Category: Speaker Spotlight

Brian is a born and bred Montrealer. Freelancer. Contractor. Learner of things. He’s been playing with WordPress since 2008(ish) when he created his first site for an online radio station. That site is long gone, but his love for WordPress grew a lot since then. Helping people with their sites is something he truly enjoys. It took a while, but, in 2016, he attended my first WordCamp and sees himself at many more in the future!

Brian gave a workshop earlier this week titled “WooCommerce: A beginner’s guide to sell anything, anywhere. Beautifully!“.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

Let me throw in a couple. The Visual Editor in the Text Widget and the WordPress Events widget in the admin Dashboard. Super helpful!

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

I thought it would be fun and I just wanted to give back!

What is your talk going to be about?

I will be giving a beginners workshop on setting up an eCommerce site with WooCommerce.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

I want them to be able to say “WooCommerce? Yeah, I understand it!”.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

Lately I’ve been listening to the podcast The WordPress Chick with Kim Doyle.

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

Although there are great plugins for this, incorporating, into core, a simple way to create multilingual sites would be awesome!

Sasha is a web strategist, front-end developer, and UX designer. She runs an interactive design studio in Montreal, Canada that specializes in creating WordPress websites for NPOs, cause-based organizations, and other do-gooders. Her goal is to make a lasting impact through amplifying the voices of those who are working towards meaningful positive changes. She enjoys spreading her passion for coding, design, and social change through public speaking and educational initiatives like Ladies Learning Code and Girls Learning Code.

Sasha will be giving a talk titled “Practical accessibility for inclusive web“.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

I’m thrilled to see more robust and versatile widgets come to core that offer ways for clients without in-house devs to bring flexibility to their sidebars and widget area.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

Well, first of all, I love to share what I know with the WordPress community but I also love to talk about topics that I feel passionate about. Accessibility and inclusion are extremely important topics, especially in the nonprofit tech world where I do most of my work but more and more in the tech word in general. When a colleague of mine told me how scary the Section 508 requirements looked to him I knew I had to show folks that these legal accessibility requirements aren’t actually that scary at all, in practice.

What is your talk going to be about?

I will regale my audience with an overview of accessibility laws to make them feel less scary. Then I’ll cover the most common accessibility standards for designers and developers along with practical examples (I’ll touch on the more complex stuff and include plenty of links for further investigation). And finally, I’ll go over tools you can start using today to test and improve the accessibility of your projects.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

You can start making your content more accessible to all of your website visitors with small steps that make a big difference.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

I had the pleasure of meeting some brilliant folks at WordCamp Europe this year: Heather Burns is absolutely a “must follow” for digital policy news, Morten Rand-Hendriksen covers a wealth of topics from accessibility to CSS grid. Then there are the usual suspects: Paul Underwood and Tom McFarlin.

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

I’m excited to see how Gutenberg will evolve over the next year or two. Would love to see it turn into a robust tool both for users and devs.

Miriam has been a web and software developer for the past twelve years, having been lucky to work in the industry right out of college. She taught herself HTML at a young age. She used WordPress exclusively in her daytime job from 2012-2016, and has been a freelance WordPress developer/user since 2008-09.

Miriam will be giving a talk titled “Plugins and You: Finding that perfect plugin “.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

Hard to say. I found the Codex to be a bit cleaner somehow, so that’s a plus!

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

I wanted to broaden my experience, and speak at WordCamps outside my home base.

What is your talk going to be about?

It’s going to be my personal guide to selecting the right plugin for your use case.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

I want them to hear about a different perspective, and perhaps gain some tips and tricks to the selection process.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

That’s a hard one. There’s no one in particular that comes straight to my mind, and I follow a variety of people. Everyone brings a different perspective to the game.

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

Not sure!

Brian is a renaissance man whose passion and enthusiasm as an experienced digital entrepreneur has shined over the last two decades. With a unique constellation of talents, he successfully multitasks between being a CEO, Internet marketing professional, author, conference speaker, consultant, content creator, mentor, photographer, web designer, media guest (TV, radio, podcasts) and startup founder. His highly praised book, Content Marketing Ideas, is a complete guide to content creation and maintains an influential five-star rating on Amazon. He is in demand as the head of established brands such as Uniseo.com and RedstoneX.com, President of the Canadian Internet Marketing Association, Editor-in-chief of Citynet Magazine, Head of WP Phone Support and Editor at The WP Crowd, among other accolades. Brian holds two Master’s degrees and has taught at McGill University and Boston College. Please visit www.rotsztein.com for more. On Twitter and Instagram: @brianrotsztein

Brian will be giving a talk titled “How WordPress Will Change Your Life“. He’s also hosting a panel titled “WordPress Business Advice”

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

This one is a little self-serving because of my involvement but I love the progress of http://www.wpphonesupport.com, a WordPress service that offers SEO-based security, website updates, site speed optimization, backups and so on.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

I’m speaking at WordCamp Montreal to give back to the community which has been so great to me personally and professionally.

What is your talk going to be about?

TALK #1: The first WordCamp that I attended was in Montreal, in 2009. Since then, I have gone on to live what I call The WordPress Lifestyle (#wplife). I encourage everyone reading this to come to the talk and discover for yourself to what extent WordPress has had a positive influence on your life.

TALK #2: I put together a great business advice panel for anyone who is using WordPress to make money (business owners, web designers, plugin creators, etc.). I’ll be hosting this year.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

TALK #1: There is much more to WordPress than blogging and making money. The community is unbelievable and I encourage people to get involved.

TALK #2: Get advice on how to make the most of WordPress and profitability.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

The team behind The WP Crowd

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

I’d like to be able to save menu settings (e.g., to have a revision history).

Montrealer Kathryn Presner 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 and encouraging new public speakers at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress obsessions include vintage Pyrex mixing bowls and growing garlic.

Kathryn will be giving a workshop titled “Getting Comfortable With Child Themes“. She’ll also be on a panel titled “Contributing to WordPress”

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

Definitely the new image widget introduced with WP 4.8, which lets you choose an image from the Media Library instead of having to enter an image file path manually. The old image widget was confusing and difficult for people to use, so I was thrilled to see this improvement.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

I can’t imagine not speaking at my hometown WordCamp!

What is your talk going to be about?

My child theming session is a hands-on workshop for anyone who wants to learn how to create your first child theme. I’ll walk you through the process step-by-step, to get you more comfortable with child themes and help you better understand their potential.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

Child theming is not hard, you can do it!

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

This year I’m nominating three of my wonderful colleagues at Automattic who inspire me in different ways: Cate Huston, Ashleigh Axios, and Anne McCarthy.

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

I’ll answer this question a bit obliquely. I’m excited about the potential of Gutenberg to change the WordPress landscape and hope developers give it a chance and pitch in to make it the best it can be.

Meagan Hanes is a WordPress expert based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with over 20 years creating websites by hand and over 10 years using WordPress. She creates elegant, high-performance, mobile-optimized web solutions – front-end, back-end, and everything in between. You may have seen her present talks across a variety of WordPress subjects. She gives back to local communities through organizing WordCamps, running meetups such as the Ottawa WordPress Community, and teaching others to code.

Meagan will be hosting a panel titled “Contributing to WordPress“.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

The newest change on our wp-admin Dashboard’s Events and News widget that shows nearby WordCamps and WordPress meetups! Now it’s even easier for WordPressers to meet and learn from one another.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

I don’t speak at every WordCamp every year, but when I do, it’s WordCamp Montreal!

Thanks for having me back as a speaker for the 5th consecutive year <3

What is your talk going to be about?

This year we’re going to have a fun and interactive panel chat about contributing to WordPress. What does this term mean to the range of panelists, the ways and avenues in which we’ve contributed to the WordPress Project, and how you can find your special niche for helping make WordPress the world’s best open source CMS!

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

Excitement and confidence about WordPress’ future!

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

Too many to list! Nowadays I get a lot of inspiration from podcasts like The WP Crowd and WPWatercooler.

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

My dream world would be spending a few development cycles improving various aspects of Camptix, the WordCamp-management integration plugin for WordPress, while others are focusing on Gutenberg UI/UX developments and advanced REST API & WP-CLI integration 🙂

Dwayne has been working in tech and open source sales since 2005.

He knew as soon as he started working with Java middleware developers he never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. He first started building in Drupal and WordPress when he needed to build projects for the San Francisco Improv scene. He fell in the love the community of developers and then found my position at Pantheon at the end of 2013.

As a Community and Agency Success Manager, he has had the privilege of presenting at MidCamp (Drupal), WordCamp Milwaukee, WordCamp Baltimore, Drupal Northern Lights (Iceland), Stanford DrupalCamp and other conferences.

Outside of tech I love producing and performing improv theater. I also love comic books and karaoke!!!

Dwayne will be giving a workshop titled “Let’s learn git. No more excuses.“.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

The inclusion of the WP-CLI as part of the core project. While this didn’t directly add any additional new functionality immediately it paved the path for many more improvements by getting more folks involved from the make.wordpress.org community.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

I love speaking in public and sharing what I have learned over the years from this awesome community. I see it as a way of giving back.

What is your talk going to be about?

Git, which is version control for not only code, but anything. It is really the best revisioning system we have invented yet and has a lot of practical applications.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

How to do the basics and understand conceptually what Git can do.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

Wow, this would be a long list if I listed everyone. Bridget Willard (@YouTooCanBeGuru) jumps to mind as well as Adam Warner (@wpmodder) and Matt Cromwell (@learnwithmattc) and Rachel Cherry (@bamadesigner). Leaving out a lot, the whole dang community is pretty inspirational.

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

I would like to see better role management in core, with the ability to change capabilities for a role or invent a new role directly within the admin. There are plugins and you can accomplish this with tools like WP-CLI but having a way in core to do this would allow for larger publishing organizations to more easily adopt WP as their enterprise solution.

Lisa Ghisolf is Gizmo Creative Factory, with 20 years in print, web & email design, and 14 years in business. She’s worked with big and small companies, publications and organizations alike, creating print and digital for Kraft, the National Retail Foundation, Bridgestone, the National Safety Council & many others. Aside from putting out fires, she has designed and built robust WordPress sites since 2008, starting nostalgically with HTML back in 1996. Lisa also offers training and maintenance and likes to work as a technology and design partner to her clients.

Lisa will be giving a talk titled “From zero to launch: A walk-through of the website process“.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

JetPack UI overhaul; hoping for the best on the text editor…

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

Want to go to Montreal (duh) and meet Canadian WP nerds!

What is your talk going to be about?

A roadmap for working with clients that touches on the important pieces to creating a lasting site rather than a “get ‘er done” mentality. Also for potential clients to know what they should be looking for in a project.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

New ideas to incorporate into their workflow or touchpoints for working with developers.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

Everybody! Vladimir Prelovac, John James Jacoby, Joost de Valk, Mika Epstein, Boone Gorges

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

Not so much a feature but… make BuddyPress less buggy? Please?

Overextended, overcommitted, entrepreneur, volunteer, and social butterfly. Avid Scrabble player. Tea snob. Mom (to an adult!). School board member. Marketing fanatic. 11th hour expert. Michelle is the owner and marketing diva at Marketed by Michelle.

Michelle will be giving a talk titled “Little Things Make a Big Difference“.

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What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?

I think the changes in the widget editors are extremely helpful for WordPress users who aren’t comfortable with any code (HTML, for example). When I teach a WordPress class now, I don’t also have to do a quick HTML lesson. It’s a win!

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?

My speciality is marketing. I think it’s important to think about how your site appeals to your visitors, and how they will use it. My talk is all about those things.

What is your talk going to be about?

My talk is about the “little things” you can do to your site that will make it more appealing to your site visitors and easier for them to use.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

I hope that people who attend my talk look at their sites with fresh eyes, seeing it from a visitor’s perspective. Only then can a site best serve the client.

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?

He’s now a friend, but I used to have a WordPress “celebrity crush” on Brian Rotsztein. His approach to using WordPress with the end user in mind is awesome, but his sense of the WordPress community is inspiring. #wplife

What new feature would you like to see in the future?

It would be great to be able to set the login page to something other than /wp-admin without using code or a plugin. Making that inherent to WordPress would help increase security.