Category Archives: Speakers

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Eight

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the latest confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Christina Harris

Christina Harris started working with WordPress in 2008. After spending years building WordPress sites on the side, she realized how much she enjoys teaching WordPress to others.

In 2014, she joined WPBeginner to create WordPress training videos. WPBeginner is the largest free WordPress resource sites on the web.

Valerie Pierce

Over 20+ years of project management experience with a demonstrated history of working in the health and wellness, technical, and automotive industries. Transferable skills include: customer service, nonprofit organizations, negotiation, event planning, marketing planning, social media: strategy, implementation, and coaching, strong professional training.

Rachel Lucas

Rachel S. Lucas is the co-founder of BICO Desk Website Training & Support, which aims to support people who are creating and maintaining their own websites. A techie at heart, Rachel brought to Balambico a sophisticated level of creativity from her architecture background.

As a female minority in tech, Rachel strives to serve as an inspiration to other young ladies in her demographic to find the joy in coding. She is also an aspiring Young Adult (YA) author working on her debut novel.

Michael Schofield

Michael is a service designer specializing in the hyperlocal (libraries, higher-ed, local journalism), where the success of product and service suites is determined by their user experience. He is the lead of user experience development at WhereBy.Us, a WordPress-based media startup dedicated to connecting curious locals to their communities.

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Seven

WordCamp Miami proudly announces the seventh group of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Cindy Montgenie

Cindy Montgenie, former award-winning HP executive, is a high-performance strategist, international keynote speaker, and certified executive coach whose subject matter expertise includes the future of work, change leadership, and influence.

Cindy leverages her C-Suite experience and 20-year international career managing billion-dollar businesses and leading multicultural teams through mergers, company splits, and internal reorganizations to help leaders and organizations navigate the hurdles of change and become winning power players in today’s complex, disruptive digital era.

Cindy is the CEO of New Skies Nation, a boutique advisory firm where leaders strengthen their leadership competencies to build unstoppable organizations.

She holds an MBA from Grenoble Ecole of Management, France, and speaks three languages

Michelle Wiltshire

Without boxing myself in too much, I describe myself as always curious, overly energetic, and a holistically inclined person. I’m licensed as a clinical psychologist with a small private practice in Midtown (Miami) and a Product Designer of digital products. In 2017 I chose to evolve my career to include design and development with a focus on Front-end development. My everyday motivation is to bridge gaps between need and resources. I feel inspired by tech/design’s ability to have a positive impact on a grand scale. Right now I am a Product Design Consultant and UX Consultant at two startups. In my spare time, I’m building, designing, and launching passion products.

Tony Perez

Tony is the GoDaddy General Manager (GM) responsible for the Security Product Group and Sucuri brand. He oversees the Certificate Authority (CA), Content Distribution Network (CDN), Website Application Firewall (WAF), Website Backups, Monitoring, DNS and Incident Response product and services. He is the former CEO / Co-Founder at Sucuri and US Marine.

Jennifer Bourn

With 20 years experience as a graphic designer, 14 years experience as a web designer, 13 years as a creative agency owner, and 10 years as a blogger, Jennifer Bourn has worked with hundreds of small-medium sized service-based businesses to build brands, establish profitable online platforms, and claim authority positioning in their niche. She is also a sought-after speaker and writer, earning rave reviews for her workshops, trainings, and valuable articles.

Through Jenniferbourn.com, Jennifer focuses on providing the information, tools, and resources freelancers need to build thriving, successful businesses and delivering courses that help freelancers make more money. Through her agency, Bourn Creative, she offers a suite of services designed to maximize results and increase profits that include brand strategy, content strategy, and website strategy, as well as copywriting and content implementation. And over at her personal blog Inspired Imperfection, she shares recipes, family adventures, and more.

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 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 to help you build your brand (for free of course).

Christie Chirinos

Christie Chirinos is one of the owners of Caldera WP, makers of Caldera Forms. She also received her MBA from Florida State University in 2015.

Mary Baum

Gutenberg blocks give us a new level of freedom without clogging up our theme files with 600 page templates. And we can still keep styling on brand with CSS, so our users can get crazy creative — but everything will still go together!

Mark Jaquith

Mark has been building cool things with WordPress since 2004. He runs Covered Web Services which focuses on solving tricky WordPress development challenges.

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Six

WordCamp Miami is excited to announce the sixth group of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Chris Teitzel

Chris has a passion for technology and its ability to create an impact on lives around the world. He’s driven by simplifying website security and privacy, working in both WordPress and Drupal to further core privacy initiatives. Recently he’s been appointed to advise the Department of Homeland Security on privacy matters, worked with US/EU Trans-Atlantic Privacy Initiatives, and helped form the new Cross-CMS Privacy Working Group.

Jamie Schmid

Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences, and a big ol’ enthusiasm for all things WordPress. Formerly Community Evangelist at SiteLock, she is now a WordPress Strategy and Development consultant based in Portland, OR, taking site concepts through a well-managed process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content.

Aida Correa

Aida is a mom & grandma, lover of the Lord, writer, multi-media artist, poet, speaker, and blogger. She owns LoveBuilt Life LLC, a Creative Arts & Lifestyle Company, where she teaches people to live “Life from the art”.

She also builds websites for start-ups on a budget and enjoys regularly attending WordCamp conferences (as a volunteer, speaker, attendee and, now an organizer), where she can relish in the WordPress Community and fan the flame of her ongoing love of Wapuu.

John Jacoby

Works at Sandhills Development. Friend to WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress fans. Cohost WordPress Weekly w/ Jeff Chandler. East Troy Village Trustee. 11 time WordCamp Miami heavyweight champion.

Keri Engel

Keri is Head of Growth at OptinMonster, lead generation software made by the company behind WPBeginner. She first started working with WordPress around 2011, when she founded the blog Amazing Women In History.

James Tryon

James Tryon is the lead ambassador of Wapu.us, co-founder of BizTender.io among other things. James is married with 3 kids. He also helps organizer of WordCamp Orlando & the WordPress Orlando meetup group. He has been in the creative industry since 1998. Tryon has an eye for design and usability, and also possess the know-how to plan, design, and dev it all if needed.

An avid collector of random awesomeness and unique creations, James always finding something interesting to spark his creativity. When James not working, he is more than likely making something, playing with toys, or hanging with friends and family.

Nemanja Stojanovic

During his career, Nemanja has been involved with numerous aspects of building high-scale production systems as well as mentoring and teaching. For the past 2 years, he’s been working at Enki (enki.com) where he currently oversees the day to day engineering operations across multiple educational products (a Slack bot, a mobile app, a web app) supporting close to 1M users. Over the years, Nemanja has leveraged JavaScript to build software ranging from web, hybrid and native mobile applications to backend and infrastructure systems in the cloud.

Outside of his day job, you can find him occasionally contributing to OSS or learning funky tunes on his saxophone.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy

Josepha has been organizing and promoting events in Kansas City, and across the nation, since 2010. With experience in SEO, data science, and excellent written communication skills, she began working with MMGY Global, the largest travel and tourism marketing firm in North America. In 2015, after five years of volunteering her time to the WordPress open source project, she was hired by Automattic. At Automattic Josepha helps guide the future and support the ongoing health of the world’s largest volunteer open source community. This includes financial planning, sponsorship relations, volunteer training programs, and several diversity initiatives on a global scale. She is well-versed in conflict mediation tactics and has a knack for explaining complex topics clearly and respectfully.

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Five

WordCamp Miami is privileged to announce the fifth group of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Patricia Meyer

I am an award-winning graphic designer and website developer based in Fort Lauderdale, FL. In 2001, I founded Big Max’s Studio, a woman-owned design firm specializing in startups and small businesses, with their branding and marketing, websites and publications.

In 2016 I won the “American Graphic Design Award” for the logo design for my invitation company Patti & Hank, and in 2017 I again won the award for my website design for Italian winemaker Terralsole. In 2018 I won the award for the book cover “Think you can’t write? Think again!”

I am a Certified Digital Business Consultant, as well as a WordPress Care Plan Specialist. In 2010, I switch from HTML websites and began developing and designing all websites in WordPress. Many website designers choose to pick one field, I on the other hand like the challenge of all trades. Some of my website designs have included lawyers, accountants, independent book publishers, wineries, florists, and media companies.

I have written three books and am the primary blogger for Tropic Moon Media.

Joseph LoPreste

Joseph LoPreste is co-owner of St Pete Design, a web development company that specializes in web accessibility and custom WordPress software. He brings over 12 years of business and technology experience along with a passion for web accessibility and the knowledge to help. He also oversees all aspects of software development from design to launch.

He has 2 amazing daughters Mekenzie and Kennedie who have taught him what’s important in life. They bring balance to him and his life/work ratio. He brings the mindset that as a company we should cultivate creativity and individuality so that allows us to create solutions at the highest levels while still loving what we do.

“If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

“I get to wake up every day to a fresh set of challenges and the opportunity to solve these challenges with new and unique solutions.”

Karim Marucchi

As CEO, Karim leads Crowd Favorite and has been actively engaged in the WordPress community for over a decade. His career has included a range of opportunities including founding startups, working for large web agencies, and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in leading digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the vision to lead Crowd Favorite in helping Enterprise organizations transition to Open Source solutions.

Jessica Ortega

Website Security Analyst with a passion for WordPress security. I have been working with WordPress for over a decade, now with a heavy focus on educating the community about the importance of proactive cybersecurity on open source applications.

I started in web hosting technical support, server administration, terms of service enforcement for a managed WordPress platform, and now as a technical writer and security analyst.

Wendy Guess

Wendy is passionate about what makes people tick, why they do what do….and how they become your loyal clientele. You have a service that helps business become stronger, so….you need the right systems in place to build the right community with the right communication.

Passions: Being Inspired, learning, harmonious living, Healthy Change, Healthy Marketing, Systemic Coaching, outdoorsy stuff, energy, and sound healing; WordPress enthusiast, Choreographing communication and yep, even social dances!

She teaches in FIU’s Master of Marketing program and is a 6-time award-winning professor for FIU’s PMBA Online.

@DrWendyGuess

#SassySage #HealthyChange

Carl Alexander

Heya! I’m Carl.

I’m a PHP developer from Montréal, Canada. I live and breath advanced programming topics (and memes). I share a lot of my passion for those topics on my website where I publish articles on a regular basis.

It’s my way to help you with these hard-to-learn topics. That’s also why I’m excited to speak at WordCamp Miami. It’s another way for me to help you.

Besides that, I’ve been a WordPress Montréal organizer since 2010. I also help organize other WordPress events during the year. You can find me on Twitter and GitHub.

Chloe Chamberland

Chloe has been with Wordfence for the past two years originally starting out as a customer service engineer and now as a security analyst. On a daily basis, she works with people that have had their WordPress sites compromised by restoring them and provides them with insight on what they can do to better secure their sites. With a few years of customer service and security experience under her belt she loves teaching what she has learned about security so the internet can be a safer place.

She holds several industry certifications like Security+, CySA+, SSCP, and CEH, and she is currently working towards her CHFI. When she’s not learning about security or raising security awareness she enjoys traveling the world finding fun and unique coffee shops, donuteries, and tasty restaurants.

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.

Announcing: Freelancer’s Workshop March 15th

Tickets Now Available For This Workshop!

Freelance Workshops have always been popular at WordCamp Miami … they always sell out and we have to create a waitlist. Last year we didn’t have one (thanks to a wildly successful e-commerce workshop). For 2019 we are happy to bring the FREELANCE workshop back with an all-new lineup featuring more focused topics and a greater diversity of speakers.

If you are a freelancer, want to become one, or want to be better at business this is DEFINITELY a must-attend workshop for you. Buy your tickets early to ensure your spot!

The “Freelancer” Workshop will be on Friday, March 15th. It is a single full-day track.

We will post speakers and session information on our schedule page but enjoy our lineup below as a preview!  Tickets are now available.

Allie Nimmons

Allie is a self-taught freelance web designer and internet marketer. In 2013, she started teaching herself web design and coding out of books. Her first job as a junior designer introduced her to WordPress. She also learned about SEO, social media marketing, website security, and just how to run a business well. She struck out and started her own business (Allie Nimmons Creative) in 2016 and rebranded as Pixel Glow Web Design in 2018.

Talk: “How To Improve Your Client’s Experience”: The main takeaways are tips taken directly from Allie’s own process that have been used in order to make client workflows more fun and easy to understand. Designers and developers struggle sometimes with educating their clients and making the process overall seem less daunting. Allie will share a link to download a customizable Welcome Packet template that she has created.

Nathan Ingram

Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.He is also the creator of >ADVANCE Coaching, working with WordPress business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.

Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he is an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham. You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.

Talk: “What I Wish I’d Known About Freelancing”: Our success as freelancers is built upon the lessons we’ve learned from our biggest mistakes. In this talk, Nathan draws on more than 20 years experience in the web business to share 10 important lessons he had to learn the hard way and common mistakes we all can avoid. Each lesson is summarized in a succinct, proverbial statement and then unpacked with examples that will make you laugh, cringe and think.

Gayle Williams

Gayle Williams, owner of Vision Marketing in Sarasota, FL, has spent the majority of her career as a marketing professional directing marketing operations for not-for-profits and small businesses. Gayle moved over to agency account management in 2002 and founded her own agency in 2008. From directing strategy and client relations she moved into hands-on design and development—growing in the opposite direction than most designers has had its strategic advantages. Today she runs a thriving digital marketing and WordPress design business from her home office, and enjoys the work-family balance it provides.

Talk: “Be Your Clients’ Hero”: Do you feel that part of your mission as a WordPress website designer is to enlighten and empower your clients? Sure, our bottom line is to build excellent websites that serve business goals, but we can build a better partnership and trust with our clients if we educate them along the way. How can we do this without wasting hours explaining basic concepts over and over? In this session we will discuss the website owner’s bill of rights and ways to bake the education into your client onboarding process.

We will cover types of content to leverage, email workflows, and recommended wording in contracts and project emails.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.

She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”

Talk: “Fitness And Freelance”.

Rian Kinney

Rian Kinney is a Florida attorney, legal consultant, published author, and founder of eCommLegal and the Kinney Firm which represents and advises founders and businesses of every size, from freelancers to enterprise; across industries in the areas of: tech, e-commerce, privacy, intellectual property and corporate law, as well as business and marketing strategy. She is also a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals and maintains their Certified Information Privacy Manager and Certified Privacy Professional/Europe designations.

Talk: “Freelancer’s Guide To Contracts”: Tired of Contracts talks that start with “I’m not an attorney, but…”… Rian Kinney IS a Florida attorney here to answer your entrepreneurial questions such as: “Can I use a Template? If so, what should I look for?”

In this talk you will discover what clauses are “boilerplate” and you should have in your contracts which will also help you better discern which templates are well drafted. Other legal questions and issues that will be addressed are e-signatures, credit card processing fees, privacy policies and terms of use

Adam Soucie

Adam Soucie is the founder and CEO of Impossibly Creative, a small business agency focusing on WordPress. He is also a member of the WordPress Orlando organizing team.

Talk: “How Freelancers Can Apply The Disney Basics When Dealing With Clients”: In this talk, Adam will discuss his time working at Walt Disney World in multiple roles, and apply the famed “Disney Basics” to working with web clients as a freelancer or customer-facing team member.

Jessi Gurr

Jessi’s love for website development started back in 1993, when at the age of 12 she learned HTML and secured her first dot-com. She has been working with WordPress since 2005, and today runs a WordPress website development company in Minneapolis, MN. Jessi lives in Anoka MN, and loves traveling for both business, and with her two young boys. She enjoys organic gardening and vegan cooking.

Talk: “Project Management”. Whether you are working as a freelancer, or as part of a team, chances are that communicating with customers falls somewhere in your job description. As a website developer, you love the part of your job where you get to develop – but you also need to develop communication and project management skills to help you stay on top of projects, interact with your customers, and make sure that projects don’t spiral out of control or take more money or time than you budgeted.

In this talk, we will discuss the basics of project management. You’ll learn techniques for getting a project started on the right foot – things like making sure that your customer contracts are crystal clear, and setting up clear timelines and project milestones. You’ll also learn how to handle scope creep, and how to deal with projects that have fallen off course.

Joe Casabona

Joe Casabona is a college course developer and professor. He also has his Master’s Degree in Software Engineering, is a Front End Developer, and hosts multiple podcasts.

Joe started freelancing in 2002, and has been a teacher at the college level for over 10 years. His passion in both areas has driven him to build Creator Courses, a school for those who want to create online businesses.

As a big proponent of learning by doing, he loves creating focused, task-driven courses to help students build something. When he’s not teaching, he’s interviewing people for his podcast, How I Built It.

Talk: “How Freelancers Can Diversify Their Income”: We’ve all experienced the feast and famine of running a business. There will be times where we are swamped with work, and times where there’s no work coming in at all. What if there were a way to ease the pain of both? In this talk, you will learn how you can prepare for the famine without breaking your back from the feast. All by diversifying your income streams.


We plan to have a Q&A session at the end of the workshop to cover as many questions as possible.

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

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Four

WordCamp Miami is excited to announce the fourth group of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Colin Dowling

“All else being equal, people will buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends.”

Colin is currently the CEO of RAINCLOUD, a B2B outbounding engine focused on helping digital agencies, SAAS providers, and hosting companies fill the funnel with great future prospects. RAINCLOUD’s singular focus is getting more of the right client to know your business exists then putting you in a position to be top of mind when the time is right. We can’t control when someone will need the service or product you offer, but we can insure that when they need it they will think of you.

  • Former VP of Channel Sales for Liquid Web
  • Former VP of Sales for Media Temple (a GoDaddy company)
  • First Enterprise & Agencies Executive at WP Engine
  • Former VP of Sales at ISON Managed IT Services

Pat Ramsey

Pat Ramsey oversees all aspects of the technology group at Crowd Favorite as Director of Technology. He brings over 20 years experience in web development, including higher education, government and enterprise digital implementations. Active in technology communities since the early 2000s, Pat is one of the founders of the Austin WordPress meetup, having worked with WordPress since 2004, integrating it into higher education IT and faculty publishing systems. He’s also been a trainer and advisor for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU.

Annejeanette Washington Collins

Annejeanette Washington Collins is a dedicated educator and professor in Broward County, Florida for the past 26 years. A graduate of The University of Miami and Nova Southeastern University, she shares her passion for educational technology teaching her students WordPress, Microsoft Office 365, Canvas, Edmodo and other LMS platforms. Most notably, Annejeanette uses WordPress to spotlight STEM trends and encouraging moms at Magnific Mom Moments. Annejeanette has presented at local, state, and international platforms notably Edu-Match and Site Leaders Connect.

In addition to teaching, Annejeanette is a conference speaker, photographer, website designer, social media blogger, and community servant. She volunteers with Dare to Care Outreach, Black Girls Code Miami Chapter, The Broward Alliance of Black School Educators, DadsBeonDuty.com, and The Faith Center Ministries Youth Department just to name a few.

Her greatest joy is spending time with her husband Major, her daughter Jayda (former Word Camp Panelist), and her family.

Zac Gordon

Zac Gordon is a professional educator, with a current focus on JavaScript development with and alongside WordPress at javascriptforwp.com. Zac has years of experience teaching at high schools, colleges, bootcamps and online learning sites like Treehouse, Udemy and Frontend Masters. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, one of the world’s largest hosting companies dedicated to students and teachers. You can also catch his free Office Yoga sessions on OfficeYoga.tv.

Chris Lema

Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.

Antonella Morales

Antonella is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist that is always on top of the latest trends and news.

She has experience in optimizing blogs and copy writing for websites.

She’s been consistently working with WordPress since 2015 and is always looking to learn more. She has recently really committed to learning a lot more about WordPress.

Fun fact: This is Antonella’s first time being a speaker for any conference. So, even if you didn’t get that much out of her talk, she’d still love it if you smiled and nodded like you did.

Santiago Leon

Santiago Leon is President & Founder of sleon productions, a agency that provides web, apps, video and audio services to clients. Santiago is a Miami native with ten years of experience in technology and multimedia.

Whitney Lubin

Whitney Lubin is a Full Stack Web Developer, entrepreneur, YouTube content creator, and occasional fanfiction writer.

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Three

WordCamp Miami is honored to announce the third group of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Korene Stuart

“Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, -should learn a computer language. Because it teaches you how to think.”- Steve Jobs.
Learning how to code shouldn’t just be for those who can afford it. After starting her self-taught journey in learning various computer languages in 2016 , Korene Stuart felt there was more she could do to improve the lives of under served communities. With the help of her sister, they launched a non-profit organization, MAScode( Minorities Advancing through STEM) an initiative to expose both children and adults to the amazing careers of S.T.E.M.(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).

Joe Casabona

Joe Casabona is a college-accredited course developer and professor. He also has his Master’s Degree in Software Engineering, is a Front End Developer, and hosts multiple podcasts. Joe started freelancing in 2002, and has been a teacher at the college level for over 10 years. His passion in both areas has driven him to build Creator Courses, a school for those who want to create online businesses. As a big proponent of learning by doing, he loves creating focused, task-driven courses to help students build something. When he’s not teaching, he’s interviewing people for his podcast, How I Built It.

Jessi Gurr

Mom | Vegan | Entrepreneur
Jessi runs a website development agency in Minnesota. She loves creating jobs and talking about her experience.
Jessi enjoys traveling with her kids and organic gardening.

Micah Wood

A professional WordPress developer for over a decade, Micah has worked on sites for Fortune 100 companies, has released over a dozen WordPress plugins, is a frequent speaker at WordCamps, co-organizes the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, is a co-host on the WP Square One podcast and shares his knowledge by blogging on WordPress development topics.

Topher DeRosia

Topher has been a web developer for over 25 years, and a WordPress developer for 8 years. He recently began working with BigCommerce as a WordPress Developer Evangelist.

Topher hails from Grand Rapids MI, where he lives with his wife, two daughters, and two little dogs.

Rian Kinney

Rian Kinney, founder of The Kinney Firm and eCommLegal is a privacy expert and online business, privacy, and tech attorney assisting businesses of all sizes from freelancers to enterprise, currently representing and working with some of WordPress’s biggest names.

Rian holds the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ CIPM and CIPP/E Designations and has spoken at conferences all over the country and Europe on issues ranging from contracts, CYA’ing your site, the future of open source, to ethics, and privacy.

Scott Mann

Scott Mann is an Emmy-winning creative director, a business mentor, a board member for a number of regional non-profits, an SEO specialist, a certified Google Partner and a social impact advocate.

He founded Highforge in 2001 as a boutique digital agency with the purpose of helping good people grow good businesses online and beyond. Since then the agency has designed work for thousands of companies and helped clients reach millions of new viewers and customers. They build messaging and identity platforms and guidelines, art illustration, SEO, Google Ads and website development and support for WordPress and Shopify.

He’s an avid sci-fi reader, racquetball player, and backpack traveler. He enjoys music festivals, tequila and loves promoting BeTheMatch.org to save lives.

David Wolfpaw

David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Two

WordCamp Miami is proud to announce the second group of confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Dr. Tracy Timberlake

Dr. Tracy Timberlake is an Award Winning Digital Strategist, but began her online career as an Award Winning Beauty and Lifestyle Vlogger on YouTube. She went from making videos on her bathroom floor to being a pioneer and industry expert in the field of digital entrepreneurial world. With over 70,000 followers, 3.1+ million video views and a Doctorate in leadership, she focused her academic study specifically in the area of online entrepreneurship so that she can give the most up to date, backed by research processes!!! Dr. TT coaches clients on how to get use their influence and expertise to build successful businesses in the online space. She has collaborated with Forbes, featured in The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, and more. She has also worked with brands such as Herbal Essence, Marc Jacobs, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. Digital Leadership and Transformation is the of the game, and Dr. TT is here to help you every step of the way.

Roberto Remedios

Roberto Remedios is a UX / UI Designer and Frontend Developer who always enjoys learning and sharing his knowledge about WordPress with others. He is a community and WPTV team Volunteer / Speaker / Mentor on WordPress.org and other several Camps across the globe, including: Miami, NYC, Boston, US (Philly/Nashville), Atlanta, Jacksonville, Europa (Paris), Managua, Puebla, CMX, Sao Paulo, Cusco, San Jose organizer at WordPress Meetup Costa Rica. User, designer, developer and evangelizer of WordPress and accessibility since 2006.

Tessa Kriesel

Teaching and mentorship come naturally to dog-lover and Developer Outreach Manager at Pantheon, Tessa Kriesel. She wears many hats in her life — all with sass and finesse — including instructor for Girl Develop It, lead organizer for WordCamp Minneapolis, and founder of Outspoken Women and Coders of TMRW.

Tessa has spoken on many topics including helping beginners with workflow, mentorship, configuration management, and shedding light on continuous integration and deployment. She has also been a panelist on a wide range of topics at Conferences and Meetups.

When Tessa isn’t working on her development chops or mentoring junior developers, she is using her extroverted super hero skills to make people feel welcome and included at whatever event she attends.
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Adam Soucie

Adam Soucie is the founder and CEO of Impossibly Creative, a small business agency focusing on WordPress. He is also a member of the WordPress Orlando organizing team.

Joe Howard

Hi! Joe here. I’m the Head Buff at WP Buffs, a 24/7 WordPress website maintenance service for serious website owners and white-label partners. Whether you’re looking after 1 site or 1000, we’ve got your back! I also run WPMRR, a robust video course that teaches WordPress professionals how to implement, sell and execute ongoing care plans for their clients and increase their revenue every single month. Or you can just tune into The WPMRR WordPress podcast entirely focused on growing successful WordPress businesses and monthly recurring revenue without taking itself too seriously. Boom!

Beth Livingston

Beth built her first WordPress website in 2009 for a side business, was immediately smitten, and began building websites for other small businesses. In 2016, after a long history as an IT Business Analyst and Instructional Designer, Beth left the corporate world to become a full time WordPress Coach and Designer, and now owns WP Roadmaps and Coaching, providing project and productivity management education to WordPress practitioners.

Beth also administers the WordPress Project Management Facebook group and serves as an organizer for the Triad WordPress Meetup Group where she has hosted several “happiness bar” type events for those needing help.

Kathy Zant

Kathy Zant is a seasoned digital executive with over 20 years of web development experience for companies large and small. She’s been using WordPress for over a decade. For the last three years, she’s been a security analyst for Wordfence, developing services for WordPress users to better understand and manage their site security.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.

She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”

2019 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round One

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the first confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2019.

Bianca Welds

Bianca is a diehard WordPresser who first joined the community in 2005. From personal blogging to boutique consulting, she has now evolved into a community leader, helping the Jamaican WordPress community grow and become an active part of the wider WordPress world. When not working on community, she can be found with her nose in a book or floating in water.

David Carr

David Carr is a writer, editor, speaker and digital consultant. He has been an editor for publications including InformationWeek, Baseline, and Internet World and is the author of Social Collaboration for Dummies. His WordPress plugins include RSVPMaker, Facebook Tab Manager and Floating Callout. He founded the WordPress for Toastmasters project and the Online Presenters Toastmasters club, which focuses on presentation skills for webinars and online events.

Nathan Ingram

Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.

He is also the creator of ADVANCE Coaching, working with WordPress business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses. Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he is an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham. You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.

Andrea Zoellner

Andrea is the Chief Content Creator at SiteGround and the lead organizer for WordCamp Montreal. She trained as a broadcast journalist and worked in corporate communications before trading it for a career in tech. Now she spends her days developing brand messaging, copy editing and blogging. When she’s not at home in Montreal, she’s sampling the digital nomad life and documenting her adventures on her travel blog.

Cal Evans

When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, he enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”.

These days, when not working with PHP, Cal can be found working on a variety of projects like CoderFaire. He speaks at conferences around the world on topics ranging from technical talks to motivational talks for developers. If you happen to meet him at a conference, don’t be afraid to buy him a shot of Bourbon.

Cal is based in Jupiter, FL where he is happily married to wife 1.31, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT.

Allie Nimmons

I have been working with websites since 2013. But I’ve been designing stuff since I was small. I grew up in theatre, learning how to collaborate with others, work toward a common goal, and create something that is larger than the sum of its parts.
In 2013, I started teaching myself web design and coding out of books. My first job as a junior designer introduced me to WordPress, one of my favorite things in the world. I also learned about SEO, social media marketing, website security, and just how to run a business well. I struck out and started my own business (Allie Nimmons Creative) in 2016. I rebranded as Pixel Glow Web Design in 2018.

Gayle Williams

Gayle Williams, owner of Vision Marketing in Sarasota, FL, has spent the majority of her career as a marketing professional directing marketing operations for not-for-profits and small businesses. Gayle moved over to agency account management in 2002 and founded her own agency in 2008. From directing strategy and client relations she moved into hands-on design and development—growing in the opposite direction than most designers has had its strategic advantages. Today she runs a thriving digital marketing and WordPress design business from her home office, and enjoys the work-family balance it provides.

Gayle was an early inbound marketing adopter as a Hubspot partner agency and maintains her Inbound Marketing certification. She is also a WP Elevation-certified Digital Business Consultant. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and a Masters in Adult Learning and Development.

Chris Wiegman

Chris is an engineer at WP Engine who has been working on WordPress since 2008. Over the years he built one of the largest security plugins on WordPress.org as well as numerous other plugins, themes and solutions for sites large and small. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has presented at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University and other University courses ranging from computers to aviation.

Update On 2019 Speaker Submissions

For the first time, WordCamp Miami is posting an online update regarding our speaker submissions. To be clear at the present time NOT EVERYONE has been confirmed to be a speaker (or not a speaker) but we wanted to get some information out publicly for the sake of some transparency.  A link to this post will be sent to all those that applied to speak via our online form.

All-Time Record Of Submissions

We experienced close to 220 speaker submission this year, which is very close to last year’s record. That is an honor to have that number of submission for a WordCamp – and we are happy to have that kind of variety of people and topics. As you can imagine, with only about 60-70 slots available that means still only 1/4 of the submissions can be accepted.

Emails, Emails, Emails

It’s our policy to send an email out to EVERY person who submitted via our official online form. The acceptance emails are pretty much the same (outside of some minor details related to the talk). The emails stating we couldn’t accept the speaker are also short and sweet. We try to mention any particular reason why the sessions submitted weren’t accepted if we can, but many times it just boils down to a few innocent reasons (see below). Sending out these emails takes a lot of time and energy.

Reasons Why Applications Weren’t Accepted

A few people ask, so we figure we would share common reasons why applications are not accepted (outside, again, of the sheer fact that we don’t have slots for everyone). The vast majority (>95%) of ones that get a confirmation that they have been selected this time around fall into one of these three categories:

– Simply too many talks submitted with the same subject. This is the most common reason, and you can’t blame this really on anyone. But sadly with an event like ours if you are looking for (let’s say as a random example) an SEO talk… and there are 40 SEO talks submitted by qualified speakers… you can only realistically pick one.

– Some submitted talks interested us greatly, but simply wasn’t relatable to attendees of a WordCamp event. Random example (this was NOT submitted): how to build a toaster (if there’s a toaster conference though, we know who to recommend).

– Room reservations at the venue have made us have to consider some format changes and other planning difficulties that removed spots in our schedule that would have otherwise gone to other speakers.

It’s the nature of the beast that with large conferences the odds aren’t in your favor, sometimes if you submit multiple talks. Highly suggested reading: Speakers And Organizers: Dealing With Conference Rejections. If you are among  those not sadly not accepted this round, there are some good pointers there.

Other Recommended Places To Submit

If you are looking to give talks to other WordCamps in sunny Florida and Georgia (general Southeast), we would recommend checking out these:

WordCamp Atlantahttps://2019.atlanta.wordcamp.org/speaker-applications-are-now-being-accepted/ (speaker call submissions accepted until Feb 15)

WordCamp Orlando – https://2019.orlando.wordcamp.org/ (event in August, so watch for speaker calls on this).

Meetups

If you are local to the South Florida area, we highly encourage you to give those same submitted talks at your local WordPress meetups. Speaking at a local WordPress meetup is an excellent way to demonstrate that you are interested in supporting the local WordPress community, which is what WordCamps primarily focus on.

No matter where you are, find your local meetups and give your talks there. Some speakers come recommended to us just by the fact they gave a presentation at a local meetup that impressed enough people to made to our ears.

Speaker Announcements

Please help us spread the word about all the speaker announcements coming out. That not only shows support for the conference, but those speakers that got selected. There are going to be quite a number of speakers that are new to speaking at WordCamp Miami, or new to speaking at a WordCamp period.

More Information

We hope to share more information about our submissions – we will likely share some interesting stats Saturday (March 16th) during our opening remarks or during our closing remarks on Sunday March 17th.

Thank You

We sincerely want to thank EVERYONE who submitted a talk. If you were not accepted this year PLEASE SUBMIT AGAIN NEXT YEAR. WordCamp Miami is dedicated to locating new speakers locally and from around the world. Feel free to get in touch with us after April if you want to pick our brains on future submitted talks.