Speakers

Aaron Graham

Bio coming soon

Alex Rodriguez

Web Engineer at Integrity

“Arod” is a front and backend developer who earned an IT degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. After graduation, he did freelance web development for charities and small businesses. He now finds his full-time development home at Integrity, where he enjoys pushing web technologies (especially WordPress) to the limit. When he’s not knocking projects out of the park, he can be found playing guitar, hiking with his dog, and juggling.

Josh & Alex’s Tag Team Session: WordPress Best Practices and Admin Customization

Alex Wolk

Alex Wolk founded INSITE ADVICE over 10 years ago on the principles of helping clients manage their own web sites. Over the years they solved problems for hundreds of clients, including Word Wide Technology. His company initially used its own custom developed CMS called Sprout to handle those needs. As WordPress evolved, especially after the extended CMS capabilities in WP3, it became the ideal solution to migrate to. INSITE ADVICE services fit perfectly in the WP ecosystem, including custom theming, plugin development, SEO and social media. Alex’s growing passion is internet marketing, and WordPress is hands down the most robust SEO-friendly platform available. You can follow Alex at @insiteadvice and http://www.insiteadvice.com

Allison K Jones

Allison has worked as an interactive marketing specialist, trainer, and graphic designer. Her contributions have resulted in higher profiles, increased sales and active Facebook communities for dozens of clients including Darden restaurants and Marriott and Hilton hotels. From retail to hospitality and entertainment her ability to identify key points of contact and devise ways to engage with the online market has resulted in engaged and growing online communities.  Allison’s expertise in targeting the right audience for the right client to expand your reach is unmatched.

Brandon Dempsey

Brandon does a lot. After helming several companies over almost a decade, Brandon joined forces with Derek in 2010 to have some fun with marketing. As co-owner of goBRANDgo!, Brandon wears a lot of hats, not the least of which is sales. By reading this bio, you have legally contracted us to become your marketing company. Please call with your credit card information.

Caren Libby

Marketing specialist at Vandover
A writer, speaker, marketer and now a veteran WordPresser, Caren Libby says WordPress changed her life. She’s even built WordPress sites (little ones) at Maritz! Who knew a giant corporation would let anyone outside corporate IT build any kind of non-huge, non-IT-driven, person-powered site?

Caren’s session, How to Land Your Dream Job with WordPress, isn’t so much a get-a-job tutorial as it is a guide to changing your life, with a little marketing mastery thrown in.

You’ll see how your job is to find your niche, target an audience and draw them in with a message it needs to hear (that only you can deliver). WordPress, meanwhile, has a job too – to help you deliver. With everything from the look and feel that sets you up as an expert, to the tools that help your readers connect with you, all the way to the pure brawn to handle the server load if your message takes off and you hit it big.

Have you got a dream that requires reaching an audience? Caren’s got your blueprint. WordPress has your platform. So go get ’em!

Casara Drury

Hybrid Designer at Marketicity

Casara has been a designer for nearly four years and developing themes in WordPress for almost three years. Educated in print and self-taught in development, she is experienced in just about every medium from print to web and believes anything is possible when it comes to web design. She loves learning about new web technologies and finds each of them imperative to the growing possibilities of web design, specifically HTML5/CSS3.

Away from her Mac, you can find her on the river in her kayak, attending art and design events around St. Louis or spending time with her husband, Alex, and their new baby boy.

Chip Bennett

Chip is a freelance WordPress developer who has been using WordPress since 2005, and who has been a hobbyist web developer since the mid-90s. He has developed WordPress Themes and Plugins, and is a minor contributor to WordPress core. He is the community rep for the WordPress Theme Review Team that reviews/approves Themes for inclusion in the WordPress Theme Repository. He can often be found in the WordPress.org support forums and at WordPress StackExchange.

Chris Miller

Founder of Spiked Studio

Chris is the founder of Spiked Studio, a niche podcast network offering video and audio shows on social media, IBM software, BlackBerry and product reviews. He speaks globally at conferences, user groups and industry events. Chris is in the process of completing his second book titled Social Identity due out at the end of 2012.  You can find Chris as @IdoNotes on every network, yes everything

Chris’ Session: Using WordPress for Videocasting

Danielle Oser

For more than 15 years Danielle has used, designed and implemented a number of award-winning websites, interactive marketing campaigns and public relations programs. With that kind of experience and the perspective to step in the shoes of users, clients and all kinds of people on the back end of a site, she’s amply qualified to give us all both an academic and real-world view of digital media in action.

Danielle’s Specialties include:
Digital Media, Public Relations, Web Planning, Corporate Communications

Danielle’s Session: 101 Ways To Promote Your WordPress Baby in the Real World

Ed Morrisey

Partner and Chief Creative Officer of Integrity
Ed is an industry expert in applying creative, user-centered development principles to help businesses extend their brands online and better connect with their customers, as well as their employees, partners and investors.

Having built his last firm to be named one of AdWeek’s Top 20 Interactive Agencies, Ed has developed web-based solutions for a variety of clients within industries including technology, consumer packaged goods (CPG), healthcare, government, oil and gas, media and financial services. Ed’s clients have included such brands as Hewlett Packard, Sony, Microsoft, Bausch & Lomb, Continental Airlines, Exxon Mobil the State of Missouri, the City of Houston and the federal government.

After living in Los Angeles, Houston, DC and New York City, Ed now lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife LeAnn and son Keilan.

Ed’s Session: The Evolution of WordPress: Blog to Engineering Platform

Eric Johnson

Mobile Wrangler at Automattic

Eric has been using WordPress for work and fun since 2007.  For the past few years he’s been busy building apps for the iOS and Android platforms, and keeping up with trends in the mobile web.  In March he joined Automattic as a Mobile Wrangler and now spends his days helping make WordPress awesome on mobile devices. He loves all things mobile but loves his coffee even more!

Eric’s Session:Tuning Your WordPress Theme for Mobile Presentation and Performance

Eric Juden

Web Application Developer at Maryville University

Eric Juden has been a programmer for 8 years. Since 2008, Eric has served as the Web Application Developer at Maryville University. Maryville just launched their main website on WordPress Multisite over the summer and has been using WordPress Multisite for their faculty, staff and student blogs since 2009. Eric has created around 25 WordPress plugins and released 8 to the WordPress community. His website is ericjuden.com and you can follow him on Twitter (@ericjuden).

When Eric is not coding, he is spending time with his wife and two kids, or enjoying time in the outdoors camping or backpacking.

Joshua Ray

Web Engineer at Integrity

Joshua recently moved home to STL with his wife Brandy from Portland Oregon where he was a freelance developer and Small business consultant for Yahoo! After joining the development ranks at Integrity Joshua has specialized in Front end Development and a Mastery of WordPress. Joshua is a Star Wars fanboy and enjoys golf, live music and spending happy hour around the Integrity foosball table.

Josh & Alex’s Tag Team Session: WordPress Best Practices and Admin Customization

Mary Baum

Principal, Marginhancers. Adding profitability from the top line.

An art director and copywriter for nearly three decades, Mary Baum hasn’t been rational on the subject of typography for a long time.

Whether the work at hand has been print – for clients as big as General Motors or ConocoPhillips – or branding that took a tiny financial firm into the big leagues of Fortune-1000 retirement planning – or small sites for single-person consultants, she’s always believed that type and layout can help a no-budget postcard look like it cost $25,000 – or make a $25,000 photograph look as if it came for free from BulkPix.com.

Her session, One Theme/Many Variations, will show you a StudioPress theme she uses most, and three variations.

You’ll see how changes in the CSS and, especially, typography, make it look very different. Plus, she’ll go over the web-typography solutions she’s settled on in the last year – when she originally discussed to the topic at WordCamp 2011.

Nathaniel Schweinberg

bio coming soon

Nicholas Gilham

Nick Gilham is the founder of A Branded You, a personal branding and social media consulting firm. He coaches job seekers and small business owners about how to use online marketing techniques to market themselves and their companies.

Nile Flores

Nile Flores is a sassy Southern Illinois mom who is a professional blogger, as well as a WordPress designer and developer. She has been proud to use WordPress since its start and even when it was b2 cafelog. She has always aimed to help others in the creation, maintaining, and promoting of their website. Nile has spoken at many WordCamps across the United States and is well known in the blogging community. Her website is Blondish.net and you can follow her on Twitter @blondishnet and on her Facebook fan page.

When Nile is not knee deep in coding or blogging or speaking at conferences, she is having fun raising her son, and even attends Shoren Kempo karate twice a week.

Peter King

CEO at Seek Higher
I help purpose-driven business owners make more money online. My team and I do this by helping our clients develop high-impact branded websites and social media accounts, leveraging various marketing tools in order to automate prospecting and lead development and then integrate powerful techniques that increase sales. I started using WordPress and making money online back in 2004 and have developed websites for thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and celebrities like supermodel Beverly Johnson and celebrity-stylist Robert Verdi. My biggest success to date was taking a small niche product that sells for $3 and turning it into a multi-million dollar asset for the family business. I’m a big Cardinals fan and I live in Chesterfield, Missouri with my wife, 2 children and dog.

Randy Hicks

Web Developer at metacake

Randy is a developer from Nashville who has spent the last 4 years dealing primarily in WordPress development. He is one of the two main organizers for the Nashville Meetup group and the WordCamp Nashville 2012.

Randy has been writing his own themes ever since he heard about WordPress and currently works with an amazing team at MetaCake.com! In his spare time, he is part of a group who is currently working to put together wpnashville.com and @wpnashville

Random musings, pictures and code: visualcoma.com – @vc27

Randy’s Session: Hooks & Filters

Reshma Chattaram Chamberlin

Chief Executive Officer at B&C Designers

Reshma Chattaram Chamberlin started her career as a book designer for HarperCollins Publishers in NYC and then moved to magazine publishing, before finding her sweet spot as a web designer and project manager. She has worked on campaigns for clients like Volvo and French’s French Friend Onion as well as designed sites for governors, states and celebrities. She formed B&C Designers – a concierge interactive firm that takes on a small number of clients at a time to really focus on great design and new and intuitive functionality. B&C believes in designing for web with extreme care and attention to detail and achieving great design through the client’s business objectives, usability best practices and innovation.

Recently B&C is set to launch a Chicago State’s Attorney’s site created in wordpress, has created a mobile and iPad application for stock enthusiasts, a news reader app and a top secret project for a Fortune 50 company!

Ronald Dean Strawbridge

UX Advocate / UX Strategy

Ronald Dean Strawbridge has over 10 years experience in technology consulting. He has worked as a designer, developer at Brown Shoe, Maritz, Touchwood Creative, and other local agencies.

As a UX professional Ron has built designed user experience solutions for Allstate, MasterCard, Reed Elsevier, and Safety National Casualty Corporation.

Currently, he works with business owners and their IT department to develop UX strategies and standards. Ron received degrees in theater and communication from SLCC and UMSL.

Ryan Markel

Digital Aficionado, Family Man, Raconteur

Ryan Markel hails from St. Louis, the Gateway to the West. He’s been blogging in some form or another since the turn of the millennium, eventually learning and loving WordPress. After trying his hand at such careers as exegete, retail TV salesman, and digital strategist for a traditional publisher, he currently works as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, helping users of the WordPress.com service. In his spare time he enjoys the study of games and game design, performing the works of the baroque, being part of Cardinal Nation, and helping his wife (try to) control his five children.

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