Andy Crofford started designing websites over 10 years ago and started using WordPress in 2006. He has designed and developed a couple of themes but mainly likes managing WordPress sites for others. Currently he runs Mobile Orchard, TechKing, and most recently the ThemeFuse blog in addtion to his own iOS app review site AppTa.co. You can often find him trying to come up with innovative uses for WordPress.

Andy’s Session: WordPress Security – How to Stop Worrying and Love a Secure Website

Brian hails from the booming metropolis of Titusville, Florida. He is the lead developer at Lift (a St. Louis-based company) and developed the UpThemes Framework, a powerful theme options framework available for developers to use in their own themes. Brian’s hobbies include darkroom & 35mm photography, collecting fountain pens, studying war history, and tickling the ivories.

Brian’s Session: Anatomy of a Premium WordPress Theme

Partner and Chief Creative Officer of Integrity
Ed is an industry expert in applying creative, user-centered development principles to help businesses extend their brands online and better connect with their customers, as well as their employees, partners and investors.

Having built his last firm to be named one of AdWeek’s Top 20 Interactive Agencies, Ed has developed web-based solutions for a variety of clients within industries including technology, consumer packaged goods (CPG), healthcare, government, oil and gas, media and financial services. Ed’s clients have included such brands as Hewlett Packard, Sony, Microsoft, Bausch & Lomb, Continental Airlines, Exxon Mobil the State of Missouri, the City of Houston and the federal government.

After living in Los Angeles, Houston, DC and New York City, Ed now lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife LeAnn and son Keilan.

Ed’s Session: WordPress helps Sell St. Louis to the World

Branding consultant, direct marketer and Marginhancer Mary Baum has been an art director and graphic designer for nearly 30 years, working in print since the 1980s and on the web since 1998.

A competitive tennis player and Mac geek, Mary says the hardest thing for her about leasing her new iMac was turning in her set of Torq screwdrivers: fixing the hardware would violate the contract.

At several St. Louis ad agencies, at Maritz and in her own firm, she’s worked on a wide variety of consumer and industrial brands – including GM, Ford and Chrysler; RF Spaghetti, Pevely Dairy and Sunfield Foods; Gared and Ultra Play Sports; ConocoPhillips; the Maritz Automotive Research Group; and Artesys, an investment product she branded and helped its owner grow from tiny brokerage firm into national supplier of retirement products for a Fortune-1000 insurance company.

She can’t remember if she’s been on Twitter since 2007 or 2008, but she knows she’s not really friends with celebrity blogger and uber-tweeter Robert Scoble (just his brother Alex), and she’s definitely not a social-media expert.

At no time since 1979 has Mary ever been truly rational on the subject of typography.

Mary’s Session: It’s about time. It’s about type! Make real web type look good on all your sites.