Speaker Spotlight – Richard Archambault

richardRichard loves the web and really loves WordPress. After attending his first WordCamp Montreal in 2010, he was hooked! Now a Happiness Engineer with Automattic, Richard wants to help spread the WordPress goodness to anyone else who’s interested in the web. When he’s not tinkering with his sites, he loves going to Mexico to eat spicy tacos and ride around on the metro!

Richard will be giving a talk entitled “Widget Visibility and Other Secret Loves“.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

Jetpack comes loaded with filters and actions in almost every module, that let developers modify the default behaviour. It also comes with many theme tools that can be used when building a theme, whether it is a custom theme for a client, or a free or premium theme that you will sell or distribute. This talk will be geared towards theme developers and freelancers as well as people who love to tinker with their sites.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

I love meeting people in local WordPress communities; they are always so full of great ideas for how they can use the software for the projects they want to launch and the causes they want to support.

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

@melchoyce, @andmiddleton, @macmanx

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Speaker Spotlight – Shelly Peacock

shellyShelly Peacock, @Spinbird, has been in sales and graphic design since 2001, moving focus to include Social Media Management and Marketing in 2007. She built her first website in 2009- as a way to make her designs “do stuff”, and as a portfolio for her art business, ShellyPeacock.com. Shucked it all to run The SpinBird Group, a WordPress boutique agency specializing in consulting and design. 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.

Shelly will be giving a talk entitled “Frameworks For Freelancers – Double Time IT!“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

The Community- by far!

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

Beginners to intermediate users – mainly those that are looking for information on how to streamline their development/design process.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

Networking and meeting new people

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

Taking my business to a whole new level!

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

Chris Lema, Tom McFarlin, Carl Alexander

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Speaker Spotlight – Hector Jarquin

hector

As front-end developer Hector ensures that the projects that he is involved follow accessibility and web standards. At work… communication (content, graphics and interfaces) accessed via multiple devices and channels. When free… travel, food, adventure and vintage stuff.

Hector will be giving a talk with Ting entitled “Digital Signage and WordPress“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Each WordCamp that I have attended 🙂

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

This talk is intended to those interested in expanding WordPress beyond the conventional scenarios.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

The community and its diversity.

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

REST API

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

https://twitter.com/andreazoellner, https://twitter.com/twigpress, https://twitter.com/photomatt

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Speaker Spotlight – Christopher Ross

sponsor-300x300Christopher Ross is a WordPress consultant, and online marketing expert with a passion for using technology to solve problems, create new ones, and build better ways to keep visitors engaged.

Christopher will be giving a talk entitled “Build a membership site in 30 minutes, for $30“.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

My talk is aimed at helping people see how easy it is to build complex WordPress websites. It’s been a big hit at other WordCamps this year, and is a lot of fun!

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

Getting to meet new people.

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

@royboy789

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Speaker Spotlight – T-Rave

t-raveT-Rave spends his days responding to a wide variety of WordPress related questions as a Happiness Engineer for Flywheel managed WordPress hosting. He dabbles in code when time allows and enjoys time offline in his wood shop. He’s been known to enjoy a good IPA.

T-Rave will be giving a talk entitled “Support, eh? Why you should care“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Being able to spin up a site on a whim when silly ideas come to mind

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

My talk is to help anyone that interacts or has a team that interacts with their clients. There will always be questions, but how you answer them can be the difficult part. That’s where the talk will hopefully fill in the gaps.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

The people you’ll meet

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

The advancement of the API

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

@pippinsplugins, @wptavern, @WPwatercooler

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Speaker Spotlight – Ryan Erwin

ryanRyan is a Web Strategist at Orbit Media in Chicago. Ryan also is the Founder and CTO of Internet Marketing Chicago, a full service digital marketing and web development company, based in the city of Chicago. He brings years of WordPress experience to the organization, ranging from speaking at and organizing WordCamps to building and marketing enterprise websites. Ryan is the lead organizer for WordCamp Chicago as well as the lead organizer for Startup Weekend Chicago. In his spare time, he likes to get outdoors and camp, hike, and ski.

Ryan will be giving a talk entitled “Analyze, Plan, and Execute – SEO Action Plan“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

My best experience with WordPress is being apart of the community, which is more like a family.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

My talk hits many demographics and experience levels. Auditing WordPress sites is critical for sales, biz dev, designers, developers, and users in that it allows you to educate yourself as well as potential clients and customers. I have found that it creates trust and builds a strong foundation for future successful work.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

I love seeing my friends and colleagues from around the world. When I travel to a WordCamp, it feels comfortable, like coming home from a long trip and seeing everyone you want to see. I leave with new and expanded knowledge as well as new friends and relationships.

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

I love working with BuddyPress and the recent updates are extremely exciting.

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

ma.tt

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Speaker Spotlight – Kathryn Presner

kathrynKathryn Presner 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. She’s currently Theme Whisperer on the Theme Team, where she helps folks with customization, configuration, and troubleshooting. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress and encouraging new public speakers at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress obsessions include vintage Pyrex mixing bowls and growing garlic.

Kathryn will be giving a talk entitled “The Techie Continuum“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Getting involved with public speaking about WordPress and meeting so many talented and interesting people that way. Then later, encouraging others to start speaking as well.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

This talk is geared for anyone who feels pangs of imposter syndrome and isn’t convinced they know enough about WordPress to help others. I hope it’ll inspire you to realize you DO have something to contribute and that imposter syndrome is a beast that CAN be slayed, or at least tamed.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

Catching up with wonderful people from around the globe who I don’t normally get to see the rest of the year – and meeting new ones!

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

I look forward to seeing what improvements are made to the Customizer and to other theme-setup functionality, to make it easier for users to get their sites looking just how they want.

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

So hard to pick just three! Let’s go with Mel Choyce, Shannon Smith, and Tracy Levesque.

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Speaker Spotlight – Toufic Sbeiti

b13a1bb58477fd319a6afb24427f7419Toufic Sbeiti is the manager of the web operations team at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Beside managing day to day postings to both External and Internal websites, Toufic leads major web projects such as interface redesign and performance improvement. He provides guidance and recommendations to implement web accessibility standards and responsive design approaches to the department. Toufic implemented an accessibility assessment methodology to facilitate WCAG validation for the coding team. He is also the co-organizer of  #a11yyow Accessibility Camp Ottawa.

Toufic will be giving a talk entitled “10 quick tests to enhance your site’s accessibility“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

I am new to WordPress. I am looking forward to learn and share my knowledge on web accessibility.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

Anyone responsible for a web page. Coders, contents providers, designers and projects managers. The objective is to show how simple steps can increase the experience of all users on your site.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

I’ve been to one meetup and noticed how enthusiastic folks are. I like the climate of collaboration.

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Speaker Spotlight – Michelle Ames

1de238aef6adcc741086c355b4dc49b6Overextended, overcommitted, entrepreneur & volunteer.  Avid Scrabble™ player. Tea snob. Mom. WordPress fanatic. 11th hour expert. Michelle is the owner and marketing diva at Marketed by Michelle, where she makes a living through WordPress.

Michelle will be giving a talk entitled “Hidden Features of WordPress“.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

It’s hard to pick just one! In 2016 I’m speaking at camps, and organizing one camp, lead organizing another. Can’t get enough!

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

It’s a great talk for beginners or anyone who wants to understand the dashboard help and settings to make their WordPress experience even better.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

The community – meeting other WordPressers and building my network of amazing people.

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

I’m loving the changes in the recent core updates – especially around media management. Looking forward to doing even more with that.

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

@williamsba

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Speaker Spotlight – Alison Knott

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As a web designer, Alison Knott wants to dispel the myth that design is about looking good. It’s about effective communication… that works and looks great!

Alison’s career as a print designer turned web geek has seen her give presentations in an unusual blend of creativity, marketing, community and web. As an emerging public speaker, she brings high-octane enthusiasm to her presentations, with a focus on audience involvement.

When not tooting the WordPress horn, she can be found drawing strange portraits in the company of her two parrots in Halifax. She runs the WordPress Halifax Meetup and E3C, a meetup for visual artists.

Alison will be giving a talk entitled “Engage your audience now: purposeful content design for beginners“.


What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Running a WordPress Meetup! People come in frustrated with something they don’t think they have the power to do or change. A few hours later, they leave more empowered and ready to share what they’ve learned with others. How amazing is that?

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Ottawa talk.

Design often gets a bad rap of being about looking pretty and following trends. An after-thought to the content presented. But without good design, people will have a hard time engaging with your content. Design is dang important!

My talk is for anyone who wants to see the reasoning behind how key design principles influence how people view content. It’s the intersection of art, science, marketing… and my lame jokes.

What’s your favourite thing about attending WordCamps?

What stands out to me about WordCamp is how well all levels of users and makers jive together in one space. WordCamp embodies (at least to me) what WordPress is at its core – open, evolving and collaborative. Meeting people with lots of differences yet one common element that is WordPress is very humbling.

What’s exciting you about WordPress in 2016?

I run a WordPress Meetup and a few months ago .org started sending a newsletter to us organizers. Now we can draw inspiration from other groups that are highlighted, get ideas for meetup themes, and are kept in the loop with what’s happening with WordPress as it might relate to our attendees. It certainly has helped us stuff some extra ooey-gooey goodness into our meetings!

Recommend one to three people in the WordPress world to follow on social media!

https://twitter.com/wpbeginner – my go-to when I want to point people to more common WordPress questions. Also a great resource to just make sure I’m still up-to-date on the basics.

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