LEAD ORGANIZERS
The team lead helps keeps things organized. A team lead is picked every year, and a team lead can lead no more than two years in a row.
Patrick Alexander – Lead Organizer
Patrick Alexander is the CEO and founder of Balambico, A professional website and online solutions firm specializing in making companies look better than the competition online starting with a stunning professional website.
He holds a BS. Computer Science & Mathematics – Cameron University, MBA specializing in M.I.S – Wayland Baptist University. Patrick is a tech savant and enthusiast who has devoted himself to the tech industry for over 20 years gaining extensive experience in Programming, Web Development, Cyber Security and System Administration; and a resume with related positions in the U.S military, Universities and Internet Start-Ups .
Patrick hails from Dominica, the Nature Island of the Caribbean. His personal motto “Living To Not Be Ordinary” fuels him daily to be a motivated & driven individual who knows that hard work and steadfast discipline is the recipe for continued success.| balambico.co | @balambi
Jesse Velez – Support Lead Organizer
With over 20 years experience designing, coding and leading development web teams, Jesse Velez enjoys serving businesses and people in the web space. He is the founder and owner of We Do Internet, a Digital Marketing Agency located in Miami, Florida. A native New Yorker, he misses the cold—weather, hearts, buildings— but not enough to leave the beautiful sunny and steamy Miami weather.
This is Jesse’s 1st year as Support Lead Organizer of WordCamp Miami. In 2017, he started participating on the organizing team at WordCamp Miami and in 2019, he was Speaker Organizer. He has enjoyed every moment!
In his spare time he enjoys playing real-time-strategy games like StarCraft 2 and Ages of Empire II, writing fiction, and working with non-profits to better help manage the web thru resources and training. He hopes to get his twitch.tv channel off the ground if he can eliminate the mid-game lag!
This was going to put this in the spare time sentence, but it’s full-time: he enjoys being a loving husband, father of 5 and community member.
Jesse Velez’s Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
We Do Internet’s Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | LinkedIn
CONTENT, COMMUNCATIONS and PR TEAM
This team handles both posts to the website, the content that goes into the pages you see, and the maintenance of the website during the conference. This team also monitors our Slack channel and provides relevant updates to over 400+ who are in various channels.
Allinson Ziolkowski – Lead Organizer
Allinson joined WordCamp Miami as the lead organizer for Social Media & PR Communications. Allinson is an experienced marketing leader working with cross-functional teams in leading integrated marketing campaigns that achieve business goals and promote the company’s mission and values all-while engaging with the consumers’ feelings and interests to build brand loyalty, love and trust.
She specializes in product marketing and brand management. Her extensive experience comes from working in various industries, ranging from network broadcasting, hospitality, automation, aerospace, biotech and global logistics.
Allinson has a great ability to innovate change through visionary thinking and proactive leadership.
Nicole Soltau – Support Lead Organizer
Nicole is a digital marketing strategist and instructor. She is currently located in Miami and enjoys teaching workshops to small business owners. entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and to students. She is the creator of the P.O.W.E.R. Framework and her mission is to empower small businesses by providing access to affordable digital marketing content and tutorials.
Daniel Schutzsmith
Daniel Schutzsmith is a rare breed – a hybrid of equal parts design, code, and strategy.
Most recently Daniel was the Digital Technology Director of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) leading an amazing team through empathy and emotional intelligence to create websites, apps and interactive experiences to help safeguard the earth—its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.
Prior to that Daniel was the Digital Technology Manager / Senior Web Developer for Amnesty International USA. Helping push human rights to the digital forefront.
Over the past two decades he has worked with clients such as Adobe, Greenpeace, The Pixies, MTV, Phish, Nelson Mandela Foundation, Oxfam, PBS, They Might Be Giants, TBS, Pepsico, Dave Matthews Band and many more.
In his free time he enjoys inspirational wanderings through the streets of NYC, coding by the pool, single malt scotches in the winter, rosé in the summer, and fun in the sun with his family. He now calls Tampa, Florida home.
Elizabeth Reiher
Elizabeth Reiher is a volunteer with the Content Team. She is a paralegal and Certified Scrum Master. You can find her on twitter at Tononomoshia.
SPONSORS TEAM
The Sponsors Team is responsible for procuring relevant and exciting sponsors. Our team also checks in and helps with sponsor related items during the conference.
David Bisset – Lead Organizer
David is a developer living in South Florida, and works for a company called Envira Gallery LLC which makes WordPress plugins used on hundreds of thousands of WordPress installs. He’s a WordPress developer and specializes in BuddyPress sites/applications along with stand-alone PHP work. Also a speaker, meetup organizer, conference organizer, and father of three. [davidbisset.com | @dimensionmedia]
Rian Kinney, Esq. – Support Lead Organizer
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 US and Europe on issues ranging from contracts, CYA’ing your site, the future of open source, to ethics, and privacy.
Twitter: @thekinneyfirm
KIDS TEAM
This team handles the entire kids camp experience including activities, workshops, and special events.
Roxana Colorado – Lead Organizer
Roxana Colorado has joined the Wordcamp Miami team to co-lead and enhance the kid’s camp experience. Roxana is excited to transition from attendee and speaker to an organizer for this event.
Roxana believes everyone should be given the opportunity to do something great. Most people want to do big things. But many don’t know where to start.
Roxana’s passion to guide others towards success led her to create Kandula International, LLC – a strategic planning company in Miami. Roxana leverages her extensive corporate finance and international experience to help entrepreneurs scale their business. Together, they build profitable future proof businesses that allow them to make a positive impact in their communities. All without losing their time, money, and/or sanity.
In addition, Roxana dedicates time to pursue her philanthropic passion. Through Dare2B, Inc., Roxana inspires and empowers homeless children to survive and thrive. Helping them develop their full potential so that they too can turn into responsible adults that invest in our society’s future.
You can connect with Roxana on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook via @LatinaNomad
DEV / DESIGN TEAM
The Design Team handles logos, web design, stage decoration, badges, swag, and more.
Eddie Solar – Lead Organizer
Eddie is a developer living South Florida specializing in Front-End and Back-End Development. He is the Director of Development at MediXall.com and supports the local tech community, enjoys learning new things. You can find him on Twitter at @esolar07
EVENT/VENUE TEAM
The local team handles logistics and coordinates local vendors and venues for the conference, speaker’s dinner, after parties, and any other aspects of the event such as catering.
Anthony Miyazaki – Lead Organizer
I build brands, processes, and programs that deliver results. I’m a firm believer in people, truly constructive feedback, and the value of tangible results. If something’s efficient, effective, and sensible, I like it. In the few years that I’ve directed the revenue-focused marketing and analytics at FIU Business, we’ve grown annual revenues over $11,000,000 (yes, that’s per year) during a time when education revenues are shrinking. I lead two teams — a marketing/analytics team (5 people) and an academic/training team (40+ people) and we work together to build our individual and collective brands. Connect with me on LinkedIn; follow me on Twitter (@SensibleFolk); and catch my weekly #MarketingMinute videos on YouTube (and be sure to subscribe while you’re there).
PHOTOGRAPHY TEAM
Our Photography Team will be there for all the moments, captured in both photographs and videos, that we want to memorialize for this momentous 12th year of WordCamp Miami.
George Cooke – Lead Organizer
George is an educator teaching Python, JavaScript, PHP and WordPress for the Computer Science department at Broward College. He is the WordPress administrator for the Computer Science and BC Hackathon web sites and mentors Broward College students who intern at the Computer Science department working on WordPress plugins and themes for the department web sites.
SIGNAGE TEAM
This team helps with all signage during the event.
VOLUNTEERS TEAM
Our volunteers do it all at WordCamp US from running our registration tables, to lending a hand at the Happiness Bar, to serving as emcees introducing our speakers, and so much more. The volunteer team coordinates it all.
Etty Sims – Lead Organizer
Ester “Etty” Sims is a freelance web developer and a social media and marketing coordinator. She specializes in WordPress website development and other platforms for small businesses. In addition, she is the Academic Technologist and Social Media Coordinator for the Computer Science and Information Technology Department in Broward College. This is the fourth WordCamp Miami that she is volunteering at. To balance her life; Etty is vegan, practices yoga, loves art, world travel and promotes a healthy sustainable living. She is also very involved in her city government where she helped pass a plastic straw ban ordinance. #losethestraw Ester’s Domain | @Ettysims1
Louise Treadwell – Support Lead Organizer
Louise Treadwell is an eternal web development geek and social media junkie. She’s a native of Metro Detroit and an alumna of the University of Michigan. She learned about the human side of computer science while earning a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science and has fine-tuned her web developer skills over the course of a 20+ year career building, breaking, and fixing sites for a multitude of startups. louisetreadwell.com|@infoscigeek
Nakeesha Charles
Nakeesha Charles is the writer and editor-in-chief of cnakeesha.com. Over the last 5 years, she has participated in WordCamp Miami as an attendee, a volunteer, and a speaker on the topic of writing for the web. She has been creating with WordPress since 2009.
@cnakeesha | Cnakeesha.com
SOCIAL TEAM
This team handles social media before and during the event. They help with updates and responding to questions on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
COMMUNITY TEAM
This team handles outreach, marketing, and communication with groups that work together with WordCamp Miami to support our local communities.
LOGISTICS, VENUES, and CATERING TEAM
As WCMIA grows, so does our footprint. The logistics team coordinates all aspects of our presence at each venue we use. They take charge of things like room usage and set-up at the convention center, after-party, and volunteer party venues. They work with programming to ascertain our audio visual needs, interface with the sponsors to coordinate shipping, and they are in charge of catering at our various events.
Oswaldo Arratia – Lead Organizer
Oswaldo is an electronics engineer, sysadmin and full stack developer who has specialized in the telecommunications area since 1999.
As the owner of VoIPExperts.net LLC, Oswaldo has been designing applications and building networks for telecommunication companies focused on the VoIP technology.
He participates and likes to volunteer at several tech events and conferences. As a hobby, he uses telecommunications to build and interact with applications for small IoT projects.
Although he is not very active on social media, you can find him on twitter @OswaldoArratia
Rachel L. Alexander
Carolina Prada
SPEAKER TEAM
This team handles interactions with speakers, Room MCs, and similar responsibilities.
Santiago Leon – Lead Organizer
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.
Twitter: @sleon
MASCOT
Captain Wapuu
Take a look at when and how our mascot was created.
IN MEMORIAM
Todrick Moore
Todrick Moore was one of the strongest members of the South Florida WordPress community. After coming to meetups, Todrick quickly volunteered and became a WordCamp Miami organizer in 2015 and 2016. Todrick primarily contributed in the areas of logo design and signs for the event, as evidenced by items he shows on his website. Todrick passed away on September 25, 2018.
Efrain Rivera
Our dear friend, Efrain passed away on January 28, 2018. WordCamp Miami will never be the same without him. Several years ago, Efrain revamped our registration process transforming it from utter chaos into a finely tuned happy place run by smiling volunteers.