Category: WordCamp DFW Speakers

Topic: Working with a developer on your next website project

Sara is the owner of Graybill Creative and a WordPress developer. She creates custom WordPress websites for designers that are beautiful and easy for their clients to use. She also organizes the OKC WordPress Users Group where she works to get the word out about WordPress. When she isn’t building websites you can find Sara outside with her husband chasing their son.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I was working at a local non-profit as the website assistant (with absolutely no experience) and we needed to re-build the sites managed by the non-profit. The sites weren’t on WordPress at that time but we hired someone to re-design one of the sites and he recommended WordPress. That was my introduction to WordPress and I’ve been using it ever since.

What do you do with WordPress?

I develop custom sites for my clients and I help them to use their websites strategically to reach their organization’s goals.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

The community has been critical for me getting to where I am today. When I started with WordPress the only experience I had with websites was a one-semester class in high school that had me swearing I would never touch another website again. It’s so nice to have people I can reach out to when I get stuck and just need to bounce ideas off of someone. There’s always someone ahead of me willing to stop and help me figure something out. In return, I try very hard to help those who are just starting out. That’s one reason I love organizing the OKC WP Users Group. It lets me give back to a community that has helped me to get where I am.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I’ve been speaking at smaller events for a couple of years now and I love being able to help people and answer their questions. I spoke at WCDFW last year and loved it, I want to continue to speak at more WordCamps if I can.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

A lot of the work I do is for website designers that need someone to bring their design into reality. A lot of them have struggled in the past with their developers or don’t really know what to expect when working with a developer. I want to help clear up the confusion and make it a better process for everyone involved and ultimately a better product for their clients.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope they come away with a few ideas on how to improve their process when they work with a developer.

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: Community Impact: Using WordPress to build 48 websites for 48 nonprofits in 48 hours

I’m a Business Consultant for the Digital Marketing agency Sideway8. National Committee member for the nonprofit 48in48. Organizing Committee of WordCamp Atlanta and Atlanta WordPress Meetup. I’ve been a WordPress advocate since I started using it in 2008 and fell in <3 with the WP community at my first WordCamp in Savannah 2010. Outside of the internet, I’m a musician, producer, and audio engineer making weird sounds with weird people.

How did you get involved in WordPress?

When I first came across WordPress, I was building websites for family and friends back in the mid 2000’s. I was learning PHP and had started to create my own CMS in an effort to streamline some of my work. Stumbling on WordPress, I realized there was an entire community already focusing on building such a great platform. I quickly scrapped my CMS and started using WordPress. From there I started diving in to the local WordPress community here in Atlanta.

What do you do with WordPress?

Today I am more of a power user (Dashboard Champ!), but for a long time, I was a developer.

I am currently responsible for scoping and pricing projects for the digital marketing agency Sideways8. A decade of using and developing with WordPress gives me an upper hand for strategy and problem solving using resources that already exist in the platform itself, and an understanding of its capabilities.

The nature of the work we do has me in the backend of multiple WordPress sites every day. Our own and for our clients.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

Amazing!  I knew for sure that I wanted to be a part of this community after my first WordCamp in Savannah 2010. Considering that there were noobies like me at the time, all the way up to the highest tier, including Mr. Mullenweg, that says a lot.

I literally was talking to everyone (having no idea who they were in the WordPress world), and never once was I snubbed, looked down on, or turned away. At one point I was talking with Mark Jaquith about securely wrapping form field data. When I looked him up after the event I realized how involved he was. In many other communities, people at that level wouldn’t even give someone like me the time of day.

Since then I’ve been a participant and speaker at many other WordCamps. I’ve wanted to give back to the community the way it’s given back to me. I’ve literally built my life and business because of this platform and community.

The past two years I’ve been a part of the organizing committee for WordCamp Atlanta and spent several years as an organizer of the Atlanta WordPress Meetup.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I really want to speak at all WordCamps!  It’s such a great way to see new places and meet new people.

We’re (48in48) also strongly considering Dallas to host one of our events next year. For that reason alone it made sense for me to show up, even if I wasn’t speaking, to build awareness and hopefully make some new friendships.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

While I am not a founder of 48in48, I have been involved since the first event. I showed up to the event as a volunteer, I quickly saw where my skillsets could be used and ended up diving in as far as I could. At this time I’m a member of the global committee.

I chose this topic in an effort to spread some awareness not only about the event(s), but about the impact it has had on my own life and the lives of those people these nonprofits are reaching.

My company, Sideways8, has been the driving force behind the technical part of the platform that allows us to build 48 websites in 48 hours. It’s all built around WordPress and a heavily curated set of themes and plugins. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the kind of impact it has on the community, both for the nonprofits and the volunteers that participate.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

My hope is that the audience leaves inspired to do something bigger than themselves.  I want people to know that even doing a little bit can go a long way. It’s possible to use their skill set, and this amazing community, to have a global impact and make a positive difference in the world.

We are so fortunate to live in a country with a thriving economy. With that, we also have more opportunities than most to make a difference in someone’s life that may not have those same opportunities. I feel like we, as a community, are in such a great place right now and I just want to do my small part to keep driving that home.

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: 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.