It’s wonderful many people earn a living using WordPress: launching sites, building plugins, and designing themes, but sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of running a business we thought was just a fun hobby.

Mike Demo joins our speaker lineup with his talk “Accidental Business Owner: Now What?”, in which he will prove that a little planning goes a long way in changing your hobby to a hustle.

So, how do you take your WordPress side hustle to a full-time gig? In this talk, Mike Demo will discuss how to recognize your hobby isn’t just a hobby, how to build in steps and processes to help it scale, and how to know that the timing is right to launch.

A successful hobby is the path to a successful business.

At WordCamp DFW, Mike Demo will share how you can do a few easy things and be more productive and profitable. He has met lots of who find themselves owning a WordPress business “that just sort of happened,” and he wants to help!

Mike Demo has been involved with Open Source for years and loves sharing his expertise with the WordPress community.

My first CMS was PHP Nuke then Mombo and Joomla where I was a board member for a time. At Word Hosting Day 2016, I started talking to BoldGrid and became their first Open Source Evangelist.

Mike Demo has built hundreds of WordPress sites in his former agency life and has done fun hacking projects like placing WordPress Widgets into Joomla module positions!

We are happy to welcome Mike Demo to his very first WordCamp DFW! He’s attended WordCamp San Antonio:

Each year after the event we would go to Sea World on Monday. My job allows me to travel all around the world and connect to our community. I have made new friendships and seen amazing places.

Tweet during Mike Demo’s talk using #WCDFW and ask him about being a huge Disney fan and his experience co-hosting the popular MousePlanet Disney podcast for many years.

Get your WordCamp DFW tickets here and see you soon!

If a website is really pretty but no one can find it, what’s the point?

Same can be said for sites that have high authority in search results, but users bounce as soon as they see the layouts, or lack of.

Design tends to be overrun when there is unorganized content and SEO is overrun when design kicks content to the curb.

In her talk, The Balancing Act: Design(UI/UX) vs SEO, Stefanie Young of iNNOV8 Place, will cover the requirements of SEO while keeping UI/UX in mind.

Since starting her own website development firm, Stefanie Young has been able to create high-end stores with customizations to WooCommerce, extremely complex databases with frontend and backend data tracking and experiences, and she has also managed to create civic solutions with the City of San Antonio through her designs and website solutions.

We are so thrilled that Stefanie Young is speaking at the 2019 WordCamp DFW and that she will use her experience to help you learn to write well, retain users, and create a UI/UX individuals have come to expect.

Stefanie Young has spoken at 4 WordCamps now and she loves giving back to the WordPress community.

Each time has its own unique experience within the local cultures and audiences. I also learn from the questions brought forward by the audience.This community has been unbelievably welcoming and full of opportunities. We have had some of our best advice and mentorships come from the WordPress community, especially through local providers and firms like Pressable and Webtegrity.

Stefanie Young has a strong desire to speak to our WordCamp DFW audience because there are little problems that she comes across on a regular basis that her and her team have had to solve and they want to share how they are overcoming issues so the community as a whole can grow and expand their expertise as well.

We run into the issue of usability versus how pretty a site is versus what Google can read. It’s a headache but needs to be addressed with just about every client that we meet with. If we’re dealing with it, there’s a good chance several others are as well. Client’s don’t understand what goes into the mess that is SEO, content, Google tracking, and UI/UX. I want to break down the expectations, put it out there in layman’s terms and making these topics easier to talk about within our community.

Stefanie Young has the goal to help you talk about these issues without freezing up. She feels that these topics are typically far more important to clients than to any developer.

I want the audience to leave with a mindset that leads them to think about these things before design and before development. I want to give them a sense of operation and website deployment options that help their projects run smoother and have a higher turn around on launch for traffic, keywords, and Google usability scores.

Stefanie Young originally got into WordPress while working at the local newspaper in San Antonio.

Their websites and online presence were terrible. They were using one of the base WP themes and trying to create customizations in all the wrong places. This caused major issues and crash times to occur. I took the time to self teach a bit of HTML, CSS, and PHP before enrolling myself in a local coding program at Codeup.

After graduation, she was hired into a WordPress Expert role and quickly had to turn around web solutions, design, and customizations within the WordPress realm given its demand for small to mid-size businesses.

I have been in love with WordPress from day one!

Tweet during Stefanie Young’s talk, using #WCDFW and ask her about her life as an avid competitive gamer in the semiprofessional MOBA scene, mainly in League of Legends.

To learn from our expert speakers and be part of our community, make sure sure you get your WordCamp DFW tickets here!

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!