Speakers

Al Davis

When not at his day job in the hosting industry, Al teaches WordPress at a Toronto, Ont college and also does corporate WordPress training. As a freelance web developer, he is always busy building sites on the WordPress platform. All this leaves him very little time to ride his Harley and watch NFL football.

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Andrew Nacin

Bio TBA

Bradley Jacobs

Bradley is a web developer at Oomph, Inc. In addition to his regular duties triaging tickets, he coordinates internal training sessions for his fellow developers. Career development is a major priority to him. When Bradley is not breaking his development environment playing with new software, he can generally be found reading, eating sushi, or discussing the finer points of Transformers continuity.

Brennen Byrne

Brennen Byrne is the founder and CEO of Clef, a new identity company with the mission of replacing less secure usernames and passwords with mobile cryptography. Brennen is an active speaker with experience in user authentication, data protection and cryptographic digital identity protection solutions. Clef is located in San Francisco, CA and is privately funded company.

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Casie Gillette

Casie Gillette is the Director of Online Marketing at KoMarketing Associates, a B2B Internet Marketing firm based in Boston, MA. She has been in the search industry for eight years, working on both the agency side and in-house. Casie has been responsible for developing and implementing online marketing strategies for both small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. Casie regularly speaks about search, social, content, and branding and can be found writing for various marketing publications. She is enormously passionate about marketing and will freely admit to being a nerd for loving the internet so much.

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Chris Ferdinandi

Chris Ferdinandi is a web designer and front-end developer in Franklin, MA. He’s responsible for learning innovation and technology at EMC Corporation, a Fortune 200 tech firm. He’s also the web developer for PAWS New England, a fantastic animal rescue organization.

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Christina Inge

Christina Inge is a digital marketing executive who’s been using marketing metrics to drive conversions for a decade. She’s author of the upcoming book, Web Analytics and Site Optimization for WordPress, and blogs and writes frequently on digital marketing strategy, web analytics, and social media. She served several terms on the board of the American Marketing Association, where she has been both VP of Programming-Education and VP of Social Media. Her areas of focus include bridging the gap between traditional and online marketing, developing cohesive strategies that bring together multiple digital channels, and building social organizations.

Christopher Cochran

Chris has been designing and engineering WordPress-centric solutions for years. A true Design Engineer to his core, Chris is the guy that picks out typefaces in the real world. He has taken college courses in Illustration and Graphic Design, and has a minor in psychology. Chris believes that design is tactile; in fact, he still starts his designs with paper and pencil. When he is not designing or developing, he can often be found doodling in a sketchbook, playing music (he plays both piano and guitar), or in the kitchen cooking.

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Corey Frang

Corey is a developer at Bocoup, speaker, and system administrator, living in Boston, MA. He is an active contributor to most of the jQuery teams and is active in the jQuery community on IRC, and Stack Overflow. Corey has restructured the effects modules in both UI and Core, maintains the jQuery Color effects plugin and leads the jQuery Infrastructure team.

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Dan Beil

Dan has been freelancing as a front-end WordPress dev for the past 4 years. Specializing in making boring content look and act cool has become a passion of his as he is never content to simply make something ‘good enough.’ An expert in nothing, Dan is constantly watching what others in the WordPress community are doing and learning for their experiences.

Lastly, he added the example code to wp_trim_words as he kept loosing this snippet and was sick of tracking it down again and again.

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Dan Stolts

Dan Stolts (The “ITProGuru”) is a technology expert who is a master of systems management and security. He is proficient in many Microsoft products especially in the server area (Windows Server, System Center, Exchange, SharePoint, Virtualization, Etc) and holds many certifications including MCT, MCITP, MCSE, TS, etc. Dan is currently specializing in System Management and Virtualization and is also very passionate about cloud technologies. Dan is and has been a very active member of the community. He is president of Boston User Groups, Founder of Virtualization Group Boston, Founder of North East Leaders and serves on many IT Community group boards. Dan is an enthusiastic advocate of technology and is passionate about helping others. Dan’s lifelong passion has been and continues to be to help and teach others!

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David Hayes

Programming since he was eight, David is a web consultant passionate about solving problems for the long term. David’s been using WordPress since 2007 and released numerous themes and plugins in the WordPress.org repository. He writes regularly about WordPress and related issues at WPShout.com.

He’s passionate not just about technologies, but how they can solve real-world problems that businesses and individuals face. With his partner Fred Meyer, that’s exactly what he does at Press Up.

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Eric Mann

Eric Mann is a seasoned web developer with experience in languages from JavaScript to Ruby to C#.  He has been building websites of all shapes and sizes for the better part of a decade and continues to experiment with new technologies and techniques.

Eric is a Senior Web Engineer at 10up where he focuses on developing high-end web solutions powered by WordPress.

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Ethan Marcotte

Ethan Marcotte is an independent designer/developer who is passionate about beautiful design, elegant code, and the intersection of the two. Over the years his clientele has included People Magazine, New York Magazine, the Sundance Film Festival, The Boston Globe, and the W3C. Ethan coined the term “responsive web design” to describe a new way of designing for the ever-changing Web and, if given the chance, will natter on excitedly about it—he even went so far as to write a book on the topic.

Ethan lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and would like to be an unstoppable robot ninja when he grows up. Beep.

George Stephanis

George is a Core Contributor to the WordPress open source project, and works on the Jetpack team at Automattic. When not running planning things for his local Meetup Group or building new shinies for Jetpack or Core, he enjoys woodworking and letterpress printing.

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Jake Goldman

Jake is the President of 10up, a full service web agency that imagines, builds, and grows amazing websites with WordPress. At 10up, Jake serves brand name clients like TechCrunch, Consumer Reports, NBC Universal, Trulia, Juicy Couture, and Google. In less than 3 years, Jake built 10up from 1 to 35 full time employees.

Jake has been building websites since the mid 90’s, and has built web-based solutions for Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Navy, major universities, and high profile non-profits. He has been quoted on publications like c|net, written for Smashing Magazine, taught at Boston University, and presented at conferences around the country. He is a core contributor to WordPress, maintains some highly rated WordPress plug-ins, and organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup.

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Jared Novack

Jared Novack is a partner at Upstatement where he directs projects and uses WordPress to build and prototype sites. He was formally the newsroom developer at the Houston Chronicle and Boston Globe and an adjunct professor at MassArt. Jared graduated from Syracuse University in 2006 with a BA in Computer Art where he was also the Editor in Chief of The Daily Orange

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Jesse Friedman

Jesse Friedman is a veteran WordPress developer and web strategist. With years of experience as a developer, speaker, leader, and a Professor he delivers impactful and educational talks. Currently Jesse is the Director of Web Interface and Development at Astonish, the premier Digital Marketing Company for the Insurance Industry. He also teaches at Johnson & Wales University, in Providence RI. In 2012 Jesse wrote the “Web Designers Guide to WordPress“. He is currently working on a second book, Internet Business Strategies. He is also a major contributor for several publications around the world. Jesse is extremely passionate about the web and WordPress community and co-organizes two local WordPress meetups. He works closely with his team, students and others to share knowledge and bring forth a better future for web design and development.

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Jesse Marple

Jesse Marple is the Lead Front End Developer for The Boston Globe, Boston.com and Zocalo Consulting Services. A veteran web developer from the IE 6 and 7 Wars, Jesse started Zocalo Consulting after a tour at both Microsoft and Apple. When he’s not supporting a website optimized for practically every device or one of the highest trafficked regional news sites in the nation, he  enjoys helping small businesses, educational institutions and not-for-profits find solutions that establish a higher level of functionality.

He has been actively developing with WordPress since 2007 and rocks a Code is Poetry tattoo.

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John Eckman

John Eckman is Managing Director, Boston, for ISITE Design, a digital agency in Boston, MA and Portland OR. He is a contributor to Delight – a blog focused on customer experience as a differentiator, and The CMS Myth, a blog covering the challenges organizations face in implementing content management systems and how to overcome them. John speaks and writes frequently on open source, content management, and digital strategy, has developed a number of WordPress plugins, and blogs at Open Parenthesis and Goatless.

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John James Jacoby

Bio TBA

John P. Bloch

John P. Bloch is a Senior Web Engineer at 10up where he spends his days up to his elbows in WordPress code. He’s been working with WordPress since 2008.

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Jon Bishop

Jon Bishop is a Creative Technologist at AMP Agency with a love for writing open source code and playing with the latest web technologies. Jon maintains a few plugins in the WordPress plugin repository and spends the rest of his time blogging at JonBishop.com and the AMP Agency blog. Jon is also one of the organizers of the Boston WordPress meetup.

Jon Heller

Jon Heller has been designing and developing websites for 15 years, and has worked with WordPress for the past seven. He started writing programs in QBasic at age eight and hasn’t looked back since, graduating with a master’s degree in computer science from Villanova University in 2007. He is currently senior web developer at Allen & Gerritsen, and partner at Adaro Consulting by night (and early, early morning).

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Jon Moss

Jon Moss is a fourth grade teacher and educational technology leader in Avon, Connecticut. He has used WordPress for many years for both his classroom website and his educational technology website, and he frequently advocates for WordPress’s use at the Pre K-­12 level. Besides focusing on teacher websites, Jon’s educational technology work often addresses interactive whiteboard integration, data collection and analysis, iPad use in the classroom, and professional development for teachers. Jon has a master’s degree in educational technology from Central Connecticut State University’s Center for Innovation in Teaching and Technology, and he enjoys networking with other educational technology professionals on Twitter.

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K.Adam White

K.Adam White is a JavaScript engineer at Bocoup, an Open Web technology company located in Boston, MA, where he builds web applications and evangelizes for the web as an open technology platform. K.Adam has been a co-organizer of the Boston WordPress meetup since 2012, and has presented on WordPress and front-end development best practices at meetups and WordCamps across the country.

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Kelly Dwan

Kelly Dwan is a web developer, plugin author, and all around geek living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She works for 10up as a web engineer, finding elegant technical solutions for enterprise clients. She is a WordPress core contributor as of 3.5 and looks forward to contributing more in the future.

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Kurt Eng

Kurt Eng is a biochemist/biomedical engineer by training. When not researching cancer biology or programming robot, he can usually be found at the Boston WordPress Meetup or gaming! While consulting WordPress in his free time, Kurt also finds time to cook, run and garden.

Lindsay Branscombe

I am the owner of Creative Supply Co, a small design and development firm in New Haven, CT for the past 5 years. I learned to code about 8 years ago by making my first website which was an e-commerce pet supply store. While building that for myself (I wanted to sell pet supplies, not be a web developer) I found a love for developing and problem solving. After completing the store I decided to focus on building websites. Before long I found the wonders of WordPress and began learning and building websites with WordPress.

I now build a large majority of my medium to large client’s websites with WordPress as the CMS. Our client list has grown from small mom and pop shops to large national corporations like Murphy USA and Lego.

I also am active in the WordPress support community via the forms or the IRC Channel as well as outside the internet talking to local developers.

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Lisa Wood

Lisa Wood is the founder of Sprout New Media, a web design and development company specializing in custom WordPress themes for small businesses.

In addition to creating beautiful WordPress websites, she works to empower women to create and build successful businesses by helping them become comfortable with their online marketing. She is a frequent speaker on topics such as WordPress, social media, web tools and design.

When she’s not geeking out on color and typography, she enjoys running, snowboarding, and kayaking.

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Louise Leduc Kennedy

Louise is a business attorney and Founder and President of West Hill Technology Counsel, a seven-attorney boutique business and technology law firm. Louise has extensive experience advising technology companies on strategic and commercial matters relating to software, services, intellectual property and on-line business.

Prior to forming West Hill, Louise worked for many years as in-house counsel at IBM Corporation. During this time she supported the Global Sales and Distribution Group, Business Consulting Services as well as the Lotus brand within IBM Software Group. Louise was instrumental in the launch of Lotus’ debut Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enterprise collaboration offering. She also provided general legal support for Lotus software product development, licensing, marketing and strategic relationships including complex interoperability deals with AOL, Yahoo! and Google.

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Matt Medeiros

I’m the co-founder of SlocumStudio.com a WordPress development agency. I’m also the host of 5 popular WordPress podcasts including MattReport, PressThis & Week in WordPress

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Matt Wiebe

Matt Wiebe is a Design Engineer working on WordPress.com’s Team Custom. He likes fine beverages, beautiful typography, and clean code.

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Matthew Nelson

Matt Nelson is the Interactive Media Director of FirstTracks Marketing Group and has been working as a digital marketer for over 10 years. Matt has also been specialzing as a WordPress developer and designer for over 4 years and has a passion for creating awesome sites that produce a high rate of return of his clients. Matt is passionate about not ever hacking the core of WordPress and embracing the constant change and evolution that being a WordPress developer and designer brings in the marketplace today.

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Mel Choyce

Mel is a UI & UX designer living in Boston. She works for Automattic as a Design Engineer, improving new user experience on WordPress.com. She loves big typography, cold-brewed coffee, & reading on the T.

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Michael Cain

Michael is a Portland, Maine-based Theme Wrangler for Automattic’s Theme Team. He spends his days creating, converting, and improving the theme experience on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org, his evenings blogging about food and travel on mapandmenu.com, and his nights dreaming about how to make tomorrow’s WordPress blogs and sites even better.

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Michelle Schulp

Michelle is a graphic designer and co-founder of Marktime Media, a multimedia design and video production company based in Chicagoland. She was formally schooled in many aspects of design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She is a lover of WordCamps and the WordPress community, a Meetup junkie, and WordCamp Chicago organizer.

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Mika Epstein

Mika Ariela Epstein is better known as Ipstenu, the Half-Elf Support Rogue. Working for DreamHost, she solves any WordPress problem that comes up, and still finds time to slash unanswered WordPress.org forum threads by night and wrangle plugins by day. A self-taught guru on Multisite and .htaccess, she has a passion for writing and technology and blogs about them on her own site, as well as for DreamHost.

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Mike Susz

Making websites since 1996, freelance and contract since 2007. Specializing in UI implementation and WordPress themes, plugins, and customizations.

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Mohammad Jangda

I wrangle code and VIPs at WordPress.com. I enjoy ice cream and other sugary things.

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Sam Hotchkiss

Sam is a WordPress developer and principle of Hotchkiss Consulting Group, based out of Portland, Maine, and he loves to make people say: “I didn’t think you could do that with WordPress!” Sam uses his background in PHP development (since 1997) to manipulate the WordPress core, and loves to talk (to anyone who will listen) about how flexible it is!

Earlier this year, Sam led HCG’s development of BruteProtect, a plugin which protects WP sites against brute force attacks using a central database of malicious IPs. As of July, BruteProtect has blocked over 2.5m malicious login attempts across over 4,000 sites.

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Steven Word

Steven Word is a senior web developer working at Oomph Inc’s office in Boston, MA. Originally from Arlington, Texas, Steven made the move to Boston in 2011 after seven years of freelance web development. At Oomph, he specializes in developing enterprise-level websites on the WordPress.com VIP hosting platform. When he’s not swearing at bugs or celebrating a successful product launch, Steven enjoys spicy food, Toyota sports cars, banging on the drums, and pretending to be a beer snob. Rumor has it that he also plays a mean game of foosball. Steven currently lives with his incredible and loving wife in Melrose, MA.

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Suzette Franck

Suzette Franck is the WordPress Evangelist at (mt) Media Temple, where she educates and advocates for WordPress and the WordPress Community. She typically attends 2-3 WordPress Meetups a week, and has spoken at 10 WordCamps this year: Phoenix, San Diego, Miami, Reno, Orange County, Seattle, Chicago, Vancouver, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles. She blogs frequently at suzettefranck.com about WordPress and is a regular contributor on WPWatercooler.com. She was the host of the DradCast Episode 017 She enjoys teaching about the wonders of WordPress and finding better ways to do things with it. She loves learning about web development and digging into code, which she has been doing for over 18 years. She discovered WordPress 5 years ago and has used it to create over 200 websites with a variety of designs and requirements, mostly with hand-coded custom themes, and is showing no signs of stopping.

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