Speakers

Adrian Roselli

Adrian is a member of the W3C Web Platform Working Group, W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group, and W3C Accessibility Task Force. He has written articles for trade journals, web sites, and participated as an author and editor on five web-related books. Back in 1998 he co-founded a software development consulting firm before leaving at the start of 2016 to start all over. Some may recognize Adrian from his days helping to run evolt.org, one of the first communities for web developers. Adrian has been developing for the Web since 1993.

Afzaal

Founder of Think Up Themes specialising in development of both free and premium WordPress themes. Afzaal has been involved with WordPress since 2008. Prior to Think Up Themes Afzaal worked within financial services as an Actuary.

Alain Schlesser

Alain is a freelance software engineer and WordPress consultant living in Germany.

He started out as a government agent working in prison administration in Luxembourg, and has recently made the switch to self-employment to enjoy productive work without the bureaucratic hurdles.

He has worked with numerous platforms and programming languages for the past 25 years, and is now trying to settle down on modern web development with the WordPress platform. He is passionate about software architecture and code quality and never misses an opportunity to share best practices.

He offers his WordPress services and expertise through his company Bright Nucleus, while you can catch some of his more personal ramblings at https://alainschlesser.com.

Aleksander Kuczek

CEO Perfect Dashboard. OpenSource CMS aficionado. Joomla Extension Directory team member, and WordPress Directory aspiring team member. A Foodie and computer games freak. Huge fan of London parks and English tea rooms.

Alice Still

I’m a copywriter and founder of Unramble a little content agency in Brighton, UK. Specialising in tone of voice, I like creating user-friendly content strategies, and writing accessible website copy. Community and inclusiveness are important to me, both online and off. That’s why I’m the lead organiser of WordCamp Brighton 2017, one of the co-founders of Brighton Digital Women, and a co-organiser of WordPress meetups in Brighton.

Cedric Kisema

Chris Jansen

Chris “legolasbo” Jansen is a developer at Deeson and has been working with Drupal since 2011. After becoming an active Drupal community member in 2013 he is now one of the top 10 Drupal 8 core contributors in the Netherlands and maintains and contributes to many contributed modules. He has been an open source enthusiast for as long as he can remember, which is why he chose to do academic research into ways for organisations to contribute (more) to open source software development.

Chris Wiegman

Chris is a developer for UF Health at the University of Florida who has been working on WordPress since 2008. Over the years Chris built one of the largest security plugins on WordPress.org as well as numerous other plugins, themes and other solutions. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has presented at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University and other University courses ranging from computers to aviation.

Crispin Read

Crispin is a consultant specialising in UX and agile practice. Almost 20 years professional experience of user focussed development and open source frameworks. Content Coordinator for MWDA.uk – a national, industry led apprenticeship scheme getting young people without access to university started in a career in web development.

Spare time taken up by a film club podcast and writing passive aggressive letters to his cat.

Dave Walker

Dave Walker is a freelance cartoonist based in Essex, UK. He has used WordPress to create cartoon websites since 2005. These have included sites with cartoons for bloggers, cyclists and churchgoers, along with his own blog and portfolio site, davewalker.com. Dave draws a weekly cartoon for the Church Times newspaper, and his forthcoming book, ’The Cycling Cartoonist’, is to be published by Bloomsbury in June 2017.

David Lockie

David is the Founder & Director of Pragmatic – a WordPress specialist agency. He has experience building a WordPress business from the ground up having grown his agency from one freelancer to over 40 full-time employees over the course of 5 years.

David is looking forward to talking at WordCamp London so he can share his in-depth expertise on growing and running a thriving WordPress agency. David hopes his talk will inspire others with the knowledge and confidence to successfully grow their own WordPress business.

Denise VanDeCruze

Denise Van De Cruze has been building Web Sites for over 20 years and is passionate about empowering people through technology. She loves coffee and travel and lives in Vienna. Through her travels, she has visited and learned from many thriving WordPress communities around the world. She is an organizer of WordCamp Vienna and builds WordPress sites through her company, Girlbot.

Edd Hurst

I first met WordPress 8 years ago as a Front-End Developer. At first it was mostly about looks, but then as things got serious I made a few queries, returned a function or two, and before I knew it, it was official – I was running my department, pitching to clients and managing projects.

In that time I’ve also become a journalist and a documentary filmmaker, I’ve been motion captured into a game, and once helped save a whale. I love engaging with clients, and helping to solve their problems, but more than anything I love the opportunity to pool all of my experiences together and make clients (and team members) feel at ease on a project, explaining technical jargon with friendly metaphors, humour and large hand movements.

Elizabeth S Barker

Libby joined Human Made as a Project Manager in April 2016. Prior to her introduction to the WordPress community, Libby worked primarily in film and television, most notably with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Food Network. In 2014 she and her husband moved from New York City to Vermont where she enjoys hiking, great local food and being involved in the local tech community.

Francesca Marano

WordPress professional, community junkie, business explorer. I make WordPress things happen from Torino, Italy: Polyglots and Community team member, Meetup and WordCamp organizer.

Founder of C+B (http://cpiub.com), a blog for Italian female creative entrepreneurs, with an editorial staff offering daily advice to women who work on their own.

I am a passionate speaker and you can find me in Italy and around the world talking about WordPress, community, open source, women in tech, small businesses.

Graham Armfield

I’m a Web Accessibility Consultant with my own company Coolfields Consulting. I work with organisations to help them improve the accessibility of their websites – testing the websites for accessibility, and advising the designers and developers on how to fix issues found. I have also written and presented detailed training courses on accessibility for developers

I’m also a WordPress developer, and I’ve built many accessible WordPress websites for clients – both large and small. I’m member of the Make WordPress Accessible Team and I’ve spoken on accessibility to many WordCamps and other WordPress meetups.

Outside of work you’re likely to find me playing my guitar, recording my next album or performing at local open mic evenings.

Heather Burns

My name is Heather Burns and I am a digital law specialist. I research, write, publish, consult, and speak extensively on internet laws and policies, most specifically those that affect the crafts of web design and development. I’ve been working with WordPress since 2008 and designing web sites since 1997.

Heather Dopson

I have a passion for digital trends and innovation along with a deep understanding of social networks, consumers and branding. Social media is word of mouth marketing amplified exponentially; teaching businesses how to harness the power is my specialty.

As a Community Builder at GoDaddy, I work with external influencers to identify the right audiences (both online and offline) for our suite of products and services.

Ilia Markov

Ilia is a content marketer who has helped organisations of all sizes and industries – from SaaS to government – to succeed with growing their audience and their business with content. His guilty pleasure is that he tries to use every trip to the UK to watch his beloved Southampton FC.

In his spare time, he loves to tinker with www.markovunchained.com.

Jeffrey A. McGuire

Jeffrey A. “jam” McGuire, Open Source Evangelist at Acquia, is involved at the intersection of open source software, business, and culture. A memorable and charismatic communicator, he writes and talks about open source technology and community, Drupal, and more at events around the world, on a weekly podcast, and in blogs on Acquia.com. This all helps satisfy his inner diva, which he also feeds with performances as a storyteller and musician.

Jenny Wong

Jessica Rose

Jim Bowes

Jim Bowes is a Scrum coach, regular speaker at Agile events and CEO of Manifesto Digital. Manifesto uses Agile methods to deliver bespoke digital solutions to organisations such as Cancer Research UK, Unicef UK and the National Trust. He’s used WordPress for over 8 years and loves converting people to its simplicity and the speed at which great sites can be created.

John Blackbourn

John is one of the WordPress core developers, a member of the WordPress security team, and was the release lead for WordPress 4.1. He works as a senior developer at Human Made, and has over ten years experience developing with WordPress.

Jonny Allbut

Digital director at creative and development agency Wider, Wonderflux WordPress theme framework founder and WordPress Birmingham meetup co-organiser. Working with WordPress since 2005, specialises in bespoke theme development.

Luke Oatham

Head of Helpfulness & Product Lead, GovIntranet

Luke has over 20 years experience in IT and digital communications, working with a wide range of clients, including at Transport for London and the Ministry of Justice.

His job title may sound daft, but captures Luke’s diverse mix of skills: a developer, then an information architect and user experience practitioner, his digital skills cover a range of specialisms including usability, content and information design, digital engagement, search, web analytics and a twist of human psychology. He’s also a seasoned WordPress developer.

He leads work on GovIntranet, a straightforward intranet product serving tens of thousands of users around the world.

He runs a blog at intranetdiary.co.uk covering topics such as content strategy, staff engagement, search and analytics.

Marco Calicchia

Half Italian, half American, Marco is a Community Manager at SiteGround. In his role, he attends numerous events around the world and actively networks and builds relationships with the WordPress community members. In his free time, apart from playing football and cooking, Marco travels frequently to visit his family in the US and Italy. He loves to spend his summers sailing and winters snowboarding.

Mark Wilkinson

Mark is the Lead developer and Co-founder of Highrise Digital, a specialist WordPress agency focusing on custom development that is built to last. Mark has been using WordPress since late 2005, all the way back to version 2.0. He is an active member of the UK WordPress community speaking at local meet-ups and WordCamps and a former secondary school teacher.

Matt Radford

Matt has worked with WordPress since 2007. He is a forward-looking developer – keen to optimise performance, and promote web standards & best practice.

Meg Fenn

Co founder and co director of Shake It Up Creative, a design and marketing company based in Sussex. Throughout my 17 year career as a designer and company director, I’ve helped and worked with many different types of businesses and business owners. Some web projects have been extremely enjoyable and I’ve been fortunate to work with some fascinating people. What I’ve found is that clients’ knowledge and understanding of their own web projects vary greatly, and it’s been my job to help them through the process of creating the best website for their business that they’re proud of, that benefits their business and one they are able to manage on their own, if they chose to do so. My WordCamp talk, ‘Website design pain points for clients and how to help them through it’ will address some of the ways in which web designers and marketers can serve their clients better and as a result, build an excellent reputation.

Meri Williams

Meri is a geek, a manager, and a manager of geeks. She’s a CTO, delighted to be leading the tech team at MOO, and also runs ChromeRose, a micro-consultancy which helps digital & technical teams be brilliant.

She has had a career spanning development, project, programme & product management and more recently engineering & operations leadership. She’s led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, mostly with people spread across the world, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to startups, to the Government Digital Service.

A published author and international speaker, she sponsors scholarships to help more girls start STEM careers in her hometown of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She’s proud to be the host and co-curator of The Lead Developer conference.

Michael Murdoch

Founder and Creative Director of The House digital branding and communications agency. I have over 15 years working with clients of all shapes and sizes across the globe and work with my fantastic team of creatives and coders to deliver brands, animations, films and of course WordPress websites!

Mik Scarlet

TV Presenter, Journalist and Access Expert.

With over 30 years in the media I was one of the first well known disabled people to appear on TV in the UK, working on shows such as Beat That, From The Edge, The Travel Show, BBC News and C5 News. Alongside my media career I am one of the UK’s leading access and inclusion experts. I advise major companies and government bodies on how to create and maintain systems that ensure disabled people, and all other protected characteristics as described by the Equality Act 2010, are fully included in society. I specialise in the retail, leisure and transport industries.

Monique Dubbelman

Monique started working as a graphical designer and engineer somewhere in the 20th century. She discovered the web in the early 90’s and has been online ever since, exploring new possibilities. Her expertise shifted towards marketing, communications and web design. About 10 years ago, she started selling online and therefore built and designed her own web shop. She works as an entrepreneur in her own company BOE!media since 2011, advising SME’s on their digital (marketing) strategy. In 2016, she graduated from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences as a bachelor in information management. Building websites with WordPress is an important part of her work. When she’s not glued to her phone or computer, she likes to whisper to earth worms on her allotment.

Nela Dunato

Nela Dunato is a brand and web designer with over a decade of professional experience. She’s worked in several web development agencies before becoming a full-time freelancer in 2013. She’s teaching graphic design as a course instructor at Algebra Open University, and also hosts in-person workshops. She helps service-based businesses from all over the world to launch and grow their ventures using the power of branding, content marketing and WordPress websites.

Nevena Tomovic

Nevena originally trained as a simultaneous interpreter, but now she is responsible for two way “interpreting” at GoDaddy. She translates the team’s geek talk and product features into a language that normal people can understand, and customer wishes and needs to requirements for engineers.

Owen Cutajar

Owen has working with a number of organisations helping them leverage cutting-edge technologies to gain sustainable competitive advantage. Immensely passionate about technology, Owen has built his career on his innate ability to understand and dissect organisational challenges and apply timely and effective solutions, typically focusing on emerging techniques and systems. Owen has been using WordPress since version 2 and runs a number of sites for himself and his clients. He is a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and tries to learn everything about the WordPress security scene.

Pascal Birchler

Pascal is a student and Core Developer based in Zurich, Switzerland. He’s been working with WordPress for half of his life and passionate about helping other people and cooking. Most recently he’s been improving i18n in WordPress, as well as translating WordPress into a language only 50,000 people understand.

Rachael Dines

Co founder and co director of Shake It Up Creative, a design and marketing company based in Sussex. Rachael is skilled in marketing, PR, copywriting and search engine optimisation, is also an adviser for Enterprise Nation small business members and a mentor for CIM studying members. She has 15 years’ marketing experience with seven as a company director.

Ronald Ashri

Ronald Ashri is Deeson’s Technical Strategy Director. Analysing emerging enabling technologies and market trends he identifies new opportunities and improved methods for solving problems. Ronald holds a PhD in Computer Science where research dealt with complex distributed systems, artificial intelligence, and Semantic Web technologies. After several years in academia working on artificial intelligence he changed directions and got involved with web development and practical applications of the semantic web. For the past 10 years he has consulting for large organisations, academic institutions and government organisations, leading teams on projects and product development.

An active member of the Drupal community for the past 9 years, Ron’s first WordCamp was last year in Vienna and it was a great experience.

Ross Wintle

Ross is a freelance website developer, communications consultant and accidental WordPress expert who helps organisations use technology to make the world better. He previously worked in aerospace doing safety-critical software engineering, so websites feel a little more down to earth! Ross is a dad and a cyclist and he loves working with both people and code.

Sami Keijonen

Sami Keijonen

Teacher and front-end developer who likes to learn about web and accessibility.

Sarah Semark

Sarah Semark is a designer, developer, and self-confessed introvert. After running a business for eight years, she now works for Automattic designing and building WordPress themes.

When she’s not busy making things, Sarah likes obsessing over typography, collecting impractical footwear, and exploring new places.

Stewart Ritchie

Stewart is the lead developer and founder at Powered By Coffee.

Stewart spends his days building WordPress websites, tracking down new clients, refining his teams DevOps and collaboration processes

Sue Fernandes

Sue is a freelance web designer and developer from Stockport in Cheshire who specialises in creating custom child themes for the Genesis framework. She has been working with WordPress for over 8 years and now works with a large range of clients across the UK as well as a fantastic assortment of WordPress coders, designers and writers.

Tammie Lister

Tammie works at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. She has a varied background including psychology, design, front end development and user experience. She is a contributor to WordPress and passionate about Open Source.

Tim Nash

Tim is the platform lead at 34SP.com for their Managed WordPress product in addition to being the companies Developer Advocate. One day he will work out what either of those job titles means. Until he does he spends his day in a mix of Dev, security, ops and project management as well as speaking at user groups and conferences. He also helps run WordPress Leeds and writes for several publications including his own site timnash.co.uk.

Tom Chute

I started using WordPress when running a charity 7 years ago. I was the client, partnering with the agency I now work for, so I’ve experienced using WordPress on both sides of the fence. At my agency, I’m an Account Manager and Team Leader, working with hundreds of clients, and many team members, to deliver a wide range of WordPress sites. Prior to WordPress, I ran mass engagement, behaviour change campaigns relating to climate change and environmental conservation.

Tom J Nowell

Tom is a VIP Wrangler at WordPress.com VIP for Automattic. He reviews and deploys millions of lines of code each year for large sites at scale.
 
He’s also a community moderator at WordPress Stack Exchange, project lead for the WordPress The Right Way ebook, WordCamp organiser, and a conference speaker.

Ulrich Pogson

Ulrich is a dedicated WordPress contributor, especially as a Key Code Reviewer for the Theme Review Team. He started the WordPress Meetup in Bern @WPBern and has his own multilingual e-commerce store @WPZOO selling WordPress Themes and Plugins. Currently employed by required.

Vivek Jain

Vivek is the co-founder and Sales Head at rtCamp, an eight years old WordPress.com VIP agency headquartered in India. He is passionate about making successful enterprise project delivery and about maintaining ongoing client relationships.

He is an active community member and has volunteered at WordCamps in US and India.

He loves Jazz, follows Premier league football and is (he believes) a good Sunday football player.

Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld

Wendie started playing with WordPress in 2009. Her hobby turned into her job and she made a business out of her job. The Websiteclub helps Dutch freelancers and small local businesses with creating a website and teaches them how to use it as their home base in the digital world.

Wendie is hooked on podcasting. She is a cohost at Wendyienator, a Dutch podcast about entrepreneurship and one of the podcasters at PressCast, a WordPress podcast in English.