January is almost over, but we are already putting together our speakers and schedule for April 6th and 7th. As a sneak peak, we are proud to showcase our first six confirmed speakers:
Shane Pearlman @justlikeair
Shane is a partner at Modern Tribe Inc. and leads indie teams in UX/UI, web, mobile & product design. Did you say Shane is new to speaking? Slap yourself, because he’s spoken at SXSW, HOW, GigaOm’s Future of Work, and of course other WordCamps. He also has contributed on the topic of remote work & freelancing to Mashable, A List Apart, GigaOm, Smashing Mag, CodePoet, Elance, FreelanceSwitch & Copyblogger. He’ll be speaking at of WordCamp Miami’s new business track this year.
Tony Perez @perezbox
Tony used to call Miami home, but as the result of some encouragement (and blackmail) Tony is making the trip to WordCamp Miami 2013 this year. Tony owns a web security company called Sucuri (maybe you’ve heard of it, they remediate between 200 – 300 websites every day). He’s also the lead incident handler for large enterprise clients with websites that have millions of followers. He’ll be bringing his security knowledge to attendees (and maybe some dancing moves?).
Suzette Franck @mt_Suzette
Suzette is a Media Temple WordPress Evangelist and helps people everyday in matters related to WordPress. She’s been doing web development and hand coding for over 17 years, the last five years she’s gone WordPress exclusive. Fresh from speaking at WordCamp Phoenix 2013, she’s traveling down to South Florida to talk about customizing default WordPress themes – a perfect topic for those just getting into creating and tweaking themes in WordPress.
Pippin Williamson @pippinsplugins
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. Most recently spoken at WordCamp Chicago 2012 where he melted the minds of attendees, and we are looking at another repeat performance on a new topic at WordCamp Miami this year.
Chris Lema @chrislema
Chris Lema is the VP of Software Engineering at Emphasys Software in San Diego, where he manages high performers and oversees product development and innovation. He’s also a blogger, ebook author and a frequent guest on the hit show that is sweeping the nation – wpwatercooloer. Such a nice guy, he’s offered to buy everyone drinks at the WordCamp Miami after-party (really?). He’ll be speaking at of WordCamp Miami’s new business track this year.
Brian Messenlehner @bmess
Brian is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. There’s isn’t much in his file except that this former US Marine loves his WordPress and open source projects! He’s one of the founders of WebDevStudios, which handles a variety of WordPress and BuddyPress projects for large-scale and VIP clients. Knows how to code BuddyPress, bbPress, PHP, and C# (holy crap!) in one hand and drinking a beer in another. He’s coming down to Miami to talk about BuddyPress and we won’t let him leave until he does.
We have an amazing list of talent – both inside and outside Miami – coming to share knowledge this year. We are confirming additional speakers right now, and will be showcasing more speakers in the coming days. If you haven’t yet, make sure you get on the WordCamp Miami 2013 mailing list or follow @wordcampmiami on Twitter (and are you a closet Facebook person? We got you covered. And Google+? We don’t judge.).