Would you agree that having a website that looks nice isn’t enough anymore? Victory Harbin believes that everything from the imagery to the words on the page have to speak authentically to your client’s target audience in order to convert the way it should.

We are excited to have Victory Harbin as one of WordCamp DFW speakers this year and glad she will discuss building a process around content.

Victory Harbin’s background in marketing started in social media content creation. She worked with video and social media campaigns to help small businesses gain momentum online. 

As she began to understand Pay per Click more, she realized that integration with her clients’ websites was a no-brainer.

Initially, she worked with her current business partner, who is a web designer and has been involved with WordPress for years, but she eventually built her first webpage about two years ago.

Victory Harbin says it was as a way to integrate a social media campaign into an existing website, which helped her lear the real power of content on a website.

I think we do all the things that everybody does – we try to help our clients grow their businesses online. But, we do try to provide holistic services that include content, design and photography.  This combination of services is actually what I’m going to be talking about at WordCamp DFW!

Victory Harbin is very passionate about high-quality content on websites. Her philosophy is that completely elevates the entire project, it enriches the customer’s experience, increases conversion and decreases delayed projects.

We, at The Social Brand, have implemented it in our own business and are seeing great results. I wanted to share it!

Her talk will help you include social media and content creation in your web design to end the frustration of delayed projects. It will be a game-changer!

Even though Victory Harbin has never attended WordCamp DFW before, this is her fourth WordCamp in 2019.

WordCamp has helped me learn in a short amount of time and I am so thankful! I have been completely impressed with the WordPress community. I have been welcomed in like family. I look forward to every single event.

Tweet @victory_harbin during her talk, using #WCDFW and ask her how she decided to take her dog to work with her most days. She says her clients love her!

Make sure you register for this year’s WordCamp DFW ASAP!  Get your Tickets here!

In the world of fleeting news and viral sensations, creating killer content can help make or break your website.

Thankfully, Desiree Johnson will help WordCamp DFW learn how to capitalize on pop culture, holidays, and trending moments to elevate your content and social media to the next level.

My topic is going to help people not only identify a trend for their audience but structure and write that trend into their content. I hope audiences leave more confident in how to identify a trend within their brand/business/product/service and feel empowered to write about it for their audience.

Whether your creating web content or a social media posts, you must keep your site one step ahead with relevant material your audiences will love.

Desiree Johnson has always been passionate about trends and trending topics and what draws people to them. She consume trends on a daily basis and that’s why she’s used that to redirect how she implements them into her writing as a WordPress Content Specialist for Bluehost.

Her work at Bluehost introduced her to WordPress and allows her explore all the aspects of the platform to help Bluehost customers build better WordPress websites.

I get to write different types of content for Bluehost that is focused on helping our customers build their WordPress websites whether it’s eCommerce, hobbyist blogs, or plugins. The various content I write which can vary between blogs, webinars, and ebooks, challenges me to learn about all the intricacies of WordPress every day.

Desiree Johnson will attend WordCamp DFW for the first time, but she has spoken at WordCamp Las Vegas and New York, which she describes as “amazing experiences.” As a fellow Texan, she says it’s very exciting to be able to speak at a WordCamp native to her state – we are excited, as well!

I have enjoyed getting the chance to interact and collaborate with members of the WordPress community over the past year. Whether it was attending WordCamps where I got to chat with community members about all things WordPress or interviewing community members for various articles with Bluehost. I’ve really enjoyed getting to learn about all the different roles and ways people get involved with WordPress and how they work in teams to constantly improve the platform.

Tweet @dezij7 during Desiree Johnson’s talk, using #WCDFW and ask her about her love for movies. She could be at the movies every weekend and never get bored!

Make sure you register for this year’s WordCamp DFW ASAP!  Get your Tickets here!

In his talk, “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall – Ways On Debunking Imposter Syndrome,” Alex Juchniewicz will open up the conversation around the impact our mental health can take towards us on a daily basis, as well as provide tools and insight, so you can find common ways to identify signs of Imposter Syndrome and how to combat it to improve your mental health.

Alex Juchniewicz spoke at WordCamp DFW several years ago about mental health and handling a hard situation his family went through about losing their son in the womb at 38 weeks.

The response and the community were overwhelmingly just incredible. I will never forget my friend, who I will leave nameless and I didn’t know at the time, came up to my wife and I crying at the end of our talk and just gave me a hug. He explained to us about his family member went through a similar situation and how our talk touched him. It was very impactful to see how the response was for such a vulnerable topic, this makes me love our community, even more, to rally and support people that have gone through something.

This year, there are some new and exciting things happening in his life relating to mental health, and he hopes to share some stories about how he has battled Imposter Syndrome, and the ways he has learned to manage anxiety in his personal and professional life.

If you have ever felt like you are not good enough, a fraud, and even doubtful or questioning the ability to be confident and successful, Alex Juchniewicz wants you to know you are not alone.

Recently, Alex Juchniewicz was a guest on the WP&UP PressForward podcast to talk about his history with mental health over the past decade.

Their mission to help promote positive and mental health awareness to the WordPress community resonated with me so much that I wanted to volunteer. That lead to having a conversation with Dan Maby, CEO of WP&UP, to come onboard part-time helping with partnerships.

Alex Juchniewicz assures that if you’re thinking about going to WordCamp EU this year, you must check out a project their team just launched called #HeatToWCEU. Throughout May 2020, they will take on the challenge of riding 3,000 km, across six countries, over 30 days, arriving at WordCamp Europe 2020, to help raise awareness of positive physical and mental health within the WordPress community. 

I started experimenting with WordPress creating websites for people I knew while working at a technology company around 2010. I found a love for how simple it was to create a website that I actually changed jobs just to be able to grow and level up my WordPress skills. I started attending WordCamps in 2014 when the last WordCamp US was held in San Francisco. Since then I’ve been a regular attendee and volunteer at a handful of camps, even having my incredible wife serve alongside me. I got hooked on the community experience and the relationships that can be built by attending. I enjoy going for the people and opportunities that might evolve because you never know who you will meet or what situation you will walk into.

In 2017, he started speaking at WordCamps and has learned a lot of lessons along the way on how to present myself, the topics that I’m passionate about and the value that I can give to the community.

Alex Juchniewicz’ first full-time job in WordPress was working for Pagely back in 2014 as a Customer Success Engineer. He furthered his career after that by working at Pantheon as a CSE while moonlighting as a contractor for Valet (formerly WP Valet).

Alex Juchniewicz and his wife, whom he met on eHarmony, moved to Houston and his career took him to cPanel where he worked and coached two agile teams as a Scrum Master. He was able to work with the JetPack team at Automattic and their internal product team to be part of some of the updates cPanel made to the WordPress installer.

During this time, he missed being involved with the WordPress community since cPanel didn’t really have a large presence in it.

I followed my WordPress desires of working remote again and landed the opportunity to join the amazing team at SkyVerge who also runs Jilt, an online email marketing platform built for eCommerce. I worked on partnerships and business development and was able to travel to WordCamp, creating some incredible relationships and meeting some of the most intelligent people in the industry.

They created a partnership with LiquidWeb which included Jilt being available for free to anyone that signs up for their Managed WooCommerce Hosting plan.

If you ever get a chance to work on a project with Chris Lema and AJ Morris, jump on it, those guys are fantastic to work and fun.

He later transitioned to becoming a Website Project Manager at LyntonWeb, a remote agency that specializes in HubSpot and WordPress websites and integrations, where he currently is.

We are Diamond Level partner for HubSpot and I am working on growing our WordPress clients to provide scalability and education on how to use the platform. Our vision is to create new integrations between HubSpot and WordPress to leverage both platforms and increase functionality for users that use them.

Today, he manages website projects during the day and the evenings and weekends are spent talking to people and companies about their mental health and seeing if there are any opportunities to work together.

Alex Juchniewicz uses WordPress every day with his job and looks for opportunities to create new relationships within the community. Depending on the website requirements, he typically always recommend using WordPress for building a new site due to the simple learning curve and the abundance of resources out there from beginners to advanced experts.

There are a few clients he manages websites for on the side, which helps keep him updated and involved with new changes and updates to WordPress.

A fun story we’ve heard from Alex Juchniewicz:

I did a trial for Automattic one time as a Happiness Engineer and during my trial, we had a town hall meeting on Slack. During the live stream, Matt Mullenweg was trying to play a video to share with everyone and he ended up playing my application video and I saw myself on his screen. That was a very interesting experience as I don’t think a lot of people knew it was me and I read comments in Slack that said: “hire that guy!” I didn’t end up getting hired but I will remember my 10 seconds of fame on Matt’s computer screen.

Make sure to tweet @atjuch during his session, using hashtag #WCDFW and ask him about how he’s managed to never break a bone in his life even though he’s crashed on a motorcycle!

We’d love to see you at this year’s WordCamp DFW!  Get your Tickets here!

Cory Webb is a full stack developer at Reaktiv Studios, a WordPress VIP partner, where he gets the privilege of building websites for some great companies and organizations. On an average day, he’s usually building a custom theme or plugin, or creating custom Gutenberg blocks.

We are excited to welcome him once again to our WordCamp DFW family and to teach you how to “Create Custom Page Builders with Gutenberg and ACF Blocks,” in his session.

DFW has a thriving WordPress community, I love being even a small part of it and having a chance to contribute to that community.

This year, Cory Webb is presenting on creating custom Gutenberg blocks with ACF Blocks because of his vast experience with ACF and building custom Gutenberg blocks, both from scratch and with ACF Blocks. The new ACF Blocks tool is a powerful PHP framework for creating custom block types.

I felt like ACF Blocks would be a good stepping stone for people considering getting into custom Gutenberg block development, and this topic would help demonstrate the power of Gutenberg and what’s possible with the new WordPress editor.

If you are interested in Gutenberg, whether as a user and/or a developer, Cory Webb’s session should provide a good introduction to custom Gutenberg block development as well as demonstrate the power of Gutenberg.

If you have not yet registered for WordCamp DFW 2019, visit the Tickets page now!

Aaron Campbell knows it can be challenging to be an introvert in a world built for extroverts. A lot of introverts have been told at some point in their career to “be more extroverted” so they can succeed, as though introversion is bad.

At this year’s WordCamp DFW, Aaron Campbell will show how introversion is not bad, and being an extrovert is certainly not required for success!

Aaron Campbell will take both a scientific and experiential look at introversion and extroversion, how they differ, how to tell where on the scale you are, and what advantages each has in today’s workplace.

He’ll walk through his own journey of learning to leverage the strengths of his introversion and share what he does to help him navigate the parts of life and his career that are harder for him as an introvert.

If you’re an introvert or work or interact regularly with one (hint: you do), you walk away with a better understanding of the strengths that introverts have and how you can leverage those for success.

Introversion isn’t a weakness, it’s a different set of strengths.

Aaron Campbell has been an introvert his whole life, and he’s struggled with it at times, because we live in a very extrovert-favoring world. He was told over an over that the solution is to “become an extrovert” and trying to do so many years ago made for a pretty terrible time of life because you can’t just become and extrovert. Thankfully, you don’t have to!

 Head over to the Tickets page  and register for this year’s WordCamp DFW! We’d love to see you there!

We are welcoming Brent Jett to WordCamp DFW again, and this year, he will be taking you through simplifying complex page designs.

Last year, he covered a pretty technical topic (browser dev tools) and this year, he will be sharing his expertise in a more beginner/design-focused session.

I’m a total design nerd and always happy to talk about issues that people encounter when creating for the web.

In his session, titled “Don’t be Afraid of Complex Page Designs,” Brent Jett wants to dive into what makes certain modern web designs really hard to think about and build.

We have lots of examples of large companies with big web teams putting out really amazing page designs and these are leading people to expect more from every website. It’s also common to find yourself in a situation where a graphic designer has handed off a very complicated design and you’re not sure how to even approach it. These things make creating sites hard, especially if you’re a freelancer or part of a small team.

Brent Jett’s session will be really valuable because he will outline a way of thinking about any design, no matter how complex, so that you never have to be afraid of a project or turn it down because you think it’s too much for you.

I’m hoping WordCamp DFW attendees will gain some inspiration and courage to tackle harder designs and more demanding projects. For me, that’s what makes the web fun.

Before his role as As Design Lead at Beaver Builder, one of the most popular page builder plugins for WordPress, he worked for about 7 years as designer/developer at a digital marketing agency in Austin, building WordPress sites.

Around 2015 he started using Beaver Builder and ended up adopting it for most of his site work. He was able to get to know some of the Beaver Builder team and get involved in the community around it and at the beginning of 2016, he was hired to do some UI design for a new product they were thinking about (Beaver Themer Add-on).

It was part culture at Beaver Builder to attend WordCamps and that’s how I got pulled in, happily, into the overall WordPress community. Now I get to do product design full-time and go to awesome WordCamps for a living!

This year, Beaver Builder hit a milestone of over 1 million active installs of Beaver Builder and Brent Jett is very excited about that. We can’t wait to celebrate with him.

I think one of the things that makes WordCamps so compelling is just how welcoming our community is. Websites can be kind of a cold topic but there’s something really humanizing about talking with people who are dealing with the same struggles or issues that you have before. I was blessed to land in a team that was already established in the WordPress community and that got me connected to people very quickly. As a product designer, it’s invaluable to get to talk to people who use our products and hear what’s working well for them and where the pain points still are. When I go to camps I know there will likely be friends there, and I’ll probably make some new ones too.

You can tweet at Brent Jett during his session at @brentjett, using the hashtag #WCDFW.

Make sure you ask him about his work illustrating “silly alternate versions of the Beaver logo.”

So far he’s been a cowboy, a turkey, Frankenstein, a pumpkin, he’s been tie dyed, he’s been several country flags, and most recently a Star Wars rebel pilot.

We love that the Beaver Builder team brings stickers to WordCamp DFW, so if you see him walking around, check if he has any fun special edition beaver stickers on him. They are so fun!

Make sure you register for this year’s WordCamp DFW!  Head over to the Tickets page so you can be part of our community!