Speakers

Alessandro Biavati

I’m the Innovation Director at #BRITEWEB. I built my first website at the age of 12, and it had 6 animated gif icons as its menu items… animated gifs are one of the greatest things in the world. I have a diverse background, I studied fine arts in Italy for 5 years which was an amazing mind-opening experience. Then I turned direction of studies and obtained a Bachelor in Electrical Engineering and a Master in Quantum Cryptography. After my Master I decided to go back to the arts and moved to Vancouver where I started freelancing in Photography, Web Design and Web Development. Since I started working at #BRITEWEB, over two years ago, my focus has been in technology and innovation. WordPress has covered a huge role in my professional career. I spent the last 2 years hacking and playing with it, achieving amazing results.

Ben Lobaugh

Flying around with a Jetpack at Automattic

Christine Rondeau

Christine has been working with WordPress since 2004 and now offers her services as a front-end developer for the platform, via her design studio Bluelime Media. Her involvement with the WordPress community extends beyond just client work as she contributes themes, helps users via the support forums and speaks at WordCamps. Christine also gives back to the community by sharing her learning resources for anyone teaching WordPress at wpyogi.com.

Curtis McHale

I’m Curtis and I’ve run out of funny things to say. But ask Jill about her Star Trek song because it’s awesome. Could we work that song in to a talk?

Luke Woodward

I love learning everything I can about WordPress and the web at large. More than that I like to share what I’ve learned with a larger audience so everyone can get better. I’m a Senior Strategic Engineer for 10up, core contributor in the 3.9 release, and all around fun guy.

Mandi Wise

I own a business called Adventure and Art Interactive where I do freelance WordPress plugin and theme development. I also work as the in-house web developer at Small Business BC.

Mel Karlik

Mel Karlik is WordPress web designer and developer with over 10 Years of experiencing (hacking WordPress since her early blogging days in 2002). Today she runs A Prettier Web – a site dedicated to help women use WordPress for their blog and business.

Merrill Mayer

Merrill Mayer is the founder and web developer at Kool Kat Web Designs. She specializes in creating custom WordPress themes for informational and e-commerce websites. She enjoys working with designers to translate their vision into a working website. Merrill began her career in technology by studying for a Masters degree in French at the University of Michigan. There she had the opportunity to work on a project to computerize French demographic data from the 19th and early 20th centuries. As a result, Merrill became hooked on technology.

Morgan Kay

I am a freelance WordPress theme and plugin developer. I specialize in working with graphic designers to convert their designs into WordPress themes. I have nearly 15 years of CSS experience.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen

I am a staff author with lynda.com focussing on WordPress, front-end web development, and web standards. I’m also an instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and BCIT. In my non-teaching capacity I’m the director of Pink & Yellow Media Inc., a boutique style design and development agency, and I’m a co-organizer of the Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group. I blog about WordPress and web design at mor10.com and Tweet about anything and everything at twitter.com/mor10.

Robert Dall

I am a 30-something web design and developer living in Vancouver, Canada. Online I can be found at robertdall.com. I like to drink coffee and ride my bike and sail my laser class boat. In my previous life I was a professional news photographer. I am also one of many WordPress core contributors.

Stephanie Hobson

As a front-end dev Stephanie has worked freelance and full-time on sites as large as bcit.ca and as popular as careers.mozilla.org coding a web everyone can use one character at a time.

Steve Fisher

Steve is the content nerd-herder and design fanatic at The Republic of Quality. With over 18 years of experience he leads the charge on the user experience end of projects, coordinating research, strategy, visual and interaction design, and content strategy. Steve is a professional member of the Graphic Designer’s Society of Canada and served as their national VP of web for three years. He spends much of his time representing RoQ on the global stage as a sought-after speaker on topics like responsive web design, UX, open source, design thinking, and web process. He has presented at such conferences as TEDx, SXSW, Future of Web, HOW Interactive Design conference, Web Visions and DrupalCon, and is a contributor to .NET Magazine. He also loves Twitter (maybe a little too much). Find him on twitter @hellofisher.

Tabby Chapman

Tabby is an Academic Applications Developer at the University of California in Irvine. She has worked with WordPress since WordPress 1.5 was a shiny play-thing, developing both plugins and themes; Tabby is always chasing after the latest and greatest standards and best practices. And when she’s not doing that, she desperately trying to catch up on all the things she’s missed out on like “TV” and “Books” and “Friends”.

Tanner Moushey

I have been engineering solutions with WordPress for over 2 years. During that time have been able to work on a wide variety of projects from startup blogs to complex applications for Fortune 500 hundred companies both as a contractor and a Web Engineer at 10up. I now run iWitness Design, a WordPress consulting business focussed on creating elegant solutions for complex WordPress challenges.

Tony Perez

Co-Founder and CEO of Sucuri, Inc. A globally recognized website security company, specializing in protection, malware detection and remediation. Tony is a Marine Corps veteran that has been living in the underbelly of the web for various years. I enjoy speaking in front of crowds and finding ways to engage the crowd on the very serious subject of website security.

Xiao Yu

After an existential crisis and a stint working as an apprentice brewer Xiao realized he rather enjoyed working with bits as long as there was a purpose. He now wrangles data at Automattic with the help of elasticsearch in hopes of making the internet a better & more democratic place. He still enjoys brewing beer and attempts to run up mountains in his spare time.

Zack Tollman

Residing in Portland, Oregon, Zack longs for the cold, snowy days of his Alaskan youth. He enjoys strumming his guitar, playing hockey, and spending time with his wife and dog. Otherwise, you’ll find him at his computer meticulously spinning lines of clean WordPress code.