Author: Jacob Martella

Topic: Build your first custom Gutenberg block

Cory Webb is a senior full stack developer at Reaktiv Studios hailing from Waco, Texas, home of Dr. Pepper, Baylor University, and shiplap. Before joining the team at Reaktiv, Cory ran a small web development company specializing in WordPress and Joomla development. His educational background is in engineering and business, but his true passion has been web development since he built his first web page as a freshman electrical engineering student at the University of Texas in 1997. When he’s not busy manipulating 1’s and 0’s, you can usually find him spending time with his wife and 3 kids, traveling, watching movies, and serving at his local church.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I first looked at WordPress in 2003 when I was evaluating open source CMS’s for a website that I was building. It didn’t quite fit for the site, so I ended up going with Joomla. That decision started years of specializing in Joomla development, but I continued to test WordPress and occasionally build sites with it. Over the past 4-5 years, the amount of work I have done with WordPress has steadily increased, and now I do almost 100% WordPress development.

What do you do with WordPress?

A year ago, I was fortunate to be able to join the team at Reaktiv Studios, one of only a dozen WordPress.com VIP partners, and that has given me opportunities to work with high profile companies on some really interesting WordPress projects. I am a senior full stack developer, and I spend most of my time building custom themes and plugins.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

WordCamp DFW will be my 4th time speaking at a WordCamp, and I have really enjoyed getting to know the WordPress community. Everyone has been very welcoming to this old Joomla guy. In April of this year, I became the lead organizer of the Waco WordPress Meetup, and we have met monthly since April.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I love speaking at events because it gives me an opportunity to share what I have learned with other people in the community. I also just really enjoy meeting new people and getting to know other people who love WordPress as much as I do.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

Gutenberg is coming, and developing custom blocks can be a bit intimidating for WordPress developers who spend most of their time in PHP. I want to demystify the process of building custom blocks and help other developers start to get a deeper understanding of how Gutenberg works under the hood.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope my talk can pique their interest in learning more about custom Gutenberg development, and maybe inspire some developers to build something really cool with Gutenberg.

Topic: 10 Strategies To Teach Yourself Before Taking a Development Class

Dave Ryan is an Interdisciplinary WordPress Developer at Bluehost, where he focuses on contributing to WordPress. In the past Dave has worked for large publishers and universities scaling high-traffic WordPress sites, blending his skills in information design, journalism and web development. Dave lives in Phoenix, loves a good taco and will like every photo of your dog on Instagram.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I started using WordPress to publish journalism projects. I was working as an entry-level remote developer when I met another WordPress Developer in a Phoenix coffeeshop, who invited me to join the Arizona WordPress Group.

What do you do with WordPress?

I started a new position at Bluehost in May as a WordPress Contributor and Evangelist, spending 80 percent of my time contributing to the WordPress project and community and my remaining time bringing things I learned outside the company into internal projects. Before joining Bluehost, I was working on publishing tools and WordPress sites at Time Inc.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I’m pretty active in the Arizona WordPress Group, which has four monthly Meetups and a thriving Slack community. I ended up organizing WordCamp Phoenix before ever attending a WordCamp, have since attended a half-dozen US-based camps and organized two more. I love the inclusive, warm and brilliant people WordCamps attract.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I’ve got a good friend who lives in the Dallas area, so I’ve visited a few times in the past few years.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

Becoming a web developer is a career-long commitment to learning new code languages and tools. For folks who succeed in a school setting, code bootcamps and online courses can be a great step in their learning journey, but I’ve always learned best guiding myself through concepts and materials. I’ve been fortunate to have some incredible teachers, coaching coworkers and wise friends who’ve helped me find my own path to success and confidence with code.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope someone who attends my talk leaves with some ideas for self-guided learning, resources and the confidence that if they wisely invest their time, there’s nothing they can’t learn or learn deeper.

Topic: Who are the people in your neighborhood: Digital Persona Experience

Keisha (Pittman) McKinney lives in South Arkansas with her husband and sweet Boxer, Bailey and her new little man! Keisha is passionate about connecting people and building community, seeking solutions to the everyday big and small things, and encouraging others through the mundane, hard, and typical that life often brings. She put her communications background to work as a former Non-profit Executive Director, college recruiter and fundraiser, and Digital Media Director at a large church in Northwest Arkansas. Now she is using all of those experiences as Founder of Arkansas Influencers, a social media marketing talent agency, McKinney Media Solutions and her blog @bigpittstop which includes daily adventures, cooking escapades, #bigsisterchats, the social justice cases on her heart, and all that she is learning as a #boymom!

How did you get involved in WordPress?

Well, I connected with WordPress when I transferred my blog over a couple years ago. I had been a blogger gal for 8 years when I originally started writing. But, everything was moving to WordPress and as it became the premier blog platform, I knew I needed to be part of the conversation and get on board with the capabilities and ways WordPress could help me grow my business.

What do you do with WordPress?

Currently, I’m a website owner. I have a personal blog and I’m Owner/Founder of Arkansas Influencers, an online community and talent agency for Social Media Influencers in Arkansas. I also do freelance work through my own business McKinney Media Solutions.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

Whoa, this community is amazing. I love how supportive everyone is. It seems like we are all still navigating some new territory and learning and teaching each other. It’s a pretty special place. Yes, people are interested in making money off what they’ve learned and that is happening through theme and plugin development. But, I love that this community is about mutual support and sharing what they are learning. The Trailblazers and early adopters stick their necks out there and learn what they can to bring the rest of us along. I think we are seeing this right now with Gutenberg and experienced it earlier this year with the GDPR. Without a web development background, it’s so easy to just want to throw in the towel and give up, but this community keeps us coming along. It’s a mutually beneficial space.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I love learning and being a part of this WordCamp community. I think so many times we get lost in the building of the website that we forget there are other processes and platforms that integrate with what we do to actually built the “site space” that our website lives on. As business owners (yes, I’m thinking of bloggers, freelancers, developers, and actual business owners) we have so many parts and moving pieces to think about. One of those is marketing and actually getting people to show up. My background and experience is in “all the other things” and I’m learning more and more how to get people to the table to talk about them. I’m not the technical gal, but I love community and creating community around really great content.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

As I mentioned above, I love community. We spend so much time wmaking really great content and putting in our website. We make content we really think needs to be out there. I like to ask a couple questions. Is that the content the person we are trying to reach wants to read? And, do we know who the person is that is coming to our website or that we want to come to our website. Persona, Avatar, Blue Person – we hear all these terms, but do we really know who this person is? “Who are the people in your neighborhood” will be a super practical, highly interactive session where we explore the visitors we are attracting and compare that to the person we want to be inviting to the party and will walk through a tool to discover how they use the internet and what that means for us.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I want the audience to walk away with a tool they can take that evening and apply directly to their website. I love a good walk away and “first step” when I get home from a conference and I hope this session will be one of those. We will look at 2 specific things during our session – who is our audience, who do we want to be our audience and then explore how they consume media and where we fit in to that picture.

Topic: Hearing Colors: A journey through accessible website development

Johnny Thompson has more than 20 years of web and application development experience, successfully launching and maintaining countless sites and utilities in industries ranging from defense to banking. He has called UNT Health Science Center home since 2011 as the Executive Director of Digital Outreach and Web Services for the Office of Brand and Communications.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I created my first blog back in 2005 after getting fed up with the limitations of Typepad for a personal website. My first commercial application of WP was for an agency website in 2008. Fast forward to 2015 and for the last 3 years we have used a multisite installation of WP for our institution’s web presence of some 60+ departments, 15,000+ pages and a half-million visits a month.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

Arguably the best part of the WP platform is the fact that it is open and that active developers are are so easily accessible to help solve problems or even incorporate enhancements with their plugins or themes based on your feedback.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

Two reasons. 1) Our journey in addressing the accessibility needs of our school was fascinating and I genuinely felt others could benefit from our experience., 2) as part of my own leadership development plan, I am trying to be more active in the speaking community in an effort to help others and give back to an industry that has been so good to me

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

An appreciation for what people with disabilities go through to interact with your average website. Also, how addressing accessibility issues can benefit YOU with better site performance, search performance and user experiences in general.