Author: Frank Corso

Introducing our final round of speakers

Posted on by Frank Corso

WordCamp Jacksonville is excited to announce our final set of confirmed speakers for this year’s conference!

If you missed our previous speaker announcements, check out our first round, second round, third round, and fourth round of speakers too!

James Tryon

James is lead ambassador of Wapu.us, founder of Easily Amused and BizTender. He is an organizer of WordCamp Orlando and the Orlando WordPress Meetup group. He been in the creative industry since 1998. James has an eye for design and usability along with the know-how to plan, design, and code it all. James is married with three children. When James is not working, he is finding something interesting to spark his creativity. An avid collector of random awesomeness and thrift-store artifacts, James is building something, playing with someting, or hanging with his friends and family.

David Wolfpaw

David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.

Mama Trish

Mama Trish is a musician, performer, and former festival organizer, who, after illness and injury, turned her talents to Self Care. She now shows others how to do the same, with no time, little money, and hella fun and creativity. She built her webpage, SelfCareCircus.com, to share all the things that make her happy and healthy.

Steve Schwartz

Steve is the owner of AVT Marketing in Charlotte, N. C. and has been a WordPress developer for over 10 years. After experiencing a hacked site in 2012 he became obsessed with website security and educating others on end-to-end online security. His teaching style is to simplify technical jargon to make it understandable for all end users. As an educator, he stresses the why and not just the what. He uses many stories in his teaching.

He is a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and is currently pursuing the Offensive Security Certified Professional certification (OSCP) through Kali Linux

 

Scott Mann

Scott is an Emmy-winning creative director, a business mentor, a board member for a number of regional non-profits, an SEO specialist, a certified Google Partner and a social impact advocate.

He founded Highforge in 2001 as a boutique digital agency with the purpose of helping good people grow good businesses online and beyond. Since then the agency has designed work for thousands of companies and helped clients reach millions of new viewers and customers. They build high-end brand identity and messaging guidelines, SEO, Google Ads and WordPress development and support.

He’s an avid sci-fi reader, racquetball player, and backpack traveler. He enjoys music festivals, tequila and loves promoting BeTheMatch.org to save lives.

Cate DeRosia

In 2015, Cate stepped into the WordPress community to investigate if it was possible to find work outside of development or design. She discovered that as WordPress usage increases and businesses grow, many jobs are opening up for people with soft business skills and/or a talent for content.

After test driving some of these options, she currently works editing and writing content and using her soft business skills to run operations at Pressware.

Beyond answering her questions and finding employment, she’s had the opportunity to meet some amazing people. Her commitment to community building has lead to being a co-organizer of the Grand Rapids meetup, regular WordCamp speaker, and the previous organizer for the 2018 and 2019 Grand Rapids (MI) WordCamps.

She has dedicated the last 20 years to family development and enjoys sports, exploring new places, and making pretty things, often with yarn. When she writes, you’ll find it at atypical.ink

Introducing our fourth round of speakers

Posted on by Frank Corso

WordCamp Jacksonville is excited to announce our fourth set of confirmed speakers for this year’s conference! Stay tuned for announcements about the rest of our speakers.

If you missed our previous speaker announcements, check out our first round, second round, and third round of speakers too!

Frank C Jones

Frank is the host of the WordPress Help Desk in RTP, organizer of the Raleigh SEO Meetup, founding member of the Triangle Wikipedians user group, and Marketing Director at OptSus Marketing. He has been building websites since 1995 and started using WordPress in 2008. The Learn-Do-Teach ethos and open knowledge are central to his work.

Aisha Adams

Aisha is the blogger behind NappyThoughts.com. Her written work has appeared in publications such as The Asheville Citizen-Times, The Asheville Grit, and WNC Woman Magazine. She is also the founder of Aisha Adams Media Group.

April Wier

April helps individuals and businesses become the best versions of themselves. This may come in the form of a new, or better, web site or coaching to break through self-imposed limitations. She specializes in helping high-performers reach their goals online. She is heavily involved in Atlanta WordPress community, as a co-organizer of the Woodstock WordPress Meetup and as a former organizer for WordCamp Atlanta. For fun, she runs the digital marketing company Sugar Five Design.

Topher DeRosia

Topher is a husband and father from Grand Rapids, Mich. He’s been a web developer since 1995 and a WordPress developer since 2010. Random fact: he’s met the guy that invented individually sliced Kraft cheese, AND wrote the Oscar Meyer wiener song (same guy).

Nick Freiling

Nick is a market research strategist and founder of PeopleFish. He helps startups and innovators use survey technology to understand their target markets. In 2018, his business surveyed consumers for over 40 clients. He has consulted on survey market research projects for Proctor & Gamble, Getaround, Bissell, University of South Florida, MIT-Sloan Business School, and dozens of startups around the world.

Nick is a long-time WordPress enthusiast and a top-performing market research analyst on Upwork, a global freelancing platform.

Christie Chirinos

Christie Chirinos is the Product Manager for the Managed WooCommerce Hosting product at Liquid Web, Inc. Before Liquid Web, she oversaw the growth of Caldera WP’s Caldera Forms plugin to 2 million+ downloads from the WordPress.org plugin repository. Christie started making websites at the age of 14, running her own blog, business websites, and later working professionally on the sites of major national non-profit organizations – on WordPress, of course. Christie has a Master of Business Administration degree from Florida State University and is currently based out of Washington, DC, where she lives with her cat, Snickers.

Chris Gregory

Chris founded DAGMAR Marketing and directs all of the agency’s SEO strategy development and implementation. He is a Certified Master SEO by Market Motive and OMCP. DAGMAR Marketing was recently honored by Search Engine Land with a Landy’s award for best local SEO initiative.

Chip Edwards

Teacher, Speaker, Designer, Technologist, and Founder of Create My Voice. Creator of multiple Amazon Alexa skills for well know podcasters and bloggers including Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast, BiggerPockets, History Unplugged, The Blind Blogger, and many others. Create My Voice is a SaaS company dedicated to helping content producers engage their audience in a Voice First, Smart Speaker world.

Tony D’Angelo

Tony was born and raised in Jacksonville. He is passionate about the local small business and tech communities. As a digital marketing specialist, He combines analytics with creativity to help businesses build an audience of raving fans and to build their business online. When he is not working on projects he enjoys obsessing over Jaguars football, cooking, video games, pondering the mysteries and wonder of the universe and finding the newest music.

Chris Edwards

Chris is co-owner of Data Driven Labs, a WordPress maintenance and marketing agency. He is a 19-year internet marketing veteran with experience in web design and development, search engine optimization, online marketing, social media marketing and mobile development. He specializes in WordPress custom development utilizing either Genesis framework or underscores and is very active in the Orlando WordPress community. Chris has held development and internet marketing positions in some of Orlando’s top technology companies.

Charles Johnston

Charles is a self-proclaimed digital ninja. Charles has a heart for nonprofits and small businesses that are doing good in their communities. Charles knew, after many mission trips, that he had to use his gifts, talents, and passion for technology for good. After spending many decades in the IT industry, he started a boutique web design agency, HeartWired Digital Solutions. It focuses on putting compassion back into technology.  HeartWired does not just offer web design services; it  provides web design and technology solutions with heart.

AJ Morris

AJ is a product manager at Liquid Web by day, site and store builder by night, AJ has spent the last decade building anything he can with WordPress. He spends most of his time focusing on helping small business build digital storefronts and web presence. He is devoted to his family and spending the weekends at the family cottage.

Jean Perpillant

Jean started Design Theory in late 2008. With a background in IT, Jean has found that web design is a wonderful way to unleash his creativity. He finds there is a great sense of fulfillment when a client is happy with a finished project—taking someone’s concepts and ideas and make them a reality. Jean loves to incorporate photography into his services.

Introducing our third round of speakers

Posted on by Frank Corso

Featured image showing the pictures for the 7 different speakers in the developer track.

WordCamp Jacksonville is excited to announce our third set of confirmed speakers for this year’s conference! Stay tuned for announcements about the rest of our speakers.

If you missed our previous speaker announcements, check out our first round and second round of speakers too!

Micah Wood

Micah, a professional WordPress developer for over a decade, has worked on sites for Fortune 100 companies and has released over a dozen WordPress plugins. He is a frequent speaker at WordCamps and a co-organizer of the WordPress Gwinnett meetup. Micah is a co-host on the WP Square One podcast and shares his knowledge by blogging on WordPress development topics.

Joshua Giowaya

Joshua is passionate about creating well-crafted, visually-engaging and highly-usable digital experiences. He has over ten years experience in web design and development at advertising and digital agencies. He also has run his own consultancy for many years. His experience in design has proven invaluable in developing designs and communicating with creative teams.

He is currently a WordPress consultant and extremely active in the WordPress community, regularly speaking at local WordPress Meetups.

David Zimmerman

David is an internet marketing consultant who specializes in search. He has several years of experience working with B2B companies, especially manufacturers. He started his own consultancy, Reliable Acorn LLC, after working in several agencies. David grew up in Wichita, Kansas as the son of an electrical engineer and an art teacher. He brings these dramatically different perspectives together to help his clients. This allows David to understand the technical and creative aspects to internet marketing. He is equally comfortable speaking with developers and designers. After several years of recommending WordPress to his clients, David eventually created his own theme. It was accepted into the WordPress Theme Directory.

Although not the most beautiful theme ever created, it taught him a lot about the platform and how to better work with WordPress websites. David’s core marketing belief is that all marketing should be measured. Measured marketing is more effective and less expensive. There’s no excuse, in David’s mind, for marketing efforts whose results are not measured. As a consultant, David is often hired to supplement existing marketing teams. Sometimes these companies aren’t as familiar with internet marketing. Other times these companies don’t have time to execute an internet marketing campaign.

David Zimmerman on LinkedIn

Reliable Acorn LLC

Tessa Kriesel

Teaching and mentorship come naturally to the dog-lover and Developer Outreach Manager at Pantheon. Tessa wears many hats in her life — all with sass and finesse — including instructor for Girl Develop It, lead organizer for WordCamp Minneapolis, and founder of Outspoken Women and Coders of TMRW.

Tessa has spoken on many topics including helping beginners with workflow, mentorship, configuration management, and shedding light on continuous integration and deployment. She has also been a panelist on a wide range of topics at Conferences and Meetups.

When Tessa isn’t working on her development chops or mentoring junior developers, she is using her extroverted super hero skills to make people feel welcome and included at whatever event she attends.

Ian Svoboda

Ian is the founder of TitanHost, a managed WordPress hosting company and a front-end developer at Oyova Software in Atlantic Beach. Ian has been working with WordPress for over five years, doing functional app and custom theme development. When Ian isn’t coding, he loves spending time with his wife, playing tabletop games, video games, and his guitar.

Twitter: @iansvo

Christie Chirinos

Christie Chirinos is the Product Manager for the Managed WooCommerce Hosting product at Liquid Web, Inc. Before Liquid Web, she oversaw the growth of Caldera WP’s Caldera Forms plugin to 2 million+ downloads from the WordPress.org plugin repository. Christie started making websites at the age of 14, running her own blog, business websites, and later working professionally on the sites of major national non-profit organizations – on WordPress, of course. Christie has a Master of Business Administration degree from Florida State University and is currently based out of Washington, DC, where she lives with her cat, Snickers.

Jonathan Brinley

Jonathan began tinkering with WordPress websites and plugins fourteen years ago, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the distributed team at Modern Tribe for the last nine years, and currently leads a team of developers to build delightful and creative solutions on top of the WordPress platform. When he’s not coding, Jonathan is busy homeschooling his two children and enjoying the beautiful weather of Northeast Florida.

http://xplus3.net/ • http://tri.be/ • http://flightless.us/

Scott Anderson

Scott founded a software development company, Get Code Smart. A developer by trade, he has had a passion for software and web development for over five years, most of which were spent working with WordPress. His primary focus is developing church-related software and websites ranging from e-commerce to online learning platforms.

Introducing our second round of speakers

Posted on by Frank Corso

WordCamp Jacksonville is excited to announce our second set of confirmed speakers for this year’s conference! Stay tuned for announcements about the rest of our speakers.

If you missed them, check out the first round of speakers too.

Charlene Bond

Charlene is from Nashville, Tennessee and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Digital Media Communications from Middle Tennessee State University. Charlene is Creative Director for Prolific Xpressionz, a small and growing digital firm helping businesses sustain, retain, and expand through web design, branding, and CRM. Charlene also specializes in Instructional Design, creating training material and learning experiences for departments and organizations.

Tom McCracken

Tom is a 20+ year web industry veteran. He has a blended background ranging across web development, UX, marketing, content strategy, data analysis, and agile project management. His passion is helping organizations leverage technology to drive measurable business impact.

Tom has consulted on over 100 interactive projects for organizations such as AT&T, U.S. Bank Corp, Simon & Schuster, IBM, Miami Dolphins, NEC, McDonald’s, SMU, Abbott Labs, Pratt & Whitney, ADP, E*TRADE, Nationwide Insurance, and Tektronics.

An avid open source contributor, he has built more than two dozen Drupal modules and WordPress plugins. Today, his core focus is developing results-oriented, data-driven tools to enable teams to deliver decisively better web experiences and ROI.

Mary Baum

Mary is the founder and principal of RacquetPress, a digital consultant to the tennis industry. Trained as a print designer before the web was born, She built her first site (wrong) in 1999 and started to learn real CSS and HTML in 2007—at the tender age of 47. Today she’s a big fan of design in the browser (after a few thumbnail sketches!) and all the modern CSS the browsers will support.

Also high on her list: rare steaks, homemade hot fudge sauce, happy cats, high backhand volleys, high-contrast serif type, the Genesis Framework, fighter jets from Boeing, several new (well, sorta-new) features in Illustrator, Atomic Blocks for Gutenberg and the ad court.

Young McQueen

Young’s experience is fashioned from his education (chemical engineering and marketing) and employment in large companies in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He has worked as a marketing director in the consumer goods industry, taught marketing at a local university and worked as a gemologist and small business developer mostly in the pre-internet era. Now retired, he concentrates on photography and WordPress (as hobbies).

Joseph LoPreste

Joe, a St Petersburg, Fla. native, is co-owner of St. Pete. Design. He brings over 10 years business and technology experience to the team. With St. Pete Design he has the opportunity to combine his passion for business and his obsession with pushing technology beyond its limits.

“If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” This is how he feels about software development. He gets to wake up every day to a new set of challenges and the opportunity to solve these challenges with new and unique solutions. One of his favorite things in business is the feeling of satisfaction that he gets when the team is able to successfully create or do something that others said could not be done.

He has two amazing daughters Mekenzie and Kennedie who have taught him what’s important in life. They bring balance to him and his life/work ratio. Joe brings the mindset that as a company we should cultivate creativity and individuality so that allows us to create solutions at the highest levels while still loving what we do.