She started making websites when she was 12, but never imagined she’d end up in the digital strategy business. Says Nathalie, “I was blogging online before ‘blogs’ or WordPress were even on the scene. As soon as WordPress was available I loved it and have built all of my sites on it ever since.”

Nathalie Lussier is an award-winning entrepreneur. She graduated with a degree in Software Engineering and a job offer from Wall Street. In a gutsy move, she turned down this job to start her own business right out of college. Now running a highly profitable software and training company, Nathalie helps thousands of people all over the world get techy with it. She’s been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Venture Beat, Mashable, Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, and Under 30 CEO.

Nathalie says she went down the corporate path and turned back, and sometimes felt like going back to square one. But now she knows she’s exactly where she was meant to be.

Nathalie has been blogging for over 14 years, and really ‘gets’ the online marketing landscape. She recently partnered with her husband to launch AmbitionAlly, which creates WordPress tools for driven and design-oriented entrepreneurs. They include the polite PopupAlly plugin for WordPress with exit intent options.

We can’t wait to hear Nathalie’s perspectives on how our career paths can take us in fascinating and unexpected directions, as they spiral ever upward.

Follow Nathalie on Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Facebook and her website.

Mike Stewart is president and founder of Soundpages Inc., a complete multimedia production facility located in the Atlanta area of Georgia, USA. Mike has composed countless radio jingles, television scores, and produced or performed on music heard all over the world. He has worked with world famous musicians such as Tommy Roe, Joe South, The Shirelles, William Bell (Georgia Hall of Fame Recipient), Isaac Hayes, Eddie Floyd, Bertie Higgins, and Bill Anderson: The list goes on and on of Georgia performers who’s who. He owned and operated a recording studio for over twenty years working in all facets of digital audio and video.

In 1996, Mike became passionate about the future of the Internet and how small businesses could benefit from the web if they just understood how to make it work for their company. He saw how the broadcast of audio and video information on a website was no different than the television/radio industry he had been a part of all his life.

Since that time, he has become very successful consulting with small business owners on how to set up their worldwide TV stations and broadcast their unique marketing message to the world.

WCATL 2015 Session – iPad Video Blogging

Why video blogging is so powerful for relationship building, and how easy it is to embed video in WordPress.

I demonstrate the top 10 video apps that make incredible video content with your iPad and give resources for accessories that vastly improve the quality of your videos. Plus case studies of successful bloggers who turn viewers into customers.

John is a hacker, writer, and lover of all things 8-bit. His first project of note was a “Choose Your Own Adventure” quest in BASIC when he was 11. He grew up (a bit) and has since worked as an engineer and executive for Fortune 50 companies and has exited a handful of bootstrapped and VC-funded startups.

He serves as partner and the head of people development and growth at The Iron Yard. At night he works on his small app called Desk.

WCATL 2015 Session – Spinach in Your Teeth? Rapid Fire Website Critiques
Panel Presentation with Judi Knight, Jenny Munn and David Laietta

Join us and find out best practices for home page content and design. If you’d like to get some feedback, this is the place for you. Be prepared to give us your website URL and we will tell you like it is!

Micah is a consultant and web developer from Atlanta, GA who is committed to continuously improving his understanding of WordPress and sharing his insights with the greater WordPress community. He has worked on WordPress projects for brands like Dell, Orkin and Coca-Cola and is a Co-Organizer of the Atlanta WordPress Coder’s Guild and an Assistant Organizer of the WordPress Gwinnett meetup groups. Micah is an avid WordPress plugin developer and is a frequent speaker at various WordCamps across the southeast. He also occasionally blogs about WordPress and other web development topics.

WCATL 2015 Session – The WordPress IDE: PHPStorm

PhpStorm is a cross-platform, IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that delivers a deep integration with WordPress. Come learn how to:

• Navigate WordPress core like a pro
• Automatically format your code according to WordPress coding standards
• Automatically scan your code for issues
• Utilize advanced debugging capabilities
• Integrate with tools like Git, Vagrant, Composer, PHPUnit and WP-CLI
• Easily Test REST APIs
• Directly integrate with your bug tracking system