Category: WordCamp DFW Speakers

Topic: Building API Services for your Plugins Using the WordPress REST API

CTO of WPMU DEV (140+ premium plugins, services, and support) and Edublogs (hosting 3 million+ education blogs), managing a large team of developers and sysadmins around the globe. Cloud architect and WordPress plugin developer specializing in Multisite for 10 years, working from home in Dallas. Proud father of 3 and a world travel nut.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I started when I created my first multisite network, missionsplace.com. I began learning to develop plugins for it, sharing them with the community. Then eventually started working as a plugin developer full time!

What do you do with WordPress?

I’m the Chief Technical Officer of Incsub, LLC (WPMU DEV, CampusPress). I spend my days leading our systems team to build and support really cool WordPress projects, whether it’s cloud API services like WP Smush, enterprise and entry level managed WordPress hosting, or designing and building architectures, policies, and guidelines for the technical side of our products, I have my hands in it all. I just love building cool new things.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I really enjoy attending and speaking at WordCamps. And it’s often the only chance I get to meet and hang out with fellow members of our distributed team.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I want to support my local DFW WordPress community, and meet people in person in the same niche as me.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

I love building API services, and the challenge of scaling them in the cloud.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope they learn the effectiveness of a new business model for plugins, to get ongoing subscription revenue by turning them into a SaaS (Software as a Service) by providing services via APIs on their own servers.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: The Must Do‚’s Before Going Live

Keri spent about 10 years working in customer service in restaurants before she landed her first Account Management gig in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was there that she met 2 amazing women who took her under their wing to teach her WordPress — and she immediately fell in love. After about a year of that, she decided to move back to her hometown of San Antonio Texas to attended Codeup (a career accelerator for Web Development), and then fell back in love with customer service. Now she gets to do the two things that she loves on a daily basis — Help clients and work with WordPress. She couldn’t be happier 🙂

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I started off my journey as an Account Manager for a Digital Marketing Company that used WordPress to develop websites. It was there that 2 of the website developers taught me about WordPress so I would be able to relay changes and requests easier to them and the support team. That led me to teaching myself a little CSS, and eventually let me to attend Codeup (a career accelerator with for Web Development) where I learned more CSS and how to work with PHP, which has helped me to better understand custom built WordPress websites.

What do you do with WordPress?

I run the support team for WebTegrity in San Antonio Texas. I’m able to mix my love for Account Management and my love for WordPress in ensuring my clients needs are met and issues are troubleshot and resolved in a timely manner. I also head up the Quality Assurance on all of our websites before they go live and are sent to the client for final review.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

The WordPress community is amazing! I love being involved with a group of professionals who just want to lift each other up and make WordPress the best it can be for everyone. I also really appreciate the support and help that I can get from the Forums at any given time.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

As a Texas native, I was excited to apply to DFW WordCamp because I’ve heard great things about WordCampDFW. Also, Dallas and Ft Worth are both so beautiful!

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

As Director of Digital Support at WebTegrity, something I take pride in is making sure all of our websites are running smoothly. I keep these same standards when I go through my QA list. I’m the final set of eyes on all new website and need to be sure there are no errors or issues with the website. I think Quality Assurance is extremely important because sometimes we get so used to doing something over and over, and we just need a checklist and another set of eyes on our work to be sure we haven’t missed anything. There are also a few plugins I want to speak about that we as a team have found to be extremely helpful for your website, post launch.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I am hoping everyone decides to use my skeleton QA list and grow it to match their own business. I’d love if everyone was able to allow 30 minutes – 1 hour for QA at the end of every web build, and I’m hoping everyone will continue with monthly site maintenance to be sure it’s always up to date and running at it’s best.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: How To Use Your Blog To Become A Digital Influencer

Elayna Fernández, known worldwide as The Positive MOM, is an award-winning storyteller, a master digital strategist, and an avid student of pain. Elayna helps moms transform their pain story into positive growth, step into balance, and create joy and success on their own terms – in all areas of life. Elayna travels the world as an International keynote speaker and panelist in the topics of motherhood, mindset, and mompreneurship. Her guidance encourages, empowers, and equips millions of moms in 134 countries to increase their impact, income, and influence, without guilt, shame, or regrets in motherhood. As an influencer for over 13 years, Elayna has partnered with over 250 brands and has made her blog her main source of income. She loves to teach, train, and mentor others to do the same! Elayna is Certified Guerrilla Marketing Master Trainer, Certified Passion Test Facilitator, Certified DreamBuilder Coach, Certified Success Principles Trainer, a graduate of the Steve Harvey School for Business Acceleration, and a web designer for over 20 years. She has been awarded as Best Marketer, Mom Entrepreneur of the Year, Best Latina Lifestyle Blogger of both 2015 and 2016, and the 2017 Best Family and Parenting Creator at the TECLA Awards, and she has been named one of the Top Latina Influencers in the USA two consecutive years. ThePositiveMOM.com, has been ranked one of 100 Top Moms Blogs Worldwide both in 2016 and 2017. Elayna is often featured in global media including ABC, NBC, FOX, Telemundo, Univision, Latina Magazine, CNN en Español, The Huffington Post, and is a contributing writer to Thrive Global! Elayna has spoken on stages such as S.H.E. Summit, Texas Conference for Women, eWomenNetwork, BlogHer, Hispanicize, Mom 2.0 Summit, Texas Social Media Conference, Work Hacker, Rocks Digital, Boy Scouts of America, Rotary International, and more! She’s also been a member of both the BlogHer and Hispanicize advisory boards. Born and raised in a slum in the Dominican Republic and a single mom for many years, Elayna now lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her family. Her philosophy is “BE Positive and You’ll BE Powerful!”

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I started my web developer journey about 17 years ago when I was pregnant with my first daughter. I had been working as a web marketing strategist, so I really wanted to learn to code and to understand how the web worked.

After becoming a single mom of two toddlers in late 2004, I decided to start my own business and I launched my web design company, building websites and blogs for small business owners in the WordPress platform. I also started blogging and using social networks and other digital tools to increase visibility, credibility, and profitability for myself and my clients.

When I found WordPress, I fell in love with it instantly and I was in awe at everything that was available to empower entrepreneurs and small business owners. I made the switch to WordPress and my business has skyrocketed ever since.

What do you do with WordPress?

I use WordPress to help moms transform their pain story into positive growth, step into balance, and create joy and success on their own terms – in all areas of life.

WordPress has allowed me to encourage, empower, and equip millions of moms in 134 countries to increase their impact, income, and influence, without guilt, shame, or regrets in motherhood.

I recommend WordPress to all the moms I mentor because it’s flexible, intuitive, and user-friendly enough for a beginner that wants to use it for personal reasons, plenty of freedom someone who wants to implement a complex e-commerce and membership site, and everyone in between. WordPress has made a huge difference in my life and in the lives the women I coach and write for on my blog.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

The WordPress community is friendly, empowering, and supportive. WordCamps are all about community. It’s networking driven by passion and contribution. It’s so much more than a conference, yet you learn so much, because there are several different tracks for developers, designers, new users, bloggers, social media enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs alike.

WordCamp is for everyone because WordPress is about people!

WordCamp because it’s so affordable, and happens in so many locations that everyone could attend – and must! The speakers are generous, the sponsors are generous, the organizers are incredibly generous (organizing a conference is so much work – and you even get a t-shirt!), and the attendees are generous, because we all learn from each other.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I have been speaking at WordCamps around the world because I love to give back and to surround myself with like-minded and like-hearted people. WordCamp DFW has my heart because everyone involved is like one big family!

I am looking forward to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, and meeting more WordPress lovers, users, and supporters in the DFW area. I love sharing what I’ve learned as a web strategist and blogger, as well as learning from other experts, networking, and collaborating.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

I decided to teach this hands-on workshop because I want everyone to understand exactly how they can monetize their blog and become influencers by using simple strategies and tools they already have at their disposal through WordPress. I have been an influencer for 14 years and I love what I do, and I believe we can all be influencers and impact our communities in a positive way.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope my audience is inspired to take action, empowered with the strategies to begin monetizing their online presence and positioning themselves as leaders and influencers in their industry without making costly mistakes or wasting their time.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Managing Your WordPress Projects With Ease

LaToya is an Online Project Manager who helps busy entrepreneurs streamline their processes and get their creative ideas out into the world. She gets excited about timelines, due dates and clear plans. She has over a decade of project management and consulting expertise and a knack for translating project needs in a way that makes them understandable and executable. With a foundation in learning and development, business operations, process improvements, and new products she uses her skills in project management and digital marketing to specialize in managing membership and e-learning site launches driving efficiency and results.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I was doing research on the various website platforms and came across WordPress and checked it out based on user reviews. As I got more familiar with WordPress, I loved the flexibility and functionality and wanted to learn more. I took some WordPress training courses and was hooked from there. The rest is history.

What do you do with WordPress?

I build and/or manage the design, development and implementation of WordPress websites with a membership or e-learning platform.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

So far my experience with the WordPress community has been enlightening. Everyone has been inviting and is willing to share their knowledge and expertise.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I enjoy learning as well as speaking and WordCamp provides me the opportunity to do both.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

I decided to speak on my topic due to my personal experience and it is something I am passionate about.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I’m hoping people leave the talk refreshed and empowered with new ideas on how they can streamline their WordPress projects by easily implementing at least one of the nuggets I share.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Gutenberg 101

Christopher launched Faith Growth in 2010. Since then, he has led his team in assisting churches with moving to a digital-first mindset.

For some churches, that means creating a custom website. For others, it’s implementing smart social media practices. For others, it’s developing a comprehensive plan to engage and grow their church communities online. Christopher understands church needs and challenges, as he has held several church staff positions.

Born a geek, Christopher coded his first church website in 1997. In 2003 he entered Seminary, concluding his M.Div. studies just as social media reached a critical tipping point when Facebook opened its site to the public. Christopher enjoys coding in WordPress, but his primary passion is in helping churches to communicate effectively by harnessing the power of digital technologies. Based in Dallas, Texas, Faith Growth serves clients internationally.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

My journey with WordPress began in 2005 when I set up a blog for my mother. I found WordPress easy to use and install. It was perfect platform on which for my mother to learn to blog. I was a seminary student at that time studying to become a Pastor.

I concluded my seminary studies in 2008 just after Facebook opened to users beyond those with a .edu email address. I’ve always been doing the tech thing along with ministry. When I came out of seminary, I was really was like, “I don’t really feel called to work with one congregation right now. I feel called to help the church learn how to use digital communication tools for ministry.” So I started a ministry organization called, Faith Growth.

What do you do with WordPress?

At Faith Growth we are digital ministry consultants. Our goal is to make digital easy for church leaders. We have been at this just over five years and just now feel like I know what I am doing. I would not be here today if it where not for the WordPress community. I have learned the ins and outs of WordPress from the community via user groups, online tutorials, and from kind strangers answering my questions on forums. I also have learned how to run my business from project management to writing proposals from other WordPress consultants that shared with me their experienced.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

WordPress is great CMS and is perfect for most projects, but WordPress is also strengthened by the community. I am thankful everyday for this great community!

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I want to give back to the community that has taught me so much by offering a little of what I know about WordPress.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

Gutenburg is a timely topic with the eminent release of WordPress 5.0 and affects us all user and developer alike.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope the will walk away with a basic understanding of the new Gutenberg editor and what changes that might mean for their publishing workflow. I also hope to excite their imaginations to the many possibilities that Gutenberg will bring to WordPress.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Rapid Application Development with the PODS Framework

Nick Batik Chief Technical Officer, Senior WordPress Back-end Developer & Information Architect Nick Batik co-founded Pleiades Publishing Services in 1992, has been building websites since 1994 and has been a WordPress consultant and developer since 2007. A WordPress Evangelist, and a Co-organizer of the Austin WordPress Meetup, he has presented technical WordPress classes at numerous meetups, PodCamps and WordCamps. Nick specializes in the system design and implementation of custom, often complex WordPress-based solutions that address client data management issues. As the back-end developer, he creates the core computational logic of the website or information system to implement the customized functionality. Nick has dedicated his professional career to information architecture and information design.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I had been creating static HTML websites since 1994 and was frustrated with the whole process. Around 2007 I was going to give up web development, but an associate of mine, Chris Sherrod, suggested I try WordPress. I had already learned dozens of programs and I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn another one, I tried it and liked it. It’s been one of my primary tools ever since.

What do you do with WordPress?

Uh… make websites?

I’m sure there’s an answer here that’s a little more specific: I design themes, write plugins, manage databases.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

When I started I didn’t know that there was a community. Because I am a programmer, I looked at WordPress, especially the includes directory, and modified it to make my website look the way I wanted. Everything was fine until I installed the first update, then all my changes got overwritten. In frustration, I looked around for some help and found the Austin WordPress Meetup and Pat Ramsey. His support was invaluable, as was his insistence on an ethos of giving back.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I like Scott, Carrie, and Mark and want to support them in any way I can.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

I wanted a topic that was advanced enough to be interesting, but not so abstract the people wouldn’t know how to use it.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

One of the growing challenges in web development today is the growing pressure to do more with them.

This adds to the complexity and the time to complete, with the very real risk that any misunderstanding at the beginning of a project can have expensive and devastating consequences if the final product misses the mark.

I want to give the audience something that gives them a better chance of success – a way to make working, visual prototypes that clarify what the client will get, and that highlights development areas will be technically challenging.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Maintaining a HEART Healthy WordPress Database

David serves as a Customer Experience Data Analyst and in-house WordPress Database Subject Matter Expert (SME) for WP Engine. He has an MBA from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA majoring in Management Information Systems and Bachelor’s in Applied Behavioral Sciences from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA. He has worked as a freelance database design consultant and has been supporting WordPress for 5 years.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I began working with WordPress in 2013 as a support technician for Hostgator. In 2016, I joined the WP Engine team as a Level 1 Support Technician and soon assumed the role of Database Subject Matter Expert. After two years in our Support organization, I’ve progressed to Level 2 Support Technician and Senior Level 2 Support, and I have now assumed the role of Customer Experience Data Analyst.

What do you do with WordPress?

I currently have a professional profile page for myself and develop sites for local non-profits addressing the needs of marginalized populations (i.e, human trafficking awareness, etc).

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I have thoroughly enjoyed learning from other WordPress users and developers and have relished the opportunity to give back to the WordPress community through talks, as well as support development and training.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I wanted to take the opportunity to give back to the WordPress community in Texas and surrounding areas in a way that provides actionable information to improve site performance with WordPress on an often misunderstood or neglected topic.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

The WordPress database is a unique creature in terms of the relational model and is often neglected in regular site maintenance. From my experience and the best data available, approximately 2/3 of slow sites I have worked with have been diagnosed as having significant problems with the database, ranging from data bloat to data fragmentation.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

It is my hope that developers and business managers come away from this talk with a better perspective on the importance of having a regular database maintenance plan and I will be providing a proven framework that can be utilized within their own regular development and maintenance workflows.

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

Topic: Our 6 months journey around AMP, WordPress & AMP Stories

Pratik Ghela has been working on WordPress since 2011 and has worked on 500+ WordPress projects for clients across the world. His core interest has now focused to Customer Satisfaction. Apart from just working as a bridge between his Dev Team and Clients, he regularly keeps an eye over upcoming technologies. Currently, he is working exclusively on Google AMP based projects and developing a product MakeStories for building web based stories

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I got involved with WordPress way back in 2011. Prior to using WordPress, I was doing a lot of Joomla sites. It was in 2011 when I was introduced to WordPress by a student of mine. I always thought of WordPress as a blogging tool before using it and never thought that it can be used as a CMS. But, when I started using WordPress and building themes, I fount out that it is really cool . I left Joomla in 2011 and then was completely dedicated to WordPress. The learning curve is pretty easy when you compare WordPress with any other Open Source CMS. It’s been 7 yrs and there is no looking back.

What do you do with WordPress?

I run a PSD To WordPress company called PSD To Manythings where we convert PSD / Sketch files to custom WordPress Themes. This is our primary WordPress service. But lately, we have been doing a lot WordPress Development stuff like integrating 3rd party APIs , building plugins and much more. Last year, I launched a WordPress Maintenance service called “PressMate”. Also, my obsession for speed has pushed me into using almost every other hosting company on the globe. I seldom take up challenging jobs where I bring down the page load speed to 2s. We are moving slowly and gradually. But, we are now a full service WordPress Dev Shop. This year, I am also launching 2SHosting where we sell custom WordPress Hosting plans that guarantees a load time of 2 seconds.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I am an organizer of New York WooCommerce meet up group and I have been to couple of WordPress Meet Up groups in the States. One thing that I love about WordPress community is that it’s inclusive. You can find people of all age groups with the same spirit who want to make sure that everyone gets the best out of WordPress. Even though WordPress is an open source project, with community support, you can build an amazing career. I think the WordPress community is a major reason behind WordPress’s success.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I have been dealing exclusively with Americans since past 6 Yrs and it is my dream to visit every WordCamp in the USA. I have heard a lot about Texas and always wanted to visit Austin & Dallas as these cities are the Technology Centers. So, while I was looking out for WordCamps happening in USA while I visit and I saw Texas, I said there we go and applied.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

I am talking about “Our 6 months journey around AMP, WordPress & AMP Stories”. Well, I must change it to 9 months now . I did knew about AMP in early 2016 while talking to one of my clients. Initially , i didn’t pay much attention to it. But, in 2017, I saw that AMP is being adopted by big media houses and has a potential of being a web standard. However, building native AMP is not that easy and has a steep learning curve. Due to this, there are lots of misconceptions about AMP. I wish to clear this misconceptions from people’s mind and story tell our journey from not knowing anything about AMP to developing our own software for building AMP Stories.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope that people make more informed decisions and not stay biased about AMP. We, as developers have a habit of using a lot of JS libraries and make things super simple for us to build. But, all of this adds up to the page load time. This is exactly what AMP doesn’t want us to. And a lot of restrictions being placed while developing AMP pages has divided the hole developer community into With AMP Vs Against AMP. AMP uses lots of techniques like asynchronous loading, caching to make your site load faster. I want people to understand that AMP is not equal to page speed , neither it is a ranking factor for SEO. I believe that after this talk, people will have a more clear understanding of when to use AMP and if they want to, then how to?

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

We’re happy to have Beaver Builder as one of our Silver sponsors for this year’s WordCamp DFW. You can learn more about what Beaver Builder does on their website.

What is Beaver Builder all about?

Beaver Builder is a flexible drag and drop page builder that works on the front end of your WordPress website. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, you’re going to love taking control of your website. Stop writing HTML or wrestling with confusing shortcodes. With Beaver Builder, building beautiful, professional WordPress pages is as easy as dragging and dropping.

Beaver Themer, our Add-On for Beaver Builder, allows you to take full control over your site’s headers, footers, archive layouts and more with the same ease and friendliness of editing page content with Page Builder.

How do y’all use WordPress?

Our team is made up of people who all build sites with WordPress and that led us to create Beaver Builder. Now we get to help others build their sites and make a career out of creating for the web with WordPress.

Why did you want to sponsor WordCamp DFW?

We like to sponsor camps, especially ones some of our team will be attending or we know we have users attending. We’d like to help make sure camps like this continue to happen!

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!