Speakers

Alex Dankoff

Alex Dankoff is a senior PHP and front-end web developer with a decade of interactive programming experience, creating innovative user experiences and complex system architectures. His dedication to quality and innovation have made the projects he touches cutting edge and award winning. He has contributed to the success of countless websites and applications for clients ranging such as Cirque du Soleil, Adidas, Walmart, FENDI, Tag Heuer, DELL, SAQ, and Rona.

Allison Levine

Allison is a freelance web developer and designer from the New York area. She’s been making stuff with WordPress since 2005 and loves finding new ways to customize it for nonprofits and small businesses. She also blogs about independent travel and minimalistpacking, and podcasts about TV shows and fandom. @allilevine

Andrea Zoellner

Andrea is a writer, translator, information designer and all-around WordPress enthusiast.

She started using WordPress in 2013 and in two short years, went from knowing nothing to using WordPress 60 hours a week for a variety of projects and clients. @andreazoellner

Anna Takahashi

For 18 years, Anna has been exploring the fascinating connection between body and mind through the daily practice of intentional sounds and conscious movement. She teaches the Yoga of Vowels (since 2007), and Kinéson (the original approach she has developed) in France, Germany, Japan and Montreal [workshops (Yoga Festival 2013…), weekly classes and individual sessions]. She practises daily these simple and powerful exercises which also help her in her work as a translator specialized in self-help and wellness. They allowed her to survive her first WordCamp in 2014, and they help her absorb the multiple facets of WordPress. @AnnaTakah

Belinda Darcey

Visual designer and owner of Dolce Design for the past 15 years, Belinda wears many hats: art director, illustrator, UI/graphic designer, UX consultant, front-end developer, business developer and handler of nervous clients. She currently directs a remote and motley team of freelance talent, creating websites and branding for a variety of platforms, including mobile apps and wearables. @belindadarcey

Bernard Prince

Bernard Prince a utilisé le web dans ses entreprises dès 1998. Stratège web depuis 2008, il étudie et observe l’évolution du web, le “Inbound marketing” et les outils d’analyse numérique. Conférencier à différents événements, dont le Podcamp de Montréal (2009), le SEO camp (2012) et Le Lab de Trois-Rivières (2013, 2015), Bernard possède les certifications Google Adwords et Analytics, en plus de l’agrément Google Partners. @pourlespme

Brendan Sera-Shriar

Brendan Sera-Shriar has been an interactive designer, developer, college and university professor, community manager, author, consultant, and professional speaker at some of the largest corporations and festivals in the world, including Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Sun Microsystems, WordCamp, BlogWorld, SXSW and more. His work has also appeared in TechCrunch, TechVibes, WordPress TV, and a host of other blogs. He was also featured in the October 2012 issue of Marketing Magazine.

Despite being known best for his work as a WordPress designer, developer, and WordCamp speaker and organizer, Brendan’s best communications skills lie in his ability to help organizations understand how they can build communities around their products and services. @digibomb

Brian Rotsztein

As an experienced Internet marketing entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and author, Brian has spent much of the past two decades helping companies excel on the Internet. His latest book, Content Marketing Ideas, has been highly praised by critics. He’s the head of well-established brands such as Uniseo (a boutique Internet marketing agency) and RedstoneX.com (a web design and online marketing company), where he brings a hype-free, seasoned approach to working with clients. You may have caught his appearances on CTV News or local radio shows. He writes about SEO, content marketing, social media, business, and entrepreneurship, among other topics. His work has been used by USA Today, ABC News, Social Media Today, Search Engine Journal, and other prominent sources. Brian holds two Master’s degrees, has taught university courses, and provides training services on Internet marketing. His love affair with WordPress began in 2005 when he started with version 1.6! Visit www.rotsztein.com and connect with him on Twitter: @brianrotsztein

Carl Alexander

Carl Alexander is a PHP developer that loves learning and teaching advanced technology topics. Besides helping with WordCamp Montreal, he organizes the other WordPress events during the rest of the year. His other interests lie with nutrition and sports science, weight training and, most importantly, video games. @twigpress

Chrissie Pollock

Chrissie Pollock worked as a freelance professional writer for nearly two decades (hence the SEO knowledge). This included blogging and website setup. Now she works for Automattic, Inc. as a Happiness Engineer who helps people set up sites and draw readers. She also works in Writing 101 and Blogging 101 for the WordPress Blogging University. @TechieFamily

Dana Salman

Hey there!

I’m Dana. I have over 10 years of experience in Marketing, Communication, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I have worked on many exciting marketing and community projects with industry leaders in retail (like Starbucks), IT (like ITS and babyTEL) and NGO’s (like AFDC).

I am inspired by innovation and technology and how it changes the human experience. I work in companies that make a positive impact on the world. I love collaborating with passionate team members on projects as a customer advocate.

I set marketing strategy according to our business goals and work with my design and development team to plan out project sprints to make sure we’re on track to achieve them. Having ideas is the fun part, weeding through these ideas and creating a project plan out of them and see them come to life is even more fun!

I also work closely with sales team to talk to customers and partners and get testimonials, case studies and feedback to improve the company’s marketing efforts. @DizzyD7

Elana Rudick

Elana is the Founder and Creative Director at Design Is Yummy. She has been passionately communicating brand messaging across web and print mediums for over a decade. She eats way too much chocolate and still believes high fives are cool. @designisyummy

Elida Arrizza

Elida has made creating delightful experiences her passion. Over the past 15 years, her background has spanned fine arts, design and digital arts, commercial photography, WordPress development and teaching. Elida applies her expertise as an Experience Designer at Sid Lee Labs. @elida_ca

Élise Desaulniers

Élise Desaulniers est associée chez Desaulniers Simard, une jeune entreprise qui offre du conseil, du développement et de la formation principalement avec WordPress et WooCommerce. Elle a récemment publié « Les femmes, cibles des trolls sur le net : écrire pour se faire insulter ? Ça doit cesser » dans Le Nouvel Obs et « Pour changer le monde, il faut changer le code » sur les femmes en technologie dans Françoise Stéréo. @edesaulniers

Francisco Sottolichio

Francisco Sottolichio has been designing web sites since some guy invented them in the early 1990s. At first, he just wanted to do the design part, the groovy graphics and fonts, but there were not a lot of HTMLcoders in those days, so he had to teach himself, and he kinda liked it. He’s gone from hand-coding html pages in a simple text editor, to programming complex Flash sites, and back to the hand-coding, but this time it’s HTML and CSS and JQuery and PHP, and the code runs WordPress sites. @fran6co

Jean-Pierre Valery

Après avoir diplômé d’un Master of Science en Management avec une spécialisation en Marketing et Communications, et avoir été choisi par IBM comme un des 80 meilleurs étudiants de la zone EMEA, Jean-Pierre (aka Jp) est présentement Gestionnaire de Communauté à Gameloft Montréal où il gère des communautés de plusieurs millions d’utilisateurs.

Son expérience avec WordPress a commencé en 2007 et a vu naître plusieurs projets, dont le plus marquant est VYSUAL.ORG : un webzine francophone indépendant éditorialisé qui voit une croissance permanente depuis son lancement avec aujourd’hui plus de 9000 visiteurs uniques par mois. Il fut également consultant freelance en création de sites avec WordPress pendant 13 mois en France. @jpvalery

Jennifer Doré Dallas

Jennifer Doré Dallas est une “corporate dropout” devenue blogueuse voyage à Moi, mes souliers et gestionnaire de communauté pour des clients de divers domaines. Passionnée des technologies de l’information et du monde nébuleux des blogues, elle navigue et vulgarise l’interface WordPress depuis plusieurs années. @moimessouliers

Jennifer Ecker

Jen is a principal and the creative director of shines & jecker labs, a web development firm in Portland, Maine. She has over 12 years of experience in digital design, doing everything from creating original graphic design to writing CSS. Her strength is her ability to master the latest technologies quickly to provide clients with modern, current designs. Jen spends her free time reading, running, and serving on the board for her local library. @drjecker

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke is a human web developer from Montreal. He’s been using WordPress since 2005 and working for his non-profit employer Global Voices for almost as long. Jeremy was a founding organizer of WordCamp in 2009 and has spoken at WordCamps in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, San Francisco, Boston and New York. @jeremyclarke

Jordan Quintal

I am a 15 year New Media veteran. I own and operate GeniusMedia, and we have been in business for over 3 years now .
We specialize in Web, Website, and WordPress development.

I have been a speaker at a dozen WordCamp’s across North America. @GeniusWebMedia

Kate Newbill

I’m Kate Newbill. I built my first website in very basic HTML about 1999. My first exposure to WordPress (and my first, very basic blog) came in 2004, just a few months after WordPress was first released. Since then I’ve built hundreds of websites for businesses of all sizes. In the past several years, I have expanded my services to offer security, prevention, and recovery for sites which had been hacked. My major strength is that I am a good speaker and able to explain highly technical material in a way that beginners and non-technical people can easily understand it. I was privileged to present a program called “Disaster-Proofing Your WordPress Website” at WordCamp Toronto in November 2014.

Kathryn Presner

Kathryn thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012. She’s currently Theme Whisperer on the Theme Team, where she helps folks with customization, configuration, and troubleshooting. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress at grassroots events like WordCamps, Girl Geeks, and Ladies Learning Code, and also loves encouraging new public speakers. @zoonini

Kelly Dwan

Kelly Dwan is a developer in Cambridge, MA. She works on the VaultPress team at Automattic. In her spare time, Kelly develops themes and contributes to the WordPress project. @ryelle

Liesl Barrell

Liesl is an agency veteran with over 8 years of digital marketing experience and award-winning projects under her belt. She’s originally South African and has worked with brands like Bombardier, Birks, Lise Watier, Mary Kay, Just For Laughs, Pfizer, Van Houtte, and The Montreal Gazette. @lieslbarrell

Louis-Michel Couture

Directeur Techno Chez O2 Web, Louis-Michel est un passionné d’automatisation. Il travaille avec Bedrock depuis plus d’un an et participe activement au développement de l’écosystème. Pour lui, déployer doit être aussi facile que développer. Ses responsabilité le mettent en contact quotidien avec des serveurs. Que ce soit avec Ansible ou Capistrano, il préfère le “write once, deploy everywhere”. Grand amateur d’opensource, il à participé à la refonte de wpackagist. Outre le code, Louis-Michel se passionne pour l’électronique, les robots (encore plus ceux qui volent), et le plein-air. @louim

Luca Sartoni

Luca Sartoni is a media professional with more than a decade of technical and marketing background. Thanks to his extensive experience in different business environments, from SMEs to large corporate projects, Luca helps companies scale up their business adopting data driven strategies. He does not believe in Santa Claus, magical spells and everything that is not backed up by facts. Luca is a Growth Engineer at Automattic. @lucasartoni

Marianne Prairie

Marianne Prairie a découvert sa vocation féministe à l’université après avoir constaté l’absence des femmes dans les nouvelles technologies. Tout en menant une carrière de gestionnaire de projet web indépendante, elle fait partie du quintette artistique et humoristique 100% féminin Les Moquettes Coquettes.

En 2007, elle crée son blogue de maman Ce que j’ai dans le ventre. L’année suivante, elle lance avec une amie le blogue collectif Je suis féministe, une plateforme d’expression pour les jeunes féministes francophones, devenu au fil des ans un incontournable du web féministe (tous des projets réalisés sous WordPress !) @marianneprairie

Meagan Hanes

Meagan Hanes is a designer of digital things, photographer, blogger and all around creative gal living outside Ottawa. She enjoys creating easy-to-use websites and technology solutions for artists, entrepreneurs and other creatives around the world. When not giving back to the community, you’ll find her behind a laptop or smartphone screen. @mhanes

Mel Choyce

Mel is a Design Engineer at Automattic and WordPress core contributor. She loves big type, cold brew coffee, and printmaking. @melchoyce

Michael Bontyes

Michael has been playing around with the code for more than a decade with a tireless curiosity. Today, WordPress is the reason he bikes every day to his job where he enjoys learning and improving web development practices day in and day out. Besides that, he was made in Belgium … which might also explain a never-ending enthusiasm for beer, people and simple joys of life! @MichaelBontyes

Michal Bluma

Michal a écrit ses premières balises depuis plus d’une décennie.

Passionné de tout ce qui est « web », il est toujours à la recherche des moments « Aha! » chez les gens. Il a un fort désir de démocratiser l’information à travers les analogies et les métaphores (et les blagues de mon’onc’). @isotrope

capital_OMGYES_dangit();

Mohamed Hamad

Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, and now living in Montreal, Canada, Mo is a web marketing and development professional with 9 years experience in web development, UX and design and 5 years experience in web marketing and SEO.

Nick Adams

I am a WordPress web developer and founder ofRevault Media. I split my time between Canandaigua, New York and London, Ontario. I run the WordPress London Canada and WordPress Finger Lakes meetups as well as the WordPress Help for Beginners and WordPress Help for Professionals Facebook groups. I blog about Minimalist Design and Living. @nickadamstv

Paul Bearne

Paul Bearne is a senior WordPress full stack developer. He lives and works in Toronto Canada.

He discovered WordPress in 2006 when asked to explore the use of collaborative tools internally for a multinational corporation, setting up a 200+ multi-blog site using WPMU on IIS7. As part of this project, he created the Author Avatars plugin, which now has 10,000+ active installs.

From this point on, the community, the flexibility and the velocity of WordPress has made it the platform of choice for Paul’s work.

Paul specializes in creating highly performant scalable, accessible and SEO friendly code (plugins and themes) for large WordPress sites that are often multi-site, multi-language, VIP and/or e-commerce.

He has made core commits in 3.9, 4.0 and 4.2 and continues to support his plugin and the wider WordPress community.
@pbearne

Richard Archambault

Richard loves the web and really loves WordPress. After attending his first WordCamp Montreal in 2010, he was hooked! Now a Happiness Rocketeer with Automattic, Richard wants to help spread the WordPress goodness to anyone else who’s interested in the web. When he’s not tinkering with his sites, he loves going to Mexico to eat spicy tacos and ride around on the metro! You can find online as @richardmtl.

Rick Radko

Rick Radko has been building web sites and apps since 1996. He began developing websites with WordPress in 2008. In 2011, Rick became involved in the WordPress community, starting the Ottawa WordPress Meetup Group and speaking at WordCamp Toronto. Since then he has been a repeat presenter at WordCamp Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Rick is also one of the organizers of WordCamp Ottawa. Rick is the founder of R-Cubed Design Forge where he develops and designs custom plugins, themes and multilingual websites. @r3designforge

Roy Sivan

Roy was born & raised in San Francisco, CA and now live in Los Angeles. He’s been using WordPress for almost its entire life, I started version 0.7. He’s now a front end developer and WordPress developer at Disney. He also has a small application & plugin company ARC(CTRL), which launched CodeCavalry.com earlier this year. @royboy789

Sarah Hines

Sarah is a principal and technical lead at shines & jecker labs, a web development firm in Portland, Maine, USA. Her 17 years in web development allow her to empathetically explain technical components to non-geeks so they understand what they’re making a decision about. Behind the scenes, she’s programming and managing WordPress installs from single sites to 20-domain multi-sites. With clients, she starts conversations with her good-humored, energetic approach and brings pragmatic new ideas to the table while keeping client budgets and goals in check. @sarah_hines

Sarah Marie Lacy

Sarah Marie Lacy fell in love with WordPress in 2008 when she was looking for a new platform for her art website. After rebuilding on WordPress, she was hooked. Since then she’s built websites for everyone from artists and authors to therapists and entrepreneurs and has worked for several WordPress development companies across North America.

She currently runs a micro design and tech business helping other creatives and entrepreneurs get up and running online and keep their tech systems running smoothly. She speaks both digital and analog fluently and is good at making technology sound less like garbled nonsense to beginners.

When she’s not pondering responsive layouts and typography, she’s drinking copious amounts of tea and painting. @smlacy

Shanta Nathwani

Shanta R. Nathwani is a Web Design and Information Architecture Consultant as well as an Instructor in Web Design and CCIT Capstone at Sheridan College, located in Oakville, Ontario, Canada which includes teaching WordPress. The ICCIT program is a joint program with the University of Toronto at Mississauga. She teaches students and small businesses how to use their websites and social media to increase their online presence leading to increased revenues and improved customer service. She has assisted companies to incorporate social media in the real estate, financial, non-profit, education and technical fields to name a few. She is from Toronto, Ontario, but now lives in Hamilton, Ontario. @ShantaDotCa

Shawn Hooper

Shawn is a partner at Fivesense Technologies in Ottawa, Canada. A lifelong computer geek, Shawn wrote his first database application at the age of 12, and ran a bulletin board system while in high school. He has been a web developer since 1995, and a WordPress developer since 2011. He has experience building applications for clients in government, non-profit and the private sector in both Canada and the United States. @shawnhooper

Stéphane Boisvert

Stéphane works for Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com as a VIP Engineer helping sites stay secure and optimized. He’s been working with WordPress for over 5 years. @stephboisvert

Veronica Louis

Veronica Louis is a freelance blogger, writer,copy-editor, designer, ESL trainer and project coordinator who over the years has developed useful organizational tips to keep her eclectic life as organized as possible. She is currently part of WordCamp Montreal’s team of organizers and is highly involved with the WordPress community year-round. @Veronica_Louis

Yannick Lefebvre

Yannick Lefebvre is an author and plugin developer who has released eight projects to the official WordPress repository to this day. His book, WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook, is available from Packt Publishing. With a background in Computer Science, he started writing plugins for his own WordPress site in 2004 and quickly started sharing his creations with the community. His first creation, Link Library, is used by more than 20000 WordPress sites around the world. You can find out more about him and his plugins on his blog, Yannick’s Corner. @ylefebvre