Russell Aaron is a back-end developer & support specialist at WebDevStudios.com. Russell has created two WordPress.org plugins, one of which won second place at WCOC’s Plugin-a-Palooza. He is a fan of WordPress first and foremost. He is currently the lead organizer of the Las Vegas WordPress Meetup Group & WordCamp Las Vegas. He is an admin of the Advanced WordPress Facebook group.
Jarrett Gucci
Jarrett Gucci comes from a retail background that started at Home Depot in Buffalo NY as cashier and 18 months later was asked to be a project manager based out of Carson, California with a goal of opening 12 stores in 14 months. This goal was accomplished. He has also been an area manager at Big Lots and Bed Bath and beyond. He left his very last retail career as a district manager at Linens & Things in 2007 to pursue a hobby of website development as hope he could make some money doing it. After 4 years of building and managing WordPress sites, he founded a company called WP Fix It and since 2011 his company has serviced over 54,000 WordPress support tickets. Something you may not know about Jarrett besides all this, is that when he was 15 his neighbor gave him a 1962 dodge dart and he completely took it apart and rebuilt it.
Andrew Bergeron
Andrew Bergeron is a designer, speaker, and proud new father. Currently, he is the UX Design Manager for Everyone Counts, a rapidly growing start-up leading the transformation of modern election systems. When he is not focused on improving lives through design you will likely find him surfing, walking in nature or finding a way to make his son giggle.
Brian Coords
Brian is an in-house manager at a non-profit and a freelancer. He used to be a teacher. His passions include writing, music, non-profits, and education.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema is the VP of Products at Liquid Web. He’s also a blogger and public speaker who runs the best business conference in Cabo San Lucas, CaboPress.
Rachel Cherry
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 Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in the world of 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.
Dennis Hong
By day, Dennis engineers happiness at WordPress.com. By night, he is a relationships and comedy writer, which can be redundant or an oxymoron, depending on your perspective.
Jeff Turner
Bio coming soon.
Jacob Arriola
Jacob Arriola is a front-end developer from Los Angeles who spends most of his time working with Sass, JavaScript and building custom WordPress themes. He works with Zeek Interactive and is always trying to learn new languages and frameworks to deliver rich and engaging UI experiences.
Blair Williams
Bio coming soon.
Scott Buscemi
Scott Buscemi is the Co-Founder of Lumen Foundry, a next-generation marketing agency based in LA. Since version 2.9 of WordPress in 2010, Scott has been bringing clients into the cutting edge of website and marketing technology. He’s also co-organizer of the LA WordPress Meetup.
Chris Ford
Over the course of her 20 year career Chris has been a visual and UX designer, brand strategist, front end developer, professional scrapbooker, magazine art director, project manager, and support lead. She also loves to write, speak and teach other people about all of those things.
Emanuel Costa
I am a professional web developer, SEO/SEM specialist, eCommerce consultant and web entrepreneur, with over 22 years experience in web development. When I did my first web page there was only 250 sites in the world. I was luck to be an intern at the computer lab while I was acquiring a Bachelors of Science degree in Engineering. At that time the Internet came to Brazil first at the Universities. I was able to start to learn a lot related to internet, web development and user experience. After I graduated, I started working as Civil Engineer and on my spare time was doing simple websites for companies in Fortaleza, Brazil. Two years later, I relocated to the United States and accepted an offer to work for a dotcom under an H1B visa. The year was 1999 and then I lived in South Florida for 8 years. I’ve lived in New York and Washington, D.C, while working as senior web developer consultant for Inter-american Development Bank. In 2015 I relocated to Las Vegas, became an American Citizen, and currently I am expanding my online businesses to the US West region. I’ve been working professionally with WordPress for the past 7 years. I contribute as much as I can, at WordPress.tv, translating WP, organizing meetups and volunteering/speaking at WordCamps.
Samantha McCoy
Bio coming soon.
Tish Briseno
Happiness Engineer at Automattic working on WordPress.com. I love helping people get started with WordPress.
Alex Vasquez
Alex Vasquez is a WordPress Developer and owner of DigiSavvy, a boutique digital studio providing digital marketing and custom web development services. My hair could qualify as a super power.
Aaron Holbrook
Father of two amazing boys. Weightlifter. Swimmer. Gamer. Obsessive DIY-er. Woodsmith. WordCamp Organizer & Speaker. Director of Web Engineering at Zeek.
Erik Mathy
My name is Erik Mathy, and I’ve been a web applications developer for over 20 years. By way of background I’ve worked on everything from small, informational static marketing sites to enterprise level, SAAS, event registration and management systems used by multi-billion dollar media conglomerates. Prior to working at Pantheon, I was the Senior PHP Developer and Team Manager for the CMS Team at Techsoup Global, a multinational non-profit.
Jason Weisberger
Ben Cole
Coding Bootcamp Instructor at UCI, and Senior Web Developer at SLR Lounge
Verious B. Smith III
Verious Smith the Creative Director of Philoveracity Design, a firm that specializes in Brand Development with work that spans the scope of strategic planning to custom branded campaigns & clients that have included local & national start-ups to medium sized corporations.
He is a BFA VisCom Graduate and has a thorough command of Conceptual Communication with a myriad of mediums.
His current career focus is to build important new relationships while nurturing current connections by properly stewarding my God given time & talents.
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon is a professional educator, currently working with the JavaScript for WordPress Master Course. Previously, Zac taught WordPress for Treehouse. He has years of experience teaching WordPress and JavaScript at the college level and high school level. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, the world’s largest hosting company dedicated to students and teachers.
Colin Dowling
VP of Sales at Media Temple, Editor/Owner at “Sales For Web Pros”, formerly Enterprise Account Executive at WP Engine.
Scott Bolinger
Scott is co-founder of AppPresser.
Carrie Forde
Front-end architect focused on improving processes, writing better code, and bringing dev teams together. Works @webdevstudios. ❤️ cats, coffee, WordPress.
Adam Silver
Adam Silver is a native of Southern California, and is a serial entrepreneur. He currently provides WordPress development and support services through ConciergeWP.com, produces two weekly podcasts at KitchenSinkWP.com and The GetOptionsPodcast.com and runs the SouthBay WordPress Meetup. Additionally, he was and is the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles 2016 & 2017. In his free time, he speaks at industry events sharing his insights & expertise into all things digital. Has been married for 18 years to his amazing wife and has 3 wickedly cool kids.
Andy Fragen
Andy Fragen has been using WordPress since 2007 and in that time has become a proficient hacker, contributor, plugin developer, and hobbyist of WordPress.
He has several plugins in the Plugin Directory and has contributed to many others. His plugin contributions have been downloaded almost 500,000 times.
“WordPress provides a problem-solving sandbox that intrigues me and allows me a creative outlet from my normal job. I enjoy helping others and helping them find solutions to their problems.”
Some of his most popular plugins are The Events Calendar Category Colors and GitHub Updater.
Jason Bahl
I’m a Senior WordPress Engineer at Digital First Media in Denver, CO where I work on large publishing sites such as ocregister.com, twincities.com and denverpost.com.
Jason Cosper
Jason Cosper is currently employed as the Developer Advocate for WP Engine. Honestly, that’s just a fancy way of saying “I get paid to chat with people about WordPress.” Nice work if you can get it.
Jason spends a ton of time with his wife Sarah and two chihuahuas, Rowdy & Gomez. They watch a lot of bad TV, scary movies and premium cable programming. He also enjoys hanging out in musty record stores, drinking whiskey, smoking meats, and sampling craft beers.
Christina Hills
Christina Hills, the creator of the Website Creation Workshop , has been passionately teaching non-techie small business owners, entrepreneurs, authors, experts, coaches and consultants, how to easily create their websites in WordPress so that they can get their message out to the world. She has been running this WordPress training program to an international audience since 2008. She loves to teach WordPress as a creative way to get clarity on your business, your marketing, and your message. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Christina Hills worked as a digital artist for the network promotions division of NBC-TV, and then as a senior technical director in the Feature Film Division at George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic with film credits such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and ET the re-release, and more.
Roy Sivan
I have been using WordPress since the early days. Nowadays I’m a senior software developer that specializes in WordPress at Disney. I’m also socially awkward, but love when people say hi to me.
Yvonne Conway-Williams
Social Media Marketing, Cybersecurity & Web Development Consultant. Co-Founder/Partner of ParadoxPrime Information Assurance.