Category Archives: Speaker Interviews

Speaker Interview: Tony Zeoli

Speaker Interviews, , ,

Tim : What’s your WordPress “origin” story?
I got involved in the web early when I founded my first company, Netmix.com, in 1995. Netmix was the first website in the world to aggregate and stream DJ mixes from the world’s most sought after house music, techno, and hip-hop DJs. By 2000, I had my first exit, selling Netmix to another company. My two partners and I set out to work for that company and continue to build and run Netmix, but when the dotcom market crashed around the time of my exit, the investment well ran dry. My partners and I went back to work on Netmix ourselves, but one of the partners tried to take over the company and we broke up. I shut Netmix down for a few years to focus on other things and think about what I wanted to do next.
In 2005, I learned about WordPress. I knew in 1999 that we needed a dynamic, database driven website, but my partner in charge of technology didn’t anticipate the shift and we were caught flat footed in the fallout. I know that if we made the shift from flat HTML to open source content management, we probably would have survived the dotcom 1.0 fallout. Once I’d learned about WordPress, I knew that I could relaunch my site, at the very least, as a blog and a place to post my own streaming DJ mixes. On WordPress, I launched the Netmix Global House Sessions Podcast, which can be accessed on Netmix.com, as well as on MixCloud, iTunes, and Stitcher.
WordPress gave the me the freedom to not have to rely on a CTO and web developers to use my voice and express myself. It was something I could to do on my own. As theme and plugin marketplaces matured, there was little cost in having to actually hire web developers for Netmix. I did invest at one point in theme design and that’s where I caught the bug to start my own web development business, Digital Stragegy Works, to create custom WordPress sites. I started DSW in 2009 and have been working with remote teams for 6-years developing WordPress experiences for our clients.
Because of my history of innovation and working for corporations and well funded startups, I have well developed skills in project management, project management, and information architecture, all of which I have applied to the hundreds of WordPress projects I have been involved with now for over 10-years, since launching Netmix on WordPress.
While I don’t keep Netmix up today as much as I should, it is my learning center and training ground on all things WordPress. It’s evolved in a WordPress Multisite network and I’m planning on raising funding for Netmix in the near future to pursue a music driven initiative based in WordPress.

Tim: What’s your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. WordPress MU and Domain Mapping combined have given me the ability to build multi-site networks for my clients, so that they can update WordPress and all plugins once. While there are other plugins that help people manage multiple WordPress instances that are completely separate today, I still love the versatility of being able to navigate between sites in the network in the network admin dashboard.
  2. All in One SEO Pack for WordPress is truly a great SEO plugin. If you actually look at the UI of All in One SEO Pack, it is far superior and less confusing than others. And, every feature has a help icon with a link off to knowledge base to teach you about how to use each feature. That is attention to detail. And, simplicity is key. Having the ability to turn on or off each component in the Feature Manager can help when a client may want to use, for example, another sitemap generator. Even though I don’t advise it, it’s useful to have options. I think this is the best way to architect an SEO plugin with so many tools inside. As semantic search takes hold, All in One SEO is well positioned because of its simplicity. Keyword density is far less important today than it was just a few years ago. There’s no reason to have those tools anymore as Google’s search algorithm gets smarter.
  4. JetPack solves all kind of problems under a single roof, and it’s developed by the folks at Automattic. So, you can trust in the plugins architecture. While I’m on WP Engine and get site backups and security scanning, having VaultPress and Brute Protect in one plugin is helpful. I also love the simplicity of the Publicize tools. Additionally, you can have related posts plugin run in the cloud without it being quarantined by WP Engine or other hosting platforms for hogging system resources. I also love using the Tiled Galleries option. Where I used to use NextGen Gallery, I know simply use the WordPress Media library with Tiled Galleries and the Carousel provided by JetPack. While some plugin developers will say its unfair for JetPack to come in and build plugins that make their own obsolete, all of JetPacks plugins are simple. The plugins they are said to make obsolete are generally a bit more advanced with a greater feature set. But I look at simplicity over complexity as the golden rule, and that’s why JetPack makes my list of favorite plugins.

Tim: What’s your most proud achievement around WordPress?
I don’t know that I have a single proudest achievement. There are many. One is helping my wife start her MelibeeGlobal.com business on WordPress after she was afflicted by mold poisoning in a building at Rockland Community College in Rockland County, NY. After being diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivity as a result of the exposure and being declared permanently partially disabled, WordPress gave my wife a platform through which to express her views on International Education and Study Abroad. This has led her to having her second conference in Asheville, NC this year, which will be attended by educators flying in from around the country to explore culture, identity, and perspective. I’ve been so busy working on my Digital Strategy Works business, that I don’t take the time (until now that is) to stop and think about how transformative WordPress has been for my wife and her industry.
I’m also proud of having launched two successful WordPress Meetups in the past: WordPress Westchester and WordPress Chapel Hill. Through each, I met so many wonderful people and I loved helping others get involved in WordPress.
Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?
That besides being this digital strategist immersed in the world of WordPress, I’m also extremely passionate about DJ culture. I produce a weekly house music radio show in Asheville, NC online over AshevilleFM.org and its terrestrial, low-power FM signal, 103.3-LP FM. I have been deeply involved in the house music community for over 25-years and have been a DJ since I was 12-years old. It’s ingrained in me and is a part of me that will never die.
Tim: Define yourself with one word.
Generous
Tony is sharing is knowledge aboout Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you won’t want to miss it!

Speaker Interview: Nik Vimal

Speaker Interviews,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


At 13 years old, I wanted to start blogging and find a simple way to create my websites. Eventually, that got me into a WordCamp where I was inspired to do more with WordPress and even had a few people help me learn PHP, Javascript, CSS, etc. Since then, I’ve been developing and eventually launched my business, TechVoltz LLC.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Gravity Forms – Best way to create Complex forms and one of the best APIs that I have used. So many options to manipulate form data and many possibilities for creating only a single form
  2. Easy Digital Downloads: Simply one of my favorite ways of selling things. The API is amazing and I really enjoy the features bundled and really the simplicity of getting setup with it.
  3. Yoast SEO: Pretty common, but yet another great plugin I would recommend for anyone with a site or a blog on WordPress. It really gets the SEO job done right.”

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


I’ve been a WordPress core contributor for a few releases.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


By day, I still go to High School. I’ve also already interned at some big companies in WordPress such as Rocketgenius, Pods, and iThemes. I’m also big into the startup community, even releasing a non-WordPress product this past summer (thezweekly.com). I also have made contributions to PHP.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Ambitious

I consider Nik a friend and I’m excited that’s he’s speaking in Hampton Roads. I heard him speak at WordCamp Minneapolis earlier this year, and you won’t want to miss his talk on the WordPress REST API.

Speaker Interview: Drew Poland

Speaker Interviews,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


Not quite as memorable as others; just your garden variety web developer who realized WP was easy for clients to use, growing at rapid speeds, and allowed me to spin up sites without having to rebuild or construct all the components I would need on even the most basic project.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Page Links To – I use the Core UI a lot to create custom content areas with CPTs for things like advertisements, sliders, so I use this plugin OFTEN.
  2. GravityForms – No explanation needed? Just works and is highly extendable.
  3. Tie between CPT UI & ACF – If I’m not building a custom functionality plugin for a project I lean on these two plugins to do a lot of heavy lifting for me and to get code siloed away from the theme and presentation of the site.

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


Helping build a community in Baltimore. We’re an odd city full of aggressive people moving quickly, so getting everyone into 1 building for a day of ANYTHING is a fine achievement I think.

But seriously, its hard to pick one as the WordPress community itself has given a lot of us (members and users) tons of opportunities to give back and grow both personally and professionally.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


I’m much nicer than I appear. haha!

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Awesome-sauce (that counts as one word, right?)

Drew is pretty awesome and so is the community he’s helped build in Baltimore. We’re excited to have Drew talk about Freelancing. You won’t want to miss it!

Speaker Interview: Michele Butcher

Speaker Interviews, ,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


I started out wanting to write my own personal blog. A friend of mine was working on a WordPress plugin at the same time and told me I should use WordPress for my blog. So we set it up in WordPress. The more I learned about WordPress to use it for myself, the more that I wanted to learn. Finally, at the end of 2013 I decided that my main source of income would be WordPress.

Now I clean hacked websites, teach people how to be secure with their website, design, develop, wrote a plugin, and teach others how to use WordPress.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Jetpack- I know it has a “”love it or hate it”” feeling with everyone but I absolutely love it. I hate uni-taskers. I hate seeing 73 plugins on a website when they only need 17. Jetpack is one of the very few that if you only used this plugin, it would be all you really need.

  2. Akismet- If you have comments open, then you should have Akismet. Nothing works better at comment spam than this unless you have comments turned off.

  3. Hello Security- Well the first reason this is in my top three is because I wrote it. (Shameless plug) It gives random security tips on your admin screen to remind the user to pay more attention to their site. ”

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


My most proud achievement would be getting a plugin on the repository. Five years ago if someone would have told me that I would have been writing any type of code and enjoying it I would have thought they had went completely bonkers.

Presently, I am working on another very special project that I am still holding quite close to the vest that I hope to have it launched by Hampton Roads.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


My favorite thing to do is help others succeed. I love helping people whether it be building or fixing their website, helping them overcome an obstacle, or start their own business.

I also never just sit still and do nothing. I am always reading a novel, writing, working out, doing something. My fiancé says that I am not even still in my sleep.

So if you have a question you think I might be able to answer, a book you would like to share, or a good joke to tell, come find me.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Passionate

Michele is talking about what to do next after launching your WordPress website so you won’t want to miss it.

Speaker Interview: Tracy Rotton

Speaker Interviews, , ,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


Working as a government contractor a few years ago, I needed a solution to create some small federal websites that would be easy for office staff to update on their own. I didn’t know much about WordPress at the time, but it seemed to be a perfect fit.

As the years went on, I’ve been consistently impressed by what is possible to create with WordPress, and have built increasingly complex sites with it as it has continued to evolve. I’ve also made great friends in the local and global WordPress community and enjoy the opportunity to spend time with that at WordCamps around the country.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Advanced Custom Fields Pro is a must-have on every project. I’ve come to use its “”Flexible Content”” fields as a way of making truly flexible WordPress sites that are still easy to manage for our clients.
  2. WP Migrate DB Pro is another must to make the development process run smoother when you’re working on teams and need to keep databases in sync.
  3. Finally WP REST API is one I’ve used a lot lately, as we’ve continued to push the envelope when it comes to front-end experiences built off of Backbone.js and the JSON REST API. I’m very much looking forward to its inclusion in WordPress core.

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


At RP3 Agency, we’ve built some truly awesome, award-winning sites using WordPress. We launched the Washington Area Women’s Foundation website (thewomensfoundation.org) earlier this year, and it has increased their effectiveness and improved their ability to fulfill their mission to help DC-area women who are trying to overcome poverty.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


I live, breathe, eat, and drink all things web. I spend most of my time trying to think how I can improve the web experience we build for our clients, or how I can improve my skills. My personal motto is “Always be leveling up,” which is why I love speaking at WordCamps and conferences. I want to share what I’ve learned with others so that together we can make the web a better experience for everyone.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Passionate

Tracy is talking about SASS + RWD: THE TOOLS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT , so you won’t want to miss it.

Speaker Interview: Tim Bishop

Speaker Interviews,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


I found WordPress is 2005. At first, I was not overly impressed. I kind of saw it as another blogging platform among a sea of many others that were popping up. But as an open source enthusiast I continued to watch and even play around with WordPress. In late 2005 I started my first blog using WP. By 2007 my blog was long gone, but WP had begun to grow on me. It was maturing at a rapid pace and even in the early days I could see that WordPress would soon stand out above the crowd.
By 2010 I had started working as a freelance web developer, developing primarily small html/css based websites. But my passion for WordPress was growing quickly. By 2012 I was convinced that WordPress was the key to my future success. I just didn’t know how at the time. So I stopped working on other platforms and began to focus solely on WordPress. In late 2013 I began the early planning stages for WP Master Design, and the end of my current business Linux PC+. In February 2014 I became a Certified WordPress Developer through National WordPress Certification Council. Though I knew they were not recognized, endorsed, or authorized by the WordPress foundation, it gave me a sense of accomplishment and I hoped it would add to my credibility with my customers. WP Master Design opened it virtual doors in mid 2014 and today I make a living on WordPress both in my business and in my job at InMotion Hosting.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. IThemes Security: While I prefer securing my sites without plugins, this plugin is easy for my customers to use and frankly, save me a lot of time when setting it up for my customers.
  2. UPDraft Plus: It is relatively light weight in terms of backup plugins, ad integrates easily with my DropBox account
  3. CMS Commander: This plugin lets me manage all of my customers websites in a single dashboard. I can instantly or automatically update my clients sites, themes, and plugins. I can instantly do a Sucuri security scan on all of clients sites.”

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


The day I officially launched my business.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


One thing I have learned is to do what you love. I love my job at InMotion, and I love my business. I talk a lot and when I a passionate about something, I will rattle on happily about it!

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Driven

Tim is talking about Website Security, so you won’t want to miss it.

Speaker Interview: Cameron Barrett

Speaker Interviews, ,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


I was an early MovableType user and before that I was hand-rolling HTML archives for my pioneering blog called CamWorld (circa late 1990s). Around 2003-2004 I started working in Drupal and built some fairly large community-driven sites.

At the Open Source Convention in Portland in July 2004, I met a young Matt Muellenweg, who had just launched WordPress. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but remember how eager, honest and smart he was.

Several years passed and I noticed that a lot of the blogs I read and follow were moving to WordPress, so I started taking another look and saw how good of a platform it was, not just for blogs but as a robust CMS.

I stopped doing Drupal development work around 2011 and moved almost all of my professional work, clients and web sites to WordPress and haven’t looked back.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. TablePress – Because I can hook up all kinds of CSV files to it and let my clients update their tabular data without needing a lot of hand-holding.
  2. MailPoet – Because it’s very easy to build newsletters where the content is driven by WordPress posts. Very valuable from a content creation cost and marketing perspective.
  3. Visualizer: Charts & Graphs: Very good plugin that converts CSV files into charts and graphs. This is amazing for a client that doesn’t want to pay for the custom development needed to draw charts and graphs from a custom database table in WordPress. Simply pair this with TablePress and some source CSV files and you have a very inexpensive, yet powerful, tool.

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


I migrated NJ’s largest public school district (40,000 students) to WordPress and am saving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars over the course of five years.

I am leading the charge for embracing “WordPress in Schools” and my goal is to eventually have all 14,000+ public school districts in this country using WordPress in some way through a services-based company called SchoolPress.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


I hail from Northern Michigan, but grew up internationally, and currently live in Northern NJ with my family. I love to go biking, hiking and travel. About 15 years ago I came very close to starting an adventure travel company in Siberia but the funding fell through and the local Russian mafia advised me against it.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Scooby Doo’s “Huh?

Cameron is going to share his insights on using WordPress for Schools .

Speaker Interview: Nile Flores

Speaker Interviews, ,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


I’ve been blogging over 14 years. I started manually blogging on GeoCities, then moved to b2 cafelog after a lot of friends introduced the blogging platform to me. I had tried Movable Type, Greymatter, Cute News, and others, but fell in love with b2 cafelog. It was only natural that as soon as WordPress had become available, that I made the switch.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Yoast SEO – While I have basic SEO down, I love it because it also has the social network integration for search results, and for your content to display correctly. Once I set up the plugin how I wanted, it’s been easy to use.
  2. Ultimate Social Deux – This sexy little social sharing plugin gives my plugins the look I want. It was easy to set up, and makes it easy for visitors to use when sharing my articles to social networks
  3. Plugin Organizer – I really like that I can shut off plugins from running their scripts on specific pages. It’s helped in optimizing website speed.

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


Being able to speak at WordCamps, and meet people around the world is great. Because of being able to present to WordPressers around the US, this year SlideShare sent to me that I was in the top 5% most viewed on their website.

I think this is awesome and makes me happy that people are really wanting to learn about WordPress, blogging, SEO, social media, and web design.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


My guilty pleasure is reading Japanese manga, watching anime, and writing InuYasha (manga/ anime) fan fiction.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Blondish

Nile is sharing her knowledge about Troubleshooting WordPress at 1pm in the User track.

Speaker Interview: Jared Beasley

Speaker Interviews, ,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?


Around 2007 I gave up struggling building sites from scratch in Dreamweaver / trying to reinvent the wheel and discovered WordPress. The ease it took to get a site up and running quickly while maintaining the ability for deep customization had me like whoa. I haven’t looked back.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP – Simple yet robust enough
  2. Gravity Forms – I buy local 😉
  3. WooCommerce – Not because it delights, but because it sells

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


Making an actual living off of it.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


When it comes to WordPress, I love learning and sharing what I’ve discovered. I’m very much looking forward to sharing some of those discoveries and hopefully glean some goodness from others as well.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.


Puntificator

Jared is talking about Optimizing WordPress for Photography at 3pm.

Speaker Interview: Judith the Conqueror

Speaker Interviews, , ,

Tim: What’s your WordPress “origin” story?

After doing a lot of research on what would be the “best” platform for my website, WordPress won hands down because of it’s ease of use and user-friendly interface.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Google Analytics Dashboard – I love seeing all my stats in one place.
  2. WordFence – it’s great at blocking unwanted intruders and cool to see where people are coming from!

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?


I love the fact that I’m able to blog consistently and get my images out to readers. It’s been a great vehicle to bring me more clients!

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?


I’m of the opinion that if you want something better, you’ve got to get out there and make it happen! The “work hard/play hard” motto definitely applies, and when I’m not holding a camera or slaving away behind my computer screen, you can usually find me with a glass of wine in hand or out trying a new place to eat. Travelling is at the top of my list for fun things to do, and I’m lucky that our business affords the opportunity to visit some pretty amazing places!

Tim: Define yourself with one word.

Bubbly

Judith is speaking at 9am about blogging best practices with her presentation titled Not your Momma’s Blog