Adam Baney
Adam Baney is a web and graphic designer from Albuquerque, NM. He is currently a web and graphic designer for Mindshare Studios (Santa Fe). He has worked as an in-house designer for an international company based in Albuquerque, and has also worked for a couple of Albuquerque-based advertising agencies, once of which, Kilmer Kilmer Marshall Duran, is considered to be the largest in the state.
Adam has been using WordPress as a CMS for over 6 years, and has created many WordPress-based websites.
Session: It’s a Lot Like Building a House
Alex King
An original contributor to the WordPress project, Alex started his web career in the mid-90s in Silicon Valley. He has created dozens of popular WordPress plugins and themes. His experience includes enterprise and consumer start-ups, roles in design, user experience, development and web application architecture. In 2003 he relocated to Denver, CO where he founded Crowd Favorite, one of the world’s largest WordPress development firms. Crowd Favorite is proud to have pioneered drag-and-drop page layouts for WordPress with Carrington Build and have solved WordPress content deployment with RAMP.
Alex is also the co-founder BackupMoxie and CloudMoxie – providers of bespoke WordPress backup and hosting solutions. Previous, Alex co-founded FeedLounge, created ShareThis and founded WordPress HelpCenter.
Session: Core Competency: Things You Might Not Know about How WordPress Works (but should)
Ben Byrne
Ben has a BFA in Graphic Design and has been designing professionally for nearly 13 years. He recently left his position with DC-based New Signature to found Cornershop Creative, a boutique web design/strategy firm serving nonprofits and small business. As Chief Creative Officer there, his extensive experience with HTML, CSS and JavaScript is put to good use implementing his designs on several CMS platforms, including WordPress.
Prior to joining New Signature, Ben worked as the lead graphic designer and web developer for Firefly Partners. Before that he was at Free Press, where he rolled his own CMS in addition to designing countless brands, brochures and websites (one of which garnered a “People’s Choice” Webby award).
Ben presented twice for now-defunct local group Webuquerque and now co-manages Webuquerque’s successor, HTTQ. At least year’s Albuquerque WordCamp he presented 10 Cool Things to Do with Widgets.
Bryce Corkins
I’m a WordPress developer and IT consultant. I own a small business in Santa Fe, BC Design, where I work for clients ranging from other local businesses to international corporations. I also work with Mindshare Studios (in Santa Fe) as a web developer. I’ve been developing sites commercially using WordPress for three years now, and am really excited about the way the platform has continued to develop. In the last year I’ve created and launched 16 WordPress sites, and collaborated on over 20 others. I’ve created custom themes, plugins, and hacked just about every hook and filter.
Session: Hooked on Actions
Carlos Reyes
I was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. I have always loved airplanes. While growing up, I always assumed I would become an airline pilot. Then the personal computer revolution started. I got an Atari 400 in 1980 and started programming it right away. I loved it!
I earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree from Columbia University’s School of Engineering in 1988. After 20 years in the computer software industry, I decided it was time to strike out on my own.
I decided my business was going to combine both of my passions – aviation and computers. I have flown full-size and model airplanes throughout my entire life. I founded RCadvisor.com in the summer of 2007. A full-time job for five years now, it has been an interesting ride!
Session: Flying high: Making a Living Blogging about Model Airplanes
Daryl L. L. Houston
Upon earning a degree in English literature and writing from UNC-Chapel Hill, Daryl realized he had no job prospects and decided to try his hand at computers. After short stints with a couple of small local companies, he did a long stint with a browser company and is now tickled pink to be working with WordPress on a day-to-day basis. He lives in Knoxville with his wife, two kids, dog, and fish, and he passes his time reading literary fiction. He will never give up on the Oxford comma but will happily split infinitives and end sentences prepositions with.
Session: Happiness Bar
Deborah Beckett
Deborah Beckett lives with her husband and two kids in the Land of the Sky (western North Carolina). She earned a degree in Journalism, specializing in Multimedia & Web Design, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been building web sites and training users for over 15 years. When not engineering happiness, she enjoys running, travel, and spending time with her family.
Session: Happiness Bar
Jake Goldman
Jake Goldman is the owner of 10up, a distributed web agency focused on awesome WordPress implementations with 13 full time employees. At 10up, Jake works on exciting and wide ranging WordPress projects, like TechCrunch, NBC Universal Sports, 9to5 Mac, Hip2Save (the official deal blog of NBC’s Today Show), VentureBeat, and Trulia. Jake is a writer and expert reviewer for Smashing Magazine, teaches WordPress at Boston University, and has authored over a dozen highly rated WordPress plug-ins. Jake founded the WordPress Providence meet up, and has spoken at WordCamps around the country, including Boston, New York, Mid-Altantic, Chicago, and Miami.
Session: Enterprise Class WordPress: Going Big with WordPress
Jamii Corley
Jamii Corley is a co-owner of Southwest Cyberport (SWCP). SWCP has been a local internet service provider, web hosting company, and IT consultant for 18 years. Jamii wears many different hats, from webmaster to in-house app developer. She has been working with WordPress for three years, developing themes for SWCP and several customers. She has developed a website directory plugin for SWCP’s epromenade.
Karen Arnold
Karen Arnold (pronounced Car-en) and her husband, 4 children, 4 cats, and approximately 10 chickens, live in sunny Albuquerque, New Mexico. When she isn’t engineering happiness at WordPress.com, she helps her husband homeschool their energetic kiddos, tries to blog regularly, and brainstorms ways to meet every WordPress user in New Mexico.
Sessions: Kids Session and Happiness Bar
Kevin Conboy
Kevin lives in Boulder, Colorado, where the sun shines more than 300 days out of the year, which is good because he’s originally from San Diego. After attending art school for graphic design in the late 90s, Kevin found himself caught up in the whirlwind of the web agency world during the dot-com boom. More recently, however, Kevin spent quite a while doing interface work for the financial industry and knows more about earnings per share than he’d care to admit. Happily married with three kids, Kevin plays in a band and has been blogging for more than 10 years.
Session: Designing For WordPress: Throwing Out the Blank Canvas
Kimanzi Constable
Last August I self-published my first book and to date it has sold a little over 20,000 copies. March 2 of this year I self-published my second book and it has sold 5,150 copies so far. The second book got so much exposure I was offered several publishing contracts. I signed a 4 book deal with Sound Wisdom Books. I went from being self-published to having the book in print with no agent or book proposal.
The only way I sold books was through social media. I studied and learnt what makes people share your work; I didn’t spend any money on any advertising. I have been featured on some of the largest websites in the world. I also have done several interviews and podcast (you can see them on my about page) all of these were very successful because of leveraging social media.
I have spoken at several local events in my hometown of Milwaukee about chasing your dreams and building a profitable business. I spoke at The Bam Social Media Conference 2012 in Huntington, WV at the end of May, and at WordCamp 2012 NYC. I will also be speaking at the Hawaii Social Media Summit 2012 on October 17 in Honolulu.
Session: WordPress is Just the Beginning
Lauren MacEwen
Lauren MacEwen is a social media strategist, blogger and speaker on social media topics. She has a BA from Smith College and an MBA from ASU. Having a passion for social media and technology, Lauren has worked with non-profits and business’ to create highly effective and award winning social marketing campaigns. She is a frequent guest blogger on top industry blogs such as Technorati and Blogher in social marketing technology, business development and politics.
Session: Chat me up! Using Social Media to Promote your Blog
Mark Carrara
I have been working with technology since 1992, the last dozen years as the Technology Coordinator for a school district in northern Wisconsin. In April I began as the Director of Technology for the Tucumcari Public Schools. I have been working with web sites on and off since the ’90s and as part of my job.
I have used WordPress to manage school district sites for my current and former district. I also have two (infrequently updated) personal blogs using WordPress.
While in Wisconsin I often spoke at the Midwest Educational Technology Association annual conference. Last March one of my topics was using WordPress as a CMS in schools.
Session: WordPress goes to School: WordPress for Educational Institutions
Max Bloom
Max Bloom is a marketing pro with broad and deep experience in digital media, media production and clean technology. Max has worked for every major film studio and television network in Hollywood and has been a member of the International Cinematographers Guild for 20 years. He has written for episodic television and film, with two screenplays produced as feature films, and is an emeritus member of the Writer’s Guild of America.
In 2001, Max created and taught the course, Introduction to Digital and Streaming Media at UCLA. As a digital media analyst, Max has written articles on business applications of streaming media and online video advertising. Most recently, Max co-founded and runs Ground Floor (www.groundfloorsv.com), a coworking space in Silicon Valley. Max was first exposed to WordPress at last year’s WordCamp and has been a voracious student of all things WordPress ever since.
Melissa J White
Melissa has been writing and winning awards since she was 14. Her first hand-made blog was started in 2006, called, My Wabi-Sabi Life which now runs on her own WordPress theme called Melissa. She is the Blog Editor for the Santa Fe Film Festival, and does Internet Audience Development for investigative journalist Russ Baker’s WhoWhatWhy.com.
Melissa has custom designed blogs on the WordPress CMS platform since 2010 and offers private marketing consultations and blog tutoring through BlogshopWorld.com. She has helped over a hundred beginning bloggers setup and start their own blogs as part of Blogshop Weekend, an intensive, two-day workshop in Santa Fe. Melissa is also the owner of Whitespace Creative, LLC, in Santa Fe, since 2006.
In 2011, Melissa and her development team won first prize at the First Annual Santa Fe Mobile Apps Challenge for a crowdsourced parking app called “Shady Parking.”
Session: Finding Your Sweet Spot: How to Choose The Perfect Blog Subject
Ray Gulick
Ray Gulick became a WordPress developer after several years as a web designer with a business partner who did all the programming and database development. When his techie business partner left the company in 2008, he learned a bit of PHP and has since focused almost exclusively on building business and professional organization websites with WordPress. He developed his own highly customizable HTML5 theme framework, evo5cms, to shorten development time. Gulick’s web development company, now entering its 13th year, is Evolution Web Development (Evo) in Santa Fe, NM.
When not developing WordPress sites, Ray is a painter who can sometimes be seen on Saturdays selling paintings at the Santa Fe Artists Market. Ray is one of the WordCamp Albuquerque organizers.
Session: Building a Better CMS: Making it Beautiful for the People who Maintain the Website
Robert DeYoung
Robert “Bob” De Young, CGMA is the managing partner for Blue Lotus Works, LLC, an independent business consulting firm specializing in Business Operations and Internet Presence. Blue Lotus Works consultants have backgrounds as accounting, compliance, finance and hospitality management executives.
Bob has been a web site designer/developer since 1998 and has used WordPress since 2007. He has specific interests in web site optimization and hardening, white hat SEO and social media presence.
Session: Hide The Keys To The Castle: Tips and Tricks to Harden and Obfuscate Self-hosted WordPress Sites
Sean Wells
A unique combination of designer, gadget girl, entrepreneur and artist, Sean takes a fresh approach to WordPress and views it as a powerful tool for making dreams happen. Although Sean does take on technical challenges, she very much enjoys finding simple, efficient and quick solutions to complicated problems. Her approach is a good match for individuals, small businesses and non-profits who want fast results with small budgets.
Session: Using Cloud Applications to take your Site from Good to Great and WordPress for Kids
Sophie Martin
Sophie Martin began working in communications at an age when most kids are mowing lawns for pocket money. Her first job involved answering the fan mail at Sesame Street, and since then she’s worked in marketing, promotions, and media relations for a broad range of clients in entertainment, education, and nonprofit advocacy.
In Albuquerque, Sophie has worked as the Director of Marketing & Operations for Madstone Theaters, the Marketing Director for the Ovation Series at Popejoy Hall, and Chief Marketing Officer for the UNM Anderson School of Management. She is the past Managing Editor of the Duke City Fix, a past president of the New Mexico Advertising Federation, and a two-time honoree in the New Mexico Business Weekly’s Forty Under 40 list. Sophie has an MBA from the University of New Mexico and a BA in Theatre from Occidental College, and is currently in her final year at UNM’s School of Law. She has a certificate in Entertainment and New Media Law from the University of New Hampshire School of Law and is the current Editor in Chief of the New Mexico Law Review.
Sophie has built and managed WordPress sites for small businesses, nonprofits, and local political campaigns.
Session: A WordPress Legal Primer