Speakers

Laura Byrne-Cristiano

Laura started her first WordPress site back in March 2006. She grew it from obscurity to millions of views a day. Since then, she’s created/written for over twenty WordPress sites mostly in the areas of education and entertainment. She is one of the WordCamp US 2017 organizers heading up marketing and communications. Aside from her her love of WordPress, Laura is also an Anglophile, avid traveler, theater lover, fantasy junkie, and occasional actor. She currently writes for Hypable.com and does freelance marketing and social media work.

Zach Lebar

Zach is a freelancer working at the intersection of design and development. With skills spanning both disciplines, he’s comfortable with the entire process of creating things for the Web and enjoys each step along the way.

Topic: How to Speak “Conversational Developer”

Nicole Kohler

Nicole Kohler is a growth marketer at Automattic, currently working to create engaging content for Jetpack. When she’s not parked in front of her laptop, you can usually find her playing a video game, chasing around her dogs, or driving aimlessly around central Pennsylvania in search of good beer.

Topic: How to Create Your Content Strategy (And Why You Should)

Kerch McConlogue

Twitter:@kerchmcc
Harrisburg, PA;

Kerch McConlogue, retired ADHD coach and front end developer, has been writing code by hand for 16 years and using WordPress since version 1.5. Her passion is helping WordPress novices to understand the basic care and feeding of their own sites and to get past their fears of breaking the internet.

Topic: Getting Started with WordPress Workshop

Timothy Jacobs

Timothy Jacobs is a WordPress developer at iThemes where he works on the iThemes Security plugin. You can find him at timothybjacobs.com where he attempts to blog semi-regularly about WordPress development.

Topic: Extending and Building upon the WordPress REST API

Reed Gustow

Twitter: @tangofoxtrot
Philadelphia, PA

Reed Gustow has been working with WordPress since 2009. He is the Principal of a local WordPress development company, Delta Angel , which creates websites for individuals and small businesses and also offers WordPress classes online. Reed has taught classes online through Delta Angel and WP Classroom, and also in person at 3rd Ward, a venue that offered technical classes on a wide variety of subjects. In addition, he has tutored many individuals in WordPress. Reed has held workshops on various aspects of WordPress at WordCamp Philadelphia, BarCamps, and PodCamps since 2010.

Reed is a co-organizer of the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup and WordCamp US. He is the Treasurer of the Philadelphia Area New Media Association, PANMA  and a board member of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society, PACS,

Topic: Getting Started with WordPress Workshop

Paul Taubman

As the Chief Online Strategist of Digital Maestro, Paul B. Taubman, II has his roots deep in the world of technology. Working as a Solutions Architect at Fortune 500 companies for over 25 years, Paul knows how to get systems to talk each other and share data. While maintaining a successful technical career, Paul is also an expert trainer. Traveling across the country, Paul trained countless people how to work on intricate computer systems. He is a Master Trainer teaching Instructors across the country how to teach courses. As a highly respected College Adjunct, Paul teaches technical Computer Programming courses. With all this training experience, Paul has learned how to teach all this “technical stuff” to non-techies! He is a master instructor at taking the obscure and complex and explaining it in a simple, fun, and educational way.

Within the past 5 years, Paul has turned his attention to teaching website development to folks looking to take control of their website. Paul is an international Speaker, Presenter, and Trainer focusing on website strategy and marketing online. Working full time as an online business owner, Paul speaks internationally and teaches businesses and individuals how to make more money with their websites.

Topic: Growing Your WordPress Site Business

Craig Allen

Craig is a freelance web developer who has used WordPress since 2007 and founded Open Waves Design in 2016. He has also been teaching students and website owners how to use WordPress, as well as HTML and CSS, for several years. Craig is a husband and father of four daughters, and in his free time enjoys writing and recording music.

Topic: Should You Be Using WordPress?

Joshua Gellock

Josh is the Senior SEO Strategist for Expander Digital, an agency he founded in 2014. Through his small business, Josh helps other small businesses improve build their brand and improve their bottom line through SEO. When he’s not meeting with clients, you can find him mountain biking, local and abroad. This will be Josh’s first time as a WordCamp speaker.

Topic: SEO for SMB: 6 ways small business can compete with the major players

Terri Orlowski

Terri Orlowski calls herself “one of those crazy people that like to play with code.” She started her business in 2006 and quickly began to specialize in WordPress and related services. Terri began speaking and training on WordPress in 2010, speaking at both live and virtual conferences to small business owners. She now does small group training at a local co-working space and has a membership site offering asynchronous training on topics and tools related to WordPress websites.

Terri continues to offer website development and consulting services and helps business owners translate the tech-talk into everyday language so they can feel more comfortable working with their website and the people that support their efforts.

Topic: Your site is only as safe as your last good backup!

Sal Ferrarello

Sal started programming on a Commodore 64 when he was eight years old. He went on to become a web developer and educator specializing in WordPress. Sal’s past also includes work as a beach photographer, magician/juggler, and high school calculus teacher. He contributes to WordPress core, the Genesis framework, and various other open source projects.

Sal writes regularly about programming at https://salferrarello.com/.

Topic: Getting Started with Transients

Joe Casabona

Joe Casabona is a Front End Developer and course creator that works in WordPress…a lot. You can find his courses over at WP in One Month. He also hosts a weekly podcast called, How I Built It, where he interviews product developers and business owners about how they create.

Topic: How I Built It: An online learning website with WooCommerce & LearnDash

Paul Barthmaier

With advanced degrees in linguistics and heaps of natural curiosity, Paul Barthmaier applies his love of languages to the beauty of WordPress when building plugins and themes that make client websites sing.

Topic: Plugin to the Customizer

Donna Botti

Donna Botti is the owner of Delos Incorporated, a website development and digital marketing company in the Philadelphia area. Donna has been working with WordPress since 2010 creating websites and applications that help businesses grow and improve their processes. Donna frequently speaks to business organizations on how to make the web work for them and blogs regularly.

Topic: Schema.org, Microdata and JSON-LD, Oh My!

Jason Coleman

Jason is co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress and Lead Developer of Paid Memberships Pro, the 100% open source membership plugin for WordPress. He has been pushing WordPress to its limits for many years and is an advocate for using WordPress as an application framework to build web sites and apps that go above and beyond the typical blog of CMS site. Jason works out of his home in Reading, Pennsylvania where he lives with his business partner and wife Kimberly Coleman and their two small children.

www.paidmembershipspro.com