All posts by David Bisset

Epic Panel: The Business of WordPress

The second year of our business track (being held on Sunday, May 11th) will be epic in many ways thanks to our new lineup of speakers and sessions. But what could be the highlight of the track is a special panel – “The Business of WordPress”.

There are all sorts of challenges to building a WordPress business. Come hear the “behind the scenes” stories and lessons learned as the brilliant entrepreneurs behind WPBeginner, Gravity Forms and iThemes answer questions in this business panel moderated by the famous Chris Lema.

We are proud to have these insightful speakers – all of which have created blogs and plugins that many thousands of WordPress users work with EVERY DAY – with us this year at WordCamp Miami.

Syed Balkhi

He is the founder of WPBeginner (the largest free WordPress resource site) and List25 an extremely popular entertainment site with over 725,000 subscribers and 90 Million video views. Syed’s work has been featured in NYTimes, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo Small Business, Wired, Mashable, and countless other well-reputed online magazines. Syed has worked with some of the largest brands in the industry including but not limited to WarnerBros, Webs, Mercer, and more.

Cory Miller

Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time web entrepreneur. In January 2008, he founded iThemes in his home, fulfilling a lifelong dream of running his own company. Now iThemes has grown to over 20+ team members, hundreds of products and thousands of customers worldwide.

Carl Hancock

Carl Hancock is one of the co-founders of Rocketgenius, Inc. A premier provider of WordPress plugin solutions and the creators of one one of the most successful commercial WordPress plugins: Gravity Forms. He loves building innovative solutions for WordPress, and is a devoted father, loving husband, amateur photographer, startup founder and travel addict.

Historical Podcast Panel at WordCamp Miami 2014

This year we are proud to be hosting a unique and a WordCamp-first panel this year at WordCamp Miami on May 10th (Saturday). We will be hosting a “Podcasting And WordPress” panel, with some of the biggest and most popular WordPress podcasters all in one room. One *physical* room. They will be telling us how they do what they do, what mistakes they’ve learned, and how they run a successful podcast. Plus a special surprise which we won’t tell them about yet.

If you will be attending this panel, we suggest you check out and listen to these WordPress podcasts:

Here’s the dirt on the speakers on this panel, guaranteed to knock your socks off (so bring extra socks):

Dre Armeda

Dre is the Co-Founder of Sucuri Security. Dre is a Harley enthusiast, and a Chargers fan. he wears many hats, and love tacos. He is infatuated with WordPress, web design, and web security. Dre hopes to make the internet a safer place! Dre presents at various WordCamps and other events every year. Dre is a proud WordPress contributor and was the lead organizer that brought WordCamp to San Diego. Dre can also be found attending local WordPress meetups at the Inland Empire WordPress Meetup and the WordPress San Diego (North County) Meetup. Dre is the Co-Host of the DradCast on Wednesday nights. Pressing all the words!

Brad Williams

Brad is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com, a co-host on the DradCast podcast, and the co-author of Professional WordPress (1E & 2E) and Professional WordPress Plugin Development. Brad is also one of the organizers of the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Group and WordCamp Philly. Brad blogs at http://strangework.com and tweets at @williamsba.

Suzette Franck

Suzette Franck is the WordPress Evangelist Lead for Media Temple, a web hosting company located in Culver City, California. She has been doing web development for 17+ years, but discovered WordPress four years ago and has used it to create over 200 WordPress sites, ranging from BuddyPress, multisite, membership to portfolio sites, with a variety of different designs and requirements. Suzette is passionate about open source software, loves to blog and teach others on the wonders of WordPress.

Jeff Chandler

Jeff is the man behind WPTavern.com. On WPTavern, you’ll find reviews, news, screencasts, guest blog posts from some great WordPress community members and much more.

Matt Medeiros

Matt Medeiros is co-founder of Slocum Studio a custom development and theme shop. He is the founder of WPMentor.org a website dedicated to helping WordPress people find mentorships. Matt hosts the popular podcast Matt Report which aims to help new WordPress freelancers and agencies grow their business.

Pippin Williamson

If you are a WordPress plugin developer, you probably have used or seen one of Pippin’s plugins. He’s written more than 100 plugins (we are looking to see if he has a social life) He has spent a long time working on improving community involvement on projects by developers / designers. Not to mention contributing to the WordPress core and WordPress Codex.

Fifth Round of Speakers

This is our last big round of speaker announcements. However, we do have announcements for BuddyCamp Miami, our beginner’s workshop, and have a few remaining speakers to announce once confirmed.

Rebekah Monson

Rebekah Monson is a journalist, designer and dork. She’s the communications manager at the University of Miami School of Communication and cofounder of whereby.us, a creative organization that helps curious locals explore, celebrate and improve Miami through events, journalism and community protoyping. She cofounded Hacks/Hackers Miami, a group that brings together journalists and technologists, and Code for Miami, Florida’s first Code for America civic hacking brigade. She loves people, dogs, coffee, Miami, stories and technology — so long as servers are up, traffic is decent and no one pees on the rug.

Brad Touesnard

Developer, host of the Apply Filters podcast, and founder of Delicious Brains Inc., the company behind WP Migrate DB Pro.

 

Sze Liu

Sze Liu is the CEO and Founder of 852 Creative Marketing & Design. Originally from Hong Kong, Sze has always loved branding, marketing and technology and has been involved in the field throughout her career. She has managed online and offline marketing for start-ups and major corporations (Manpower, Inc. and Ryder System, Inc.). She also has experience in global business development, including projects based in China.

Sze has lived in South Florida for more than 20 years and holds a B.S. in marketing and international business from Florida Atlantic University, as well as an MBA from University of Miami. As co-founder of Wiredin Women, she also helps support a community of women who wish to learn, share ideas and become successful in online business.

Adrian Cardenas

Cuban born Adrian Cardenas spent 8 months in a refugee camp prior to arriving in the U.S. as a child. Though self-taught, he has partially earned his degree in Computer Science and Computational Math, which he strives to finish one day. He has been a PHP developer for 4 years and a Systems Administrator for several before that. He is currently making awesome things in both front & back end at ServerGrove, a local hosting company. Over the years, Adrian has developed several WordPress sites, both single and multi, many of them interfacing with other systems such as MediaWiki & custom solutions. At ServerGrove he has also been witness several hundred WordPress installations and some of the “gotchas” that developers can face.

Chris Wiegman

Chris is the developer of iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) and has been working on WordPress security for over 5 years. Previously a captain for a small airline, Chris’ interest in security began on his first day as an employed pilot, 9/11 and gradually evolved over the years to helping individuals and smaller organizations protect their websites from many of the common methods attackers use to compromise their victims. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has taught computer security for St. Edward’s University as well as other courses ranging from computers to aviation.”

David Laietta

David is a WordPress theme and plugin developer, as well as community organizer. He leads the WordPress Orlando Meetup, as well as WordCamp Orlando.

David is also a long-time supporter of WordCamp Miami, and among other areas, will be speaking at the WordCamp Miami beginner’s workshop on May 9th.

Brian Messenlehner

Brian is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com, a web development company that specializes in building all things WordPress. He is also the co-founder of AppPresser.com, a WordPress based framework for building iOS and Android Apps.

Brian started his career as a software developer for the U.S. Marines with a focus on building web applications and relational databases for the Marine Corps Logistics Command. After the Marines, and prior to WebDevStudios he worked at a law firm in New Jersey building custom web applications to identify and track insurance and healthcare fraud for clients such as Allstate and Encompass.

Brian loves WordPress in his spare time! He is the co-author of the book ”Building Web Apps with WordPress” by O’Reilly Media, which is about leveraging WordPress as an Application Framework and he is the organizer of the New Jersey WordPress Meetup Group.

Brian enjoys learning about new technology and believes open source software like WordPress is the key to successful cost effective web solutions in any situation.

Follow Brian on Twitter at: @bmess, @webdevstudios, @apppresser, and @bwawwp

Nathan Hangen

Nathan is a co-founder of Virtuous Giant, where he serves as the business and development lead for IgnitionDeck, an eCommerce suite for WordPress. When he’s not shipping product, Nathan enjoys competing in triathlons, playing soccer, and coaching youth sports. In a past life, he served as a Psychological Operations Sergeant in the US Army, where he deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Jackie Jimenez

Jackie Jimenez is an ambitious and Innovative Marketing Consultant, focusing on the big picture with integrated marketing communications. She co-organizes the WordPress South Florida group and WordCamp Miami 2013, staying in-the-know and ahead of the game. Some clients that she’s worked with are University of Central Florida, Marriott Vacation Club, and world-renowned hairstylist Peter Coppola. She often speaks about Social Media and Internet Marketing at conferences.

Fourth Round Of Speakers

We are closing in on announcing the remaining speakers, but we wanted to get the word out today on these three excellent and intelligent speakers. Truly honored to have these present at WordCamp Miami this year.

Diane Kinney

Diane Kinney is the Creative Director and co-founder of The Versatility Group, a full service firm providing websites and other online solutions for 15 years. She is an award winning designer focused on WordPress design and development, graphic design, and marketing services. In her previous corporate life, she led large scale application development projects, managed multi-disciplinary teams, and oversaw Operations including marketing, customer service, and business development. She gets excited about applying the lessons from her diverse background to web and marketing projects.

Alison Foxall

Alison Foxall is a founding partner and lead designer of Gobble Logic; a web design, development, and marketing firm located in Tampa, FL. She has a traditional background in design, but has been a front-end web developer since the early 2000’s. Alison has been using WordPress since 2004, and developing for it since 2006. With her leadership, her team has created custom plugins, themes, and application platforms all with WordPress. When she isn’t running the business, Alison is learning Japanese, reading books or periodicals, and being active in political groups and discussions.

Tammie Lister

Tammie Lister is a theme wrangler with Automattic. Before moving there focus on themes, she was focused on creating sites with BuddyPress. She’s a contributor to the BuddyPress project having worked on the UI refresh and most recently the template pack. Tammie has also written a book on BuddyPress theme development. Themes are her world and she is passionate about raising the standard of BuddyPress themes.

Special Invite to Drupal and Joomla Shops

WordCamps draw those interested in WordPress, but they also strive to be welcome places for ANY developer of any platform to learn more on open-source and web related technologies. Open source projects shouldn’t harsely separate open source developers, regardless if they use WordPress or not. Matt Mullenweg lead by example by speaking at the Joomla! World Conference last year.

WordCamp Miami wants to follow in that example, we are extending an official invite to any dedicated Drupal and/or Joomla developers to come to WordCamp Miami and be a part of South Florida’s open source community. Not only are we making an official invite, but we have several (read: very limited quantity) of free and/or discounted tickets to any developers or developer shops that work in Drupal and/or Joomla.

So if you are not a WordPress developer, but work with another open-source solution like Drupal or Joomla, please contact miami@wordcamp.org. Again, the qualification is that you are a developer working with a open-source platform that isn’t WordPress. We will review entries on a case by case basis.

But no matter what you develop in – then we would love to have you at one of the biggest local web conferences in Miami and one of the largest WordCamps in the United States.

WordCamp Miami: Beginner’s Workshop

siteground

Very happy to announce that SiteGround – one of our Gold Sponsors – is also exclusively sponsoring the WordCamp Miami beginner’s workshop. What this means is that we will be talking more about how you can use hosting companies like SiteGround (and others) in setting up your WordPress site. You can look forward to learning about the exclusive offerings SiteGround and other hosting companies are offering to WordCamp Miami attendees.


Wordcamp-Miami-WCMIA-6

If you are new to WordPress, then you want to make sure you attend our beginner’s workshop. And as our beginner workshops are quite popular, we wanted to share with you some information before they sell out.

We have two beginner’s workshops planned for April 19th and May 9th. April 19th’s workshop will be Davie, FL and May 9th’s workshop will be in Miami. Both workshops worked out last year very well, and we sold out of both workshops rather quickly. We limit our workshops to about 100 attendees, SO IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY DONE SO GRAB A TICKET BEFORE OUR WORKSHOPS SELL OUT.

Registration will start at 8am, and a full day’s schedule is planned (9am to 5pm). Lunch will be provided, so just bring yourself (a laptop or tablet is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, or something to take notes with) and get ready for a full day of getting up to speed with WordPress. After this workshop you’ll be ready for WordCamp Miami weekend (May 10th and May 11th).

Schedule

Here’s what we cover in our beginner workshop (note that this schedule might be adjusted, and if so we’ll alert all ticket holders).

1. Decisions / Education (Selecting a domain, what hosting provider might be the best for you, comparing WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org, etc.)

2. Installation and Setup (Guiding through how to install WordPress and giving a tour of the general WordPress admin)

3. Getting Started with WordPress (Showcasing every day things that you do in WordPress such as creating and editing posts, pages, categories, tags, etc. Also we go into items like comment moderation)

4. WordPress Themes (Discussion about trusted sources of getting WordPress themes, best practices, widgets, menus, header images, background images, and more)

5. Trouble Shooting (Knowledge share on common WordPress problems, troubleshooting, customizing, importing/exporting, and more)

6. Plugins (Best practices for plugins, “must-have” plugins, and how to use WordPress beyond a blogging platform)


Our beginner workshops are usually the first to sellout, so if you want to learn more about using WordPress or want to review the basic concepts before the WordCamp Miami weekend, grab a ticket to either the April 19th or the May 9th beginner’s workshop.

Third Round of Speakers Announced

Mason James

Mason is the Co-Founder and CEO of WP Valet where he’s made an art of making people happy with their WordPress experience. He has a passion for creating solutions and truly loves it when a plan comes together. When not connected to a computer he’s probably playing music, video games, or with his puppy, Penny (photos available on request).

Kathryn Presner

Kathryn thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012 and is currently embedded with the Theme Team, where she help folks with all types of theme-related issues on both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress at WordCamps, Girl Geek Dinners, Podcamps, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress hours are spent collecting vintage Pyrex mixing bowls, growing organic garlic, and cavorting with her four felines.

Jonathan Brinley

After taking the plunge into full-time freelancing in 2009, Jonathan took advantage of his freedom and “retired” to Jacksonville, Fla. He’s busy enjoying the sun and the beaches with his wife (Stephanie) and two kids (Titus and Tirzah). But too often, he has to pull himself away from the sand and get down to business: writing WordPress plugins for fun and profit. When he’s not collaborating with the fine folks at Modern Tribe, Jonathan likes to create open source libraries that help make the plugin developers’ jobs a little easier. http://xplus3.net/ https://github.com/jbrinley

Jared Easley

Jared Easley is an entrepreneur, trainer, speaker & host of the Starve the Doubts podcast. Jared has interviewed successful entrepreneurs such as Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Guy Kawasaki, Michael E. Gerber, David Allen, Gary Vaynerchuck & Chris Brogan about overcoming self doubt in order to achieve goals. Jared is also the co-founder of the Podcast Movement which is the only National Conference for Podcasters by Podcasters.

Rick Tuttle

Rick Tuttle is a longtime WordCamp Miami supporter and lives in Miami with his wife and two daughters who all use WordPress. He is employed as a .NET web developer and also actively uses WordPress to help with community causes as a volunteer. Follow on Twitter @ricktuttle.

Amanda Blum

Amanda Blum has been speaking at, organizing and cursing at WordCamps/Meetups since 2009. As Strategist for Etch Software in Portland, Oregon, she helps organizations leverage technology for better processes and digital marketing. When not Pressing, she makes pickles, knits scarves and manages her batshit crazy doberman Clementine. She has never visited Miami and is impressed that all the WordCamp Organizers have promised to have a flock of flamingos sing happy birthday to her.

Lightning Talk Speakers Announced

WordCamp Miami lightning talks shine a spotlight on talent from the local community, and this year we are proud to present our three local speakers:

Pascal Depuhl

Depuhl-Bio-Pic 4x4@300

Pascal Depuhl has been telling stories with pictures for his clients as an advertising photographer for over 20 years. Seeing that video is quickly becoming the online language of choice, he began to learn filmmaking. In the winter of 2012 he found himself filming in Afghanistan, telling the story of what a flight service does. Pascal’s first documentary, “On Wings of Hope”, has gone on to win Best of ASMP 2013 and just was selected to be screened at the Palm Beach International Film Festival.

He grew up in Germany and Chicago and now lives in Miami with his wife and 2 daughters.

Anna Tuttle

Anna Tuttle is a 13-year-old girl who writes a blog about her life at annatuttle.com and has been writing reviews for restaurants and attractions in Miami since she was 8 yrs old as a kid reporter at Miami Fun Guide. She also enjoys cooking, baking, playing guitar, singing and watching or reading her favorite movies and books.

Diana Espino

Diana Espino is a Software Engineer with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. She specializes in PHP and Zend Framework 2. Diana is co-organizer of South Florida PHP User Group & SunshinePHP Developer Conference and former co-organizer of WordCamp Miami & South Florida WordPress Meetup Group. She particularly likes working with companies who have a strong engineering focus, teams who share research and knowledge with each other, and individuals who value learning. Diana teaches PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS to kids and adults in her community.

Second Round of Speakers Announced

WordCamp Miami is proud to announce the next wave of confirmed speakers. After this, be prepared for an exciting announcement of some of our local speakers.

Tracy Rotton

Tracy Rotton is a lead web developer for RP3, an advertising agency in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2012, she discovered responsive web design, and became obsessed. Since then, she’s built responsive websites for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Norfolk Southern Corporation, FrontPoint Security, and Long and Foster Real Estate, the latter two on WordPress. Deciding to combine her passions for responsive websites and WordPress, she’s writing a book all about responsive WordPress theming.

Brian Richards

Brian is a developer with WebDevStudios.com and creator of the StartBox theme framework. Brian has been selling commercial themes since 2010. He enjoys hanging outside down in avatar photos.

Trisha Salas

Trisha Salas works with the awesome team at WP Valet. As a Lead Account Rep she is responsible for everything from debugging code to custom designs. She is a regular contributor to BuddyPress, is part of the dev team working on the Admin Help Plugin (an experimental feature plugin intended for WordPress 4.0) and routinely helps in the WordPress forums. She has recently helped to start the Tulsa WordPress Meetup and – as a part of the Tulsa Web Devs group – worked to host the 200 OK Conference in 2013, Tulsa’s first all web conference.

Aaron Jorbin

Aaron is a polyhistoric man of the web. Currently Technical Architect on the Conde Nast Platform Team and a WordPress contributor, he works to improve developer happiness and is dedicated to making the internet usable and enjoyable by everyone. In the past he worked at AddThis and Privia Health.


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, @3themes contributor, and WordCamp Chicago lead organizer.

Dre Armeda

Dre is the Co-Founder of Sucuri Security. Dre is a Harley enthusiast, and a Chargers fan. he wears many hats, and love tacos. He is infatuated with WordPress, web design, and web security. Dre hopes to make the internet a safer place! Dre presents at various WordCamps and other events every year. Dre is a proud WordPress contributor and was the lead organizer that brought WordCamp to San Diego. Dre can also be found attending local WordPress meetups at the Inland Empire WordPress Meetup and the WordPress San Diego (North County) Meetup. Dre is the Co-Host of the DradCast on Wednesday nights. Pressing all the words!