Jenny Munn
Jenny Munn is an SEO Consultant who provides organic SEO audits, training, and consulting services to in-house marketers and small to mid-sized organizations in Atlanta and across the country. Her love of WordPress began in 2009 as she began building her own brand and helping clients write copy for their sites and strategize how to better drive website traffic uses organic search engine optimization. She is an ardent supporter of WordPress and has attended and spoken at 7 different WordCamps and has taught SEO at EdNet, Digital Atlanta, SuperNova South, Solo PR Summit, Business Marketing Association, Atlanta Tech Village, PRSA, and various content marketing and social media organizations. Find out more at http://jennymunn.com/.
Tom Nguyen
Tom Nguyen runs Mr. Technique, an online marketing company that focuses on promoting small businesses in the Atlanta area. He started working as a freelance web designer as a part-time gig in 2002. In 2011, he began using WordPress for his company’s website as well as his clients’ websites. WordPress allowed him to do much more with websites in much less time. During this same time period, he began focusing on improving his SEO skills. As a result of using WordPress and improving his SEO skills, his company has gone from being unknown on the internet to being on the first page of all major search engines for Atlanta Web Design and Local SEO related keywords. Mr. Technique is located in the West Midtown Atlanta neighborhood.
Tom is not just a web designer but an online marketer who offers Web Design, Local SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Hosting, and even Reputation Management services. His company’s Pinterest Divi WordPress Theme Inspiration Board is also found at the top of Google when searching for “Divi WordPress theme inspiration”.
Mickey Mellen
Mickey is the Technical Director at GreenMellen Media and runs the monthly “All Things WordPress” meetup in Marietta. He’s been using WordPress for well over a decade, and has helped build hundreds of WordPress-powered sites over the years. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn, among others.
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) – Keynote Speaker
Mika Ariela Epstein is better known as Ipstenu, the Half-Elf Rogue. Working for DreamHost, specializing in WordPress hosting (aka ‘WordPress Guru’), Mika helps make WordPress and hosting better for everyone. When she isn’t reviewing plugins she’s helping in the support forums and speaking at WordCamps worldwide about code and open source technology. 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.
Julien Melissas
Rich Robinkoff
Rich is a WordPress community advocate that speaks at and organizes WordCamps and WordPress meetups. He also helps other organizers as a WordCamp Central Community Deputy. He recently started writing about the people of the WordPress community at WP Ambassador in an effort to keep people connected. When the opportunity arises, he also teaches web development at his local community college. Be sure to connect with Rich on Twitter @rkoffy.
Carel Bekker
Carel is the owner of ClickHOST.com. “We love to educate our customers on how to get the most out of their websites; including how to use mobile websites to generate more leads, more business, and ultimately more profits for their businesses.” They specialize in WordPress friendly hosting and many other web hosting services.
PS: Fun facts about Carel
- Born in South Africa, and now a US Citizen.
- Speaks 3 languages, English, Afrikaans, and German.
- Lived and worked in South Africa, Germany, and now the US.
AJ Morris
I’m a Product Manager for Liquid Web, a fully managed hosting company. I work on various WordPress products and initiatives focusing on open-source, community, and spreading the love of WordPress. I have been involved with the WordPress community since 2006, working with theme and plugin companies in support and project management positions. In my spare time I love to travel and spend time with my lovely wife.
Nathan Ingram
Nathan specializes in building easy-to-use web sites that help small businesses, professional firms, and nonprofit organizations look great on the web.
He is a regular instructor at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress, Web Design, and Freelance Business Development via live webinars.
He also works with web developers individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their freelance businesses.
Angelica Yarde
Angelica Yarde is the co-founder of Sevenality, a brand strategy agency, located in Orlando, Florida. She is also the owner of Studio 404 Paper and co-host of the Heart + Hustle Podcast. She has been a WordPress user for over a decade and is passionate about helping brands achieve their goals using design and user-experience based solutions. She helps out with the WordPress Orlando meetup group and enjoys being a type snob.
Scott Mann
Scott is from Orlando, FL where he founded Highforge, a digital services agency focused on solving complex business growth problems ranging from web design to Google strategy to balloon animal protection services. He’s been managing high-end WordPress projects since 2006. In his free time he’s a marketing strategist, SEO and PPC guy. He loves to solve problems, make clients happy and help creatives achieve their destinies. He digs racquetball, backpacking, and a non-profit called Be the Match that helps save lives. Ask him why.
Rich Owings
An Internet marketer since 2005, Rich Owings sold his tech blog in 2014 and now spends his time helping businesses improve their online presence. Rich is co-organizer of WordCamp Asheville and the WordPress Asheville Meetup group. In his spare time he likes to mountain bike, hike, garden and listen to music.
Frank Corso
Frank has been working with WordPress since 2009 and is the founder and CEO of My Local Webstop where he develops Quiz And Survey Master, the highest rated quiz and survey plugin in the WordPress.org repository. He is an organizer of the Gainesville WordPress Meetup and the lead organizer of this year’s WordCamp Jacksonville.
In his spare time, he is the host of The WP Report which is a podcast about improving your WordPress site. He loves to blog and speak about WordPress, Marketing, and Business. Above all else, he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter.
Micah Wood
Micah is a WordPress developer and architect who is committed to continuously improving his understanding of WordPress and sharing his insights with the greater WordPress community. He currently works at Narwhal Digital on WordPress projects for enterprise clients and helps organize the Atlanta WordPress Coder’s Guild and WordPress Gwinnett Meetup groups. Micah is an avid WordPress plugin developer and occasionally blogs about WordPress and other web development topics.
Mitch Canter
Mitch Canter is a WordPress designer and developer from Nashville, TN. With over 10 years experience working with WordPress, Mitch strives to find innovative and unique ways to utilize WordPress to help people tell their story online. He has developed themes, plugins, edited Books, created podcasts, and recorded video tutorials on the inner workings of WordPress.
David Laietta
David Laietta is an organizer of WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando. He has been using WordPress for nearly eight years now, and builds custom themes and plugins for clients. David is a co-founder of Dinosaur Iceberg, a creative agency based in Orlando. In addition to WordPress, David is passionate about open source software, online freedoms, internet culture, and constantly learning about the world. He looks forward to chatting with you at WordCamp or on Twitter @davidlaietta.
Matt Cheney
Matt Cheney is a long time web developer who has implemented several decoupled CMS solutions using AngularJS and Backbone. He is also the co-founder of Pantheon which provides WordPress hosting.
Melanie G. Adcock
Melanie G. Adcock has been a full-time freelance website designer since 2010 and been involved in the local WordPress community since 2012. She has presented at WordCamp Atlanta and the Atlanta Meetup group and loves helping others getting started in their freelance careers.
Before pursuing a full-time freelance career Melanie was an Art/Computer teacher, I.T. Director, and Apple At Home Expert. She lives in Newnan with her husband Jay and too many cats.
David Brumbaugh
David, a Web Engineer with 10 Up and a WordPress core contributor (v 4.5) is a long time software engineering professional and author, who has been involved in Internet development since 1994.
Before focusing on WordPress, David wore many hats. He was the Director of IT and Software Engineering for an international health insurance company where he created and maintained a web based health insurance enrollment system. As Chief of South Eastern Operations for an international IT consulting firm, he had to “MacGyver together” a network out of old parts so that his client could locate missing cargo vessels in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In that position, he also provided testimony as an expert witness in Federal court, weighing in on alleged software copyright infringement.
David has also worked as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies in the manufacturing and insurance industries. When he repaired a legacy inventory and ordering system for a major greeting card company just before one of their biggest sales days, he became known as, “The Programmer who Saved Mother’s Day”.
His professional writing has been published by SitePoint, Microsoft, Dice, C/C++ User’s Journal, PC Techniques and John Wiley & Sons.
David has four major game titles to his credit as an artificial intelligence and physics simulation programmer: NFL Full Contact Football, Indy Racing – Road to the Indianapolis 500, Jeff Gordon XS Racing and Centipede 3D. Lest his “Geek Cred” be remotely in doubt, he has also been published in Dragon magazine.
During his time as the Web Development Community Guide for DICE, he was impressed with the elegance of WordPress not only as a publishing tool, but as a web application platform. Before joining 10up, David worked as Chief Software Architect for a web services company specializing in SaaS eCommerce, where he created a plugin that integrated his company’s eCommerce services with WordPress.
Kathy Drewien
Best known for teaching beginners how to use WordPress in the Meetup she has facilitated since 2011, (and self-proclaimed WordCamp Queen of Registration for 6 years), Kathy is the Executive Producer of Kathy Drewien & Company, a web development firm offering WordPress services for creatives, bloggers, consultants, and coaches with bold dreams.
Kathy is a professionally trained listener skilled in helping business owners grow. And, she loves to talk!
You can find her on Twitter and Slack channels for the make.wordpress.org Community and Training teams.
Aaron Reimann
Born and raised in Atlanta, Aaron is one of the co-founders of Sideways 8 and the lead geek on most projects. His background is all over the place—built first computer at age 12, started first job as a 3D animator in high school, designed first website in 1996, on and off did web design and I.T. support.
Aaron started developing a while back, but in 2001 is when he first started actually writing code that was dynamic. From that point on he has been a huge fan of building things that make sites “do stuff” instead of a just a static page. He is an active contributor to the WordPress project as co-organizer of the first Atlanta WordPress Meetup, a frequent WordCamp speaker, and plugin developer.
Judi Knight
Judi Knight is the founder and chief at New Tricks Web Design. Not your typical web designer, Judi brings an unusual wealth of experience to her work, with her background as a Ph.D. Psychologist, CEO of a software company and artist; resulting in an emphasis on psychology, technology and design in creating websites.
Judi is a lead organizer of the Atlanta WordPress Users Group with over 2,500 members, has been on the organizing committee for WordCamp Atlanta for five years, is a national speaker, blogs, and publishes Just a Digital Minute newsletter each and every Wednesday morning.
Judi’s Motto is “It’s Never too Late” …to start a new business, to have a great website, or learn to leverage new technologies to grow your company. Keep in touch @judiknight
Melissa Eggleston
I’m a content strategist and user experience specialist on a mission to connect people through the web. I work for non-profits, businesses, and universities who need user-friendly websites with memorable content. I also consult for website development firms when they have clients who require content or user experience expertise. Sometimes I give talks on how to improve websites.
I have experience and training in these areas:
- content strategy
- usability and user experience design
- photography and video
- writing and editing
- graphic design
When I’m not working, I like to be outside or on my yoga mat as much as possible. You can often find me with my two favorite people in the world – my husband Josh and my daughter Parker.
Cliff Seal
Mallie Hart
After graduating from college with a degree in history (medieval history at that), I tackled a variety of jobs, from selling garbage (recycled fibers), to selling pork bellies (as a licensed commodities broker).
I decided to step away from finance to focus on my love of creative work in 1998. Except for a brief stint as a webmaster at a TV news station around 2008, I haven’t looked back since.
My diverse background fuels what I do. Digital marketing requires me to research (I was a history major), write about and promote a wide variety of topics and ideas, while staying true to brand integrity. Leveraging the power of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ , Pinterest and Instagram to create powerful and engaging marketing campaigns for businesses large and small makes me ding-danged happy.
When I’m not busy with Go Creative Go!, I’ve been known to devour books, smash a little yellow ball on clay and hard courts, and seek out the newest, edgiest music; all while drinking a lot of coffee.
Brian Richards
Brian is the creator of WPSessions.com and a Senior Solutions Specialist with Crowd Favorite. He has been using WordPress since 2007 (version 2.3). Over these last several years Brian has had the opportunity to work with many amazing WordPress experts and agencies and help develop sites for Microsoft, Disney, TIME, YMCA, and numerous others. Brian has an affinity for self-directed learning and helping others develop skills and workflows to better solve important and complicated problems.
Zachary Skaggs
Zach is a customer service student and the ‘Director of Happiness’ at The WP Ninjas. After studying information systems and business in college, Zach went on to work in IT related customer service in production environments including Olin Chemical, Volkswagen, most recently as a as a Technical Support Engineer with Amazon. A relative newcomer to the WordPress world, he draws heavily from his experiences and influences managing support in high stakes production environments and applies those lessons in a universal support methodology to decrease support load, manage support workflows, and maintain customer happiness.
Val Hudgins
Before WordPress, Valerie’s career was in technical writing and project management. Her education is in business (UCF) and marketing (GSU). She’s owned three successful businesses in the last twenty years and taught classes to small businesses for four years at the Small Business Development Center (SBDC). She holds eight patents in digital video hardware and software while designing the cable set-top box UI and worked on the first DVR. Fun stuff! So, it was inevitable – her love of all things geeky and tech combined with her education and small business experience and led to the internet. Now she operates Zen Dog Web Services to help small businesses make the most of the massive virtual connectivity available to them through a WordPress website.
Lew Ayotte
Lew has been a Server Administrator and PHP developer for over a decade. In May of 2013, he joined the iThemes team as a plugin developer working on iThemes Exchange and iThemes Sync. He lives on a small farm in a small town in Georgia with his wife, three kids, and a growing number of animals (25 and counting). Apart from coding, he enjoys hanging out with his family, eating delicious foods, tending to his farm, and listening to podcasts. He dislikes illogical arguments, laugh tracks, and corporatocracies.
Tamil Periasamy
I’m a front-end WordPress Developer who utilizes the power of JavaScript towards making dynamic plugins, themes, and websites. I’ve worked on projects with Coca-Cola and Dell; with the former, I’ve optimized SVG animations for their welcome pages. I’m also the Assistant Coordinator for the WordPress Coder’s Guild meetup. I view JavaScript as the “perfect merge” between the technical and design sides of web development (the “right-brain/left-brain” balance so to speak). Special thanks to Micah Wood and Mike Schinckel for their mentorship, guidance, and believing in me. Connect with me via www.linkedin.com/in/tsperiasamy or on Twitter @tsperiasamy.
Rachel Carden
Rachel Carden is a web developer and designer for the University of Alabama and founder of WPCampus, a community and conference focused on using WordPress in the world of higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the world of higher ed web, she’s a theme and plugin developer who enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage collaboration and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.
Shayda Torabi
Shayda Torabi is a storyteller, digital marketer, and has been to more WordCamps than she has fingers. WordPress is her platform of choice, and she uses it daily at WP Engine as a part of their Marketing team. In her free time runs an almost famous food blog called www.dinewithshayda.com. She calls Austin, Texas home and wants to be your friend on Twitter @shaptora and talk about travel, WordPress and other interesting stories.
Nancy Thanki
Nancy Thanki is a photographer, filmmaker, and Happiness Engineer. Whether she is tinkering on the web or editing a film, she’s enjoys introducing users and storytellers to visual design and how to avoid the pitfalls of “en vogue” to create products that can withstand the test of rising and falling fashions in typography, photography, moving images, and design.
Naomi C. Bush
Naomi’s been working with WordPress as a professional developer since 2005, and today builds products that allow WordPress users to create the perfect system for running their business, instead of forcing their business to fit inflexible and bloated software. She specializes in customizing form builders to deliver powerful and precise WordPress-based business tools, which started with her flagship product: Gravity Forms + Stripe.
She contributes back to the WordPress project through the core code, the codex documentation, free plugins, organizing the WordPress Gwinnett developer meetup, and speaking at WordCamps.
Daniel Espinoza
Daniel has been building ecommerce plugins and sites since 2007. He built the first commercial plugin for WooCommerce in 2011 and has built dozens of plugins since then.
Daniel runs Grow Development an ecommerce consultancy, and Shop Plugins a commercial plugin shop. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and three kids.
Evan Volgas
Licensed Caffeine Therapist and Data Geek. Huge lover of dogs, tea, coffee, and cantaloupe. Wanders on purpose. Often gets lost while driving.
Adam Walker
I’m a husband, father of 5, and digital agency founder / owner, so I have crazy days and the kids keep me busy too. I’m a digital media strategist at heart, though I have background in design and development as well. I have been working with WordPress since 2005 and started an agency dedicated to custom WordPress design and development in 2010. We have worked on sites for everything from a Sewing Machine Store to a fortune X computer company (guess if you like). I love to speak at WordCamps and Meetups and geek out talking about digital marketing strategy.
Jason Coleman
Jason is co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress and Lead Developer of Paid Memberships Pro, the 100% open source membership plugin for WordPress. He has been pushing WordPress to its limits for many years and is an advocate for using WordPress as an application framework to build web sites and apps that go above and beyond the typical blog of CMS site. Jason works out of his home in Reading, Pennsylvania where he lives with his business partner and wife Kimberly Coleman and their two small children.
Ben Stoffel-Rosales
Ben is a Midwest dude with a Westcoast lifestyle. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in Journalism, Spanish and Rhetoric, he took a wrong turn somewhere and found himself in San Francisco working at a technology company. He works with awesome WordPress and Drupal agencies, and also codes very mediocrely in Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, and more. Talk to him about open source, travel, beer, or books.
Shelly Peacock
Shelly Peacock, @Spinbird, has been in sales and graphic design since 2001, moving focus to include Social Media Management in 2007. She built her first WordPress site in 2009- as a way to make my designs “do stuff”, and as a portfolio for her art business. Shucked it all to run SpinBird Group, a WordPress consulting and design business. She likes short walks on the beach, cabanas, and shooting opossums off her back deck with her shotgun. Mantra: Life is short- GET #FIERCE WITH IT.
Tom Tortorici
As an agency creative director years ago, Tom wanted to dig deeper into how buyers and sellers interacted in the real world. So he began paying very close attention to his own reaction to websites and other marketing media; for example, what caught his eye (or didn’t), and what happened next (if anything). It soon became clear how much marketing was falling flat by starting with the clients’ sensibilities instead of the customers’ sensibilities. The insights that Tom stumbled across have since been shared in the classes he’s taught, including strategic copywriting, graphic design, and website marketing.
Web: TomTortorici.com E-book: goo.gl/Qcstiq Twitter: @tom_tortorici
Lisa Melegari
A professional web content writer and social media manager, Lisa got sucked into the world of WordPress by her “brother”, David Laietta, back in 2009. Since then, she’s picked up some knowledge of the platform, but more importantly, embedded herself in the Orlando WordPress scene as a Meetup and WordCamp organizer. This year, she’ll be the lead organizer of WordCamp Orlando 2016. When she’s not organizing WordPress events, she’s working from her home in Deltona with her 11 cats or bringing homemade baked goods to David at his office space in Downtown Orlando.
Kate Newbill
Kate Newbill is a WordPress ninja and Business mastermind. Where some build sites, she silently destroys floating divs. Where some do Content Marketing, Ms Newbill plots global domination. Hire Kate and you won’t have to hire anyone else ever again.
Nicky Pink
Starting her career as a Print Graphic Designer over 15 years ago, Nicky Pink is a Brand Specialist and Website Designer and Developer who has worked exclusively with WordPress since 2009. Along with being certified in life coaching and event planning, Nicky’s skills in design and development provide the perfect outlet for her left brain / right brain balance.
Raised a Yooper in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Nicky lived in New York for 20 years before landing in the Atlanta area just over a year ago. The WordPress community was the first group of people she met upon arriving and has continued to be a constant source of inspiration and support with some becoming very good friends.
Currently, Nicky is launching a Branding Masterclass and writing a book between speaking engagements. When she’s not in the digital world, she enjoys movies, road trips with her teenage daughter, Eva, and hiking with her Goldendoodle, Kevin. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and on her website, Nicky Pink & Co.
Brian M Hilliard
Brian Hilliard is a popular speaker and author of the best-selling book Networking Like a Pro!
As creator of the popular program “How to Market Your Business in less than 90 Days” Brian specializes in showing busy entrepreneurs how to get more leads and close more deals.
Some of Brian’s work has appeared nationally in Black Enterprise and the Martha Zoller Morning Show – where his interview was broadcast to over 2 million listeners.
When not traveling and speaking at his popular ClientBuilder Networking Events, Brian enjoys playing golf, basketball and spending time with his wife and their dog Barley.
For More Info: www.BrianHilliard.com
Russell Fair
I’m a web developer and K-8 technology instructor and tinkerer. Outside of technology, I enjoy many outdoor activities including, soccer, geocaching, camping, boating, and more.
Michael Earley
Michael Earley got hooked by WordPress when he realized he could actually make a good living with it. When Michael isn’t tinkering with graphics and code he spends his time playing basketball, taking photographs, and using his degree in audio engineering to create crazy good digital sounds. Michael is also a regular speaker at WordPress events and enjoys training people on everything WordPress.
Tom McFarlin
I’m a self-employed WordPress developer who specializes in building custom solutions for clients using WordPress. This includes custom plugins, theme development, and application development.
I also work closely with Envato as the Tuts+ Code editor, in which I also regularly contribute tutorials and screencasts about WordPress for the site.
I blog regularly about WordPress development, tangential topics, and self-employment on my blog at TomMcFarlin.com
A longer version of all of the above can be found here: https://tommcfarlin.com/about/
Kyle Bowman
Kyle is co-founder of Evermore, a turnkey WordPress platform for small businesses and nonprofits. His responsibilities include customer education, customer support, and sales.
Kyle is passionate about teaching customers how to use their websites to build the lives they would like and accomplish their dreams.