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WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Ten

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the tenth (and final?) round of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2018.

Lenora Porter

Lenora is a creative unicorn who decided to merge her love for art, psychology, and technology into a lucrative career called User Experience Design. She attended the University of Florida and graduated (2014) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Family, Youth, and Community Sciences. She knew her degree did not reflect the traditional route toward a career in technology so she became a lifelong learner. With the use of Youtube, Udemy, and attending a coding boot camp (Wyncode Academy), Lenora was able to transition from a High School Math Teacher to a Product Designer. Currently, she’s one of the awesome designers disrupting the business VoIP world at IDT Corporation.

When she’s not at work, Lenora enjoys spending time in her community speaking about design, mentoring students, and inspiring future creatives. Lenora believes tech is much more colorful and artsy than it seems. Through her story, she hopes to shed light on the arts and its place in technology.

Carlos Vazquez

US Marine combat veteran turned digital marketer by prank calling Fidel Castro. Now he builds automated systems attracting customers predictably and profitably. (…and some say he’s dang good at it)

William Jackson

William Jackson graduated from South Carolina State University earning a Bachelor’s in Education degree, he furthered his education earning a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Webster University with a focus on Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM. William’s career involves past teaching with NASA as an Internet and Technology instructor, technology consultant with the Florida Department of Education and current Professor with Edward Waters College teaching Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM. He has been involved in the field of education over 25 years in elementary and higher education. William has been involved in blogging as a national and international writer. Writing in media in the United States, Europe and on the African continent. Using the #myquesttoteach as a foundation to share content that is diverse in the way information can be applied and integrated in many areas.

Keri Engel

An employee at Awesome Motive, Keri is the Head of Content Marketing for OptinMonster, easyWPForms, & MonsterInsights.

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Women of WordPress Panel

For the first time for WordCamp Miami, we are happy to have our first “Women on WordPress” panel being held March 17th. Check schedule for exact time.

The Women in WordPress panel brings together a diverse group of women from across North America for an honest discussion. Aiming to inspire encourage he WordPress community, but women in particular, the panelists will discuss their achievements, struggles, and give advice to those just starting out. They will also talk about how men can be better allies to women overall, but especially to those who are just starting out their WordPress journey, whether in development, design, marketing, or blogging.

We have a great lineup of speakers:

Nakeesha Charles

My name is Nakeesha Charles. I was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. I lived in Atlanta, Georgia for ten years. I completed my undergraduate degree in journalism at Georgia State University in 2004. I have lived in the greater Baltimore, Maryland area. I have been dumb struck in love with Miami since my first visit in 2000. I relocated to Florida in 2005.

Tessa Kriesel

Agency and Community Engineer at Pantheon, Tessa has been a web developer for over 10 years. She enjoys front-end development but also loves to build sites from start to finish. She started in Joomla, moved into WordPress shortly after and most recently has been digging into Drupal.

She enjoys teaching others to code, mentoring junior developers and speaking at conferences and youth events. She is an instructor and retired Chapter Leader for Girl Develop It Minneapolis, WordCamp Minneapolis Organizer and founder of Outspoken Women. Tessa is a northern Minnesota native, but now lives in the Twin Cities. She loves dogs and enjoys helping local organizations rescue dogs in her free time.

Miriam Goldman

Miriam leads the development team at Pondstone, a boutique digital marketing agency in Canada’s national capital, Ottawa. She started playing around with WordPress for personal projects in 2009, and for professional projects two years later. Miriam is also one of the co-organizers for WordCamp Ottawa, and helps run the social media for the Ottawa WordPress community.

Natalia Real

Natalia Real started building websites on WordPress in 2012 and has been learning nonstop ever since. She’s a Web Designer/Developer-turned-Digital Strategist at Website Superhero and loves using technology to help make the world a better place.

Nat’s career path has taken her from copywriting and WordPress maintenance and optimization, to content marketing, team management, and SEO. She’s passionate about meditation, psychology, mountains, and bad puns.

Birgit Pauli-Haack

Since 1998 Birgit Pauli-Haack has worked with nonprofits as a web developer, a technology strategist, a trainer and community organizer. She founded Pauli Systems, LC in 2002, now a team of six. It is a 100% distributed company. Since 2010, her team has used WordPress to build new nonprofit sites and applications.

In her spare time, Birgit serves as a deputy with the WordPress Global Community team, as a WordPress Meetup organizer and a Tech4Good organizer.

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Did You Know WordPress Has An App?

That’s right! Whether you’re on an Android, iPhone or even desktop, there’s an app for you!

Download the app from your app store (it’s free!) and connect your WordPress site(s) to start editing on the go!

If you’re new to the app and have questions, we’ll have help for you at the Happiness bar. Drop by to ask questions and participate in a survey on what you think about the app. Be sure to grab your mobile swag while you’re at it!

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WordCamp Miami T-Shirt Deadline: Feb 24th

If you are thinking about grabbing a WordCamp Miami ticket, be aware that you must do so by Feb 24th in order to guarantee yourself on our infamous (famous?) WordCamp Miami t-shirts. After Feb 24th, we send off our order to the t-shirt company who doesn’t guarantee any additional shirts on late orders.

This year, we have quite a bit of surprises for those who don’t wait until the last minute. Don’t be left out!

Get your tickets here (weekend tickets include the t-shirt).

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Announcing: “Ask The Expert” Sessions

Haven’t you wished you could ask any question to an “expert” at WordCamp? Problem is that many talks have short Q&A sessions – and while we encourage speakers to visit the Happiness Bar after the talks, it’s still difficult to ask sometimes. Also there could be someone ELSE in the room that has a great answer, or would love to bond over the subject you’re interested in.

Like last year, this is part of the reason why we are bringing three “Ask The Expert” sessions to WordCamp Miami this year. In a nutshell:

  • One person knowledgable in a particular field
  • No slides, no prepared presentations
  • Approx 30 min of that person answering as many questions as possible

Think of this as a mini-town hall or a Reddit “AMA”.

Got a question about WordPress security? We have a person for that.
Got a question that touches on development? We have a person for that.

Although you can ask any legit question, we tend to suggest topics to help guide the conversation.

There are three “Ask The Expert” spots and they are all on Saturday, March 17th. We are updating our schedule page as these speakers are confirmed. However we want to share with you the six experts we have lined up so far.

Adam Warner

Adam is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that happens to have been his job title when joining SiteLock.com. Today, he’s the Open Source Community Manager there, continuing to bring his experience and knowledge of the web, business, and security to many other communities.

Suggested Questions And Topics: Got questions about security on the web and about your WordPress site? Then ask Adam.

Andrew Norcross

Andrew (or Norcross, as most know him) is a Senior Engineer and Developer Advocate at Liquid Web, focusing on internal product development and being a voice inside the WP community itself. An organizer for WordCamp Tampa, Norcross loves to keep giving back to the WordPress community with free plugins, education talks at conferences, and core contribution to WordPress. Norcross lives in Tampa, Florida with his amazing son and a rescue dog that believes he’s a human.

Suggested Questions And Topics: Andrew is not only an accomplished developer but has formerly run a well-recognized WordPress plugin company: Reaktiv Studios. So developers who have questions related to plugins or perhaps have a question regarding having a business around WordPress plugins might want to see Andrew on March 17th.

John Maeda

John Maeda is an American executive spearheading a new convergence across the design + technology industries. He joined Automattic in 2016 as Global Head of Computational Design + Inclusion and previously served as Design Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a world-leading venture capital firm and was the 16th President of the Rhode Island School of Design.

His books include The Laws of Simplicity, Creative Code and Redesigning Leadership. He holds degrees in Electrical Engineering + Computer Science from MIT, an MBA from Arizona State U, and a PhD from University of Tsukuba in Japan. Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and executive leader to help businesses and creatives push the boundaries of innovation in their markets and fields. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his talks for TED.com have received cumulative views of over 2 million to date.

Maeda was the recipient of the White House’s National Design Award, the Tribeca Film Festival’s Disruptive Innovation Award for STEM to STEAM, the Blouin Foundation’s Creative Leadership Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Prize, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo Type Director’s Club Prize, and induction into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame.

Suggested Questions And Topics: Got questions about design and user experiences? Then ask John.

Grab your weekend ticket now to make sure you can attend.

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WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Nine

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the ninth round of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2018.

Nakeesha Charles

My name is Nakeesha Charles. I was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. I lived in Atlanta, Georgia for ten years. I completed my undergraduate degree in journalism at Georgia State University in 2004. I have lived in the greater Baltimore, Maryland area. I have been dumb struck in love with Miami since my first visit in 2000. I relocated to Florida in 2005.

I am a writer. I teach English.

Windy Pierre

I’m a studious and dedicated eCommerce and Digital Marketing Professional that develops and implements digital marketing strategies for organizations, ensuring their messages, products and services reach all the right targets.

Jesse Velez

Jesse Velez is founder and Lead Creative at WeDoInternet.net. He enjoys working with web technologies and has for over 15 years. He continues to enjoys creating websites and building them with WordPress for the past 5+ years. In addition, Jesse spends some of his time working with Non-Profits and Churches, helping them to either build or fine tune their websites (among other things).

Karla Campos

Karla Campos is a famous Latina entrepreneur mom, influencer, and author. She is a technical founder with a passion for education, community, and making the world a better place.

Karla has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com, NBC6, Telemundo, and several media outlets for her knowledge and work with moms, entrepreneurship, and education.Karla Founded the consulting and education company Social Media Sass, and the Entrepreneur Moms Club with the mission of helping moms through the journey of entrepreneurship.

Karla enjoys teaching, writing, and discussing business, marketing, social media, issues affecting women, startups, all things digital, entrepreneurship, economic development, life, people relations, news, tech and apps, trending topics, and life as a mom to boys.

Andreas Lopez

Andreas first encountered Web Design back in Germany while taking Media Design classes where he learned HTML & CSS raw – no CMS, no aiding tools, just notepad and a cheat sheet of tags.

He moved to South Florida, US in 2012 where he became an IT Admin in 2013 and Webmaster by default at a small startup. This is when he used WordPress for the first time in a professional way. And from there on it was a deep dive journey straight into E-Commerce which is why he considers himself now an E-Commerce specialist and knowing his way around Google Analytics to make sales happen.

He works full-time at a local business in West Palm Beach while freelancing on the side, allowing him to maximize his knowledge and make the dreams of others come true by creating their web presences and e-commerce channels.

Anthony Miyazaki

Anthony is a brand-builder and spends his time building brands for people, programs, and organizations. He founded and currently directs the FIU Master of Science in Marketing program, the only one in the world with a three-part focus on Digital Marketing, Brand Development, and Marketing Analytics. He leads FIU’s Marketing and Logistics department, and was recently appointed as the college’s Executive Director of Marketing and Analytics. Online, you can connect with him on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter (@SensibleFolk), and catch his weekly YouTube #MarketingMinute videos (be sure to subscribe). Anthony’s a firm believer in people, truly constructive feedback, and the value of tangible results. If you cross paths with him at the conference, ask him when he’ll help you build your brand (for free of course).

Dr. Nancy Richmond

Dr. Nancy Richmond is a professor and leading speaker in social media, personal branding and marketing. Her passion is to empower and train leaders in effectively leveraging social media for their careers and business. She teaches social media classes for the College of Business and is the co-founder of the Social Media Association at Florida International University

Dr. Richmond has worked with leading universities including MIT, Harvard University, Florida International University and Northeastern University.

Nancy has a passion for social media with over 80,000+ followers on Twitter, 5,000+ connections on LinkedIn and 7,000+ followers on Instagram. Nancy’s most recent project and research #LeadersGetSocial explores how leaders can use social media to succeed in their careers and organizations.

Mark Ratcliff

Mark is a Sales Manager at Avalara, a company that works within your own financial, billing, ecommerce, or point of sale system to deliver accurate tax calculations in real time via a secure Internet connection.

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Win Awesome Prizes from SiteGround at WordCamp Miami

For 10 years now, WordCamp Miami gathers a community of knowledgeable professionals like bloggers, marketers, designers, coders, and e-commerce owners. For the past 5 of those, our partners at SiteGround have been actively supporting the event. Now, to celebrate WordCamp Miami’s 10th anniversary, they will not only be sharing knowledge with the WordPress community but have also prepared some awesome new surprises for all attendees.  

Francesca Marano, who joined team SiteGround as a WordPress Community Manager last year, will talk about markup languages, the importance of using the right elements to help visitors read your web content with pleasure, and will teach you how to fix common problems with a few HTML tags.

As many of you already know, SiteGround’s managed WordPress hosting plans are perfectly-suited for both beginners and more advanced users. They offer all essential WordPress hosting features such as automatic updates and staging, plus hard-core geeky tools like WP-CLI and Git, and have a super helpful support team that will never let you down. You’ll be able to take advantage of their feature-rich hosting plans, now with a special hosting offer with 50% off for WordCamp Miami attendees.

That’s not all! The SiteGround team have prepared another cool surprise. On their, booth, you will be able to get a special code (on a tailor-made keychain!) and enter their game for a chance to win not one, but three custom-designed air loungers for adventurous WordPress enthusiasts. Don’t miss to stop by SiteGround’s booth and try your luck!

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SiteLock Website Security – Leading by Innovation

If you’re not already familiar with SiteLock, we are a global website security company protecting over 12 million websites worldwide, with over 4 million of those sites powered by WordPress. SiteLock delivers a patented 360-degree website security solution to find, fix and prevent malware and other threats from affecting websites and their visitors.

Founded in 2008, the SiteLock cloud-based suite of products includes automatic file and database malware scanning and removal, an advanced web application firewall, static application security testing, PCI compliance and website acceleration powered by a global CDN.

Supporting the Community at Large

In 2016, SiteLock launched its notorious “Secure Your Word” campaign to help promote WordPress security. Today, “Secure Your Word” branded shirts are a fixture at WordCamps worldwide. SiteLock has been a global community sponsor and remains  committed to sponsoring individual WordCamps in 2018. There’s an interesting story about why we decided to invest in the WordPress community — when you have a  moment, check it out.

As you might guess, the SiteLock team regularly attends WordCamps around the world. Not only is the company passionate about the WordPress mission of “Democratizing Publishing,” but you’ll also find members of the SiteLock team sharing their own WordPress experience through speaking opportunities. In fact, SiteLock Open Source Community Manager Adam Warner will answer questions about website security at WCMIA during an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Saturday, March 17th.

But it’s not just about sharing knowledge with others, it’s also about listening to the needs of users and businesses within the community, and leveraging these experiences and resources to create solutions that address specific needs. That’s why SiteLock announced its new SMART®PLUS™ product during WordCamp U.S. in December of 2017.

Website Security Innovation with SMART®PLUS™

Similar to how the SiteLock SMART™ and INFINITY™ scans automatically find and remove malware in a website file structure, SMART PLUS extends the company’s automatic malware identification and removal abilities to include your website database.

SMART PLUS also provides the ability to identify and automatically remove spam comments, and can be customized in order to filter specific keywords and phrases that matter to you. This saves valuable time from the generally tedious task of reviewing and maintaining the cleanliness and quality of the comments included within your content.

We Can’t Wait to Meet You in Person!

We’re excited to be a Gold Sponsor for WordCamp Miami’s 10th-anniversary! Our WordPress Evangelists, Jamie Schmid, Adam Warner and other members of the SiteLock team will be running our sponsor booth. Stop by and say hello and learn more about how we protect websites.

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NEW AND IMPROVED: Learn JavaScript Deeply Track

GRAB YOUR WEEKEND TICKET TO ATTEND THIS TRACK

If you are only interested in attending the JavaScript track on Sunday,
contact us for a Sunday-only ticket.

For the third year in a row, we are presenting our “Learn JavaScript Deeply” track which takes developers who are already familiar with JavaScript basics and guides them into more advance topics and React.

This track is for anyone – regardless if you are a WordPress developer or not. If you are serious about getting deeper in to JavaScript and wanting to learn React… then you need to be in this track. The focus will be on JavaScript, so no WordPress knowledge will be needed.

The “Learn JavaScript Deeply” track will be on Sunday, March 18th. It is a full-day PROGRESSIVE track… which means each talk will build on the one before it. 

Check out videos from last year on wordpress.tv.

Schedule

Click on the talk titles and names below to learn more about the speaker and what material is being covered.

Time Learn JavaScript Deeply (RDB 1100)
8:00 am
Breakfast Social
8:30 am
Breakfast Social & Registration
9:00 am
Javascript Beyond jQuery Bobby Bryant, Kevin Langley Jr.
Favorite session: Javascript Beyond jQuery
10:00 am
Modern JS with ES6 Bobby Bryant, Kevin Langley Jr.
Favorite session: Modern JS with ES6
11:00 am
Introduction to React Bobby Bryant, Kevin Langley Jr.
Favorite session: Introduction to React
12:30 pm
Lunch
1:50 pm
Advanced React Bobby Bryant, Kevin Langley Jr.
Favorite session: Advanced React
2:50 pm
Building A Mobile App With React Native (Live) Jean Regisser
Favorite session: Building A Mobile App With React Native (Live)
3:50 pm
Headless WordPress with Next.js Server Side Rendering Kevin Langley Jr.
Favorite session: Headless WordPress with Next.js Server Side Rendering
4:45 pm
Closing Remarks (And Giveaways)

More Speakers and Surprises To Come!

Speakers will be sharing all the code online. For this unique and exclusive track, there will also be a Q&A for those with questions. It’s a perfect time to get the feedback and suggestions from a group of experienced developers. No question is too basic or small!

A Slack channel (click here to signup) will be provided exclusively for developers at the conference so you can virtually meet developers before the event… and follow up with them after the conference as well.

More information concerning WordCamp Miami’s “Learn JavaScript Deeply” track will be announced the closer we get to the conference.  If you are also a WordPress developer interested in deepening your knowledge in JavaScript, then you should definitely check out the Developer’s “Future of WordPress” workshop ($15) on Friday March 16th.

Grab your weekend ticket now to make sure you can attend.

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Keynote Announced: Looking To The Future of WordPress

WordCamp Miami doesn’t usually do keynotes – so if there’s one on our 10th anniversary then you know it must be big. With big changes coming in WordPress in 2018 (and beyond) that effect almost every WordPress user and developer, we thought it was time to cover this subject at the closing of the day on Saturday March 17th.

“WordPress: Looking To The Future”

This talk will be applicable to all WordCamp Miami attendees as we talk about the past, present, and future of WordPress. We’ll briefly look back at the early days of WordPress and WordCamp Miami, and see how WordPress has evolved. Then we’ll be considering the future as it pertains to the WordPress community and WordPress itself – including something called Gutenberg, which is an exciting project that will effect nearly all WordPress users. This talk will inspire ideas and get everyone energized and excited for what the future of WordPress and the web will be.

The Speaker

John James Jacoby

John is a long-time WordPress core contributor and also a lead developer of the popular BuddyPress and bbPress plugins. He is also the co-host of WordPress Weekly, one of the most wide reaching and popular WordPress podcasts. He lives in East Troy, WI and is a Village Trustee there. All around good guy.

WordCamp Miami 2018 is over. Check out the next edition!