Sayers of Sooth – Round 3 of Speakers

Blog, Speakers

Embrace the elements of the open source code and community as you settle in to hear the tales of these battle-worn players. The year two thousand eighteen marks the passage of five thousand  four hundred and seventy five days of WordPress and the vast expertise offered by these speakers serves to enlighten and inspire. Please join us in their welcome to the stage.

Find Mastery with Our Final Round of Minstrels :

Joe A Simpson Jr

Joe A. Simpson, Jr. is a Front-End Web Developer and Graphic Designer specializing in WordPress solutions. During days he works at a top-five transit agency, fighting the good fight to ease the commute around Los Angeles County. When their lead developer and CSS specialist both left to pursue other opportunities, Joe inherited a Headway-themed design (sans child theme) and the rest is history ten years later with a blog network consisting of dozen project-specific or transit news sites. Toastmaster ATM Silver; actively contributes the Community, founding the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup in hopes of hosting WordCamp SCV in the town centre. Volunteer at WordCamps (WCLAX 2017).

Michelle Rodriguez

Michelle Rodriguez is the chapter leader of Girl Develop It in Orange County, California where she teaches introductory and advanced classes as a front-end developer. She’s a lover of the WordPress Community, a member of Women Who WP, and a social media ninja. Michelle handled the marketing for Girl Develop It in Los Angeles as well as teaching intro to web concepts classes. Michelle believes in mentorships and strives to model for others that coding can still be a passion even when it’s not your career.

She had a moment of inspiration more than 5 years ago when she happened upon an HTML tutorial that changed her life. Having no previous knowledge of coding or even a desire to develop websites, she navigated through the tutorial out of curiosity. The moment she saw “Hello World!” display in her browser she was hooked. As a lifelong learner herself, she is certified by Lynda.com in Advanced Custom Fields and Creating Custom Plugins with PHP and continues to teach herself.

When Michelle is not freelancing in website development, she is perfectly happy being an introvert and, as she says, “silently judging since 1986.” She definitely will make you laugh with her friendly snark and wit.

Check her out on Twitter and say hi at @itsthebangs.

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.

Jamie Schmid

Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, she has been working as a WordPress freelancer and consultant since 2012, regularly taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content. She has a background in Information Architecture and Content Strategy, enthusiasm for all things WordPress, and a whole lot of cats back home in Portland, OR. In her role as SiteLock WordPress Evangelist Jamie helps build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.

David Blackmon

David Blackmon is the co-founder of Aspen Grove Studios and a partner at Divi Space, two leading WordPress and Divi development companies that specialize in custom web design and product development of WordPress themes and plugins. David is also the co-host of the daily WP The Podcast show and also heads up another weekly podcast, Divi Chat. A digital nomad through and through, David travels the country in his 38′ RV, working from remote locations where he enjoys hiking, campfires and spending time in nature.

Jan Cavan Boulas

Jan is a designer and illustrator whose work has been featured in several publications online and offline. When not trying to help make the Web a better place, she can be found taking off on an impulse adventure, experimenting in the kitchen, or playing badminton. She is currently a Product Designer at Automattic, makers of WordPress.

Aaron D. Campbell

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.

Eric Debelak

Eric Debelak has been creating WordPress sites for over 10 years. He is currently a co-founder and senior developer at 11 Online, a full service digital agency in Albuquerque, NM. At 11 Online, Eric works with a variety of technology, including React.js, Python, Laravel, Android and of course WordPress. Eric also previously taught full-stack web development at Central New Mexico Community College’s STEMulus Center.

Robert W Price

Executive Director: Global Entrepreneurship Institute. We are the Trusted Source For Educating and Supporting over 500,000 Entrepreneurs in 195 Countries. Founded in 1996 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, our Mission is to spread wealth creation around the world by encouraging entrepreneurship and sharing knowledge to those who educate and support entrepreneurs. We put “global” in global entrepreneurship. Using our exclusive “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Success” we have helped entrepreneurs raise over $100 million.
Learn more at https://news.gcase.org/robert-w-price/

Joshua Wold

As a designer turned Product Owner, Joshua has worked on a range of WordPress website projects over the years. Currently he is enjoying the opportunity to help define requirements for enterprise level WordPress sites. This gives Joshua the opportunity to have regular interaction with Content Producers, as well as amazing engineering teams. He applies his design background to many of the tickets he’s working on, sketching wireframes and creating prototypes to help bring the tickets to life for their clients.

Mike Karikas

Grand Poobah of Technology and co-founder of Neutrino, Inc, creating fancy custom real estate websites for 12 years now. I have a love/hate relationship with WordPress but there is a lot of love.

Bernard Ablola

Bernard Ablola a managing partner at Think Strategy, a marketing and communications firm, located in Irvine, CA. Think Strategy focuses on B2B sales development for enterprise level clients. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of Growth Marketing and WordPress.

Prior to his role at Think Strategy, Bernard managed over $25MM+ in search and display advertising for Microsoft’s premier clients.

He is an active board member for Holistic Life Foundation, Inc., a Baltimore based nonprofit, that teaches over 7,500+ children nationwide, the practice of mindfulness and yoga.

He received his BA from University of Baltimore and his MBA from Seattle University. On the weekends, you can find him hiking or skateboarding through SoCal, walking his Pomsky (Google it) or finding THE spiciest Asian food in the city. He is an avid traveler, visiting art galleries around the world, 8 countries in the last 12 months. Some of his favorite places include the Philippines, Hungary and Vienna. When in Asia, he highly recommends NOT eating the ice.

About Jen Miller

Jen Miller has spent a lifetime deep in the content trenches - more than 25 years - publishing everything from newspapers, magazines, and books to newsletters, emails, resumes, and websites. As the author of The Book on Content, entrepreneur, blogger, and sales and marketing expert, Jen understands how to use content to build authority, create trust, and forge lasting client relationships. Jen became known in the WordPress world as her company, Need Someone To Blog, published and promoted more than a million blog posts for companies and individuals representing many industries, from real estate and mortgage, executive coaching and leadership, health and fitness, construction, plumbing and air conditioning, insurance and finance, technology and start-ups to non-profits and artisans. Jen has a breadth of website content and business blogging knowledge you will not find elsewhere. Jen launched a course entitled "Create Great Content" in 2015, where she taught clients how to get the same results her company produced for their clients. She has spoken at many WordCamps and, in 2021, began sharing her knowledge as an adjunct faculty member at four universities. Professionally, as Director of Accounts at WebDevStudios, she helps clients find success through WordPress website enterprise solutions. Jen lives just outside of Phoenix, AZ, with her two teen sons and Goldendoodle dog and says she uses her college degree every day, having graduated from CSU, Long Beach, with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies, an option in Music and a minor in Journalism. She also earned a Master of Science in Management and Leadership (MSML) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Western Governors University and is working on a Ph.D. in Business at the University of the Cumberlands. Jen Miller is an active volunteer with her church and other non-profits in her area and has served as an organizer for WordCamp Phoenix, believing that the key to providing value is learning and sharing with her community.