WordCamp St. Louis is proud to host a terrific group of speakers for our 2016 event.
Mary Baum
Shelly Peacock
Shelly Peacock, AKA @Spinbird, has been in sales and graphic design since 2001, moving focus to include Social Media Management and Digital Marketing in 2007. She built her first WordPress site in 2009- as a way to make her designs “do stuff”, and as a portfolio for her art business. Shucked it all to run The SpinBird Group, a WordPress consulting and design business. She likes short walks on the beach, cabanas, and shooting opossums off her back deck with her shotgun. Daily Mantra: Life is short- GET #FIERCE WITH IT.
Danielle Tillis
Danielle Tillis is the host of Hollywood Breakthrough Show, with the flexibility and open platform of WordPress. Danielle was able to use her WordPress website that has ignited into a podcast.
Danielle has interviewed some of the most talented people in the business, such as Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage; Screenwriter of film “Belle”, Misan Sagay; Documentary Film Director of “Life Itself – Roger Ebert”, Steve James; Producer of the Film “Beyond the Lights”, Reggie Rock Bythewood; Tony Award Show Producer of “Kinky Boots” & “Rocky on Broadway”, Kat White; and Screenwriter “ Night of the Living Dead”, John Russo. Screenwriters, directors, producers and entertainment industry professionals share inside perspective on writing, filmmaking, breaking into Hollywood, and navigating SHOW BUSINESS, along with stories of their journey to success!
Check out:
Hollywood Breakthrough Show :
http://www.hollywoodbreakthrough.com/interviews/
Check out Hollywood Breakthrough Show on Itunes , Stitcher , Google Play Store. Also, coming soon her new podcast Tech Descendant.
Ryan O’Neil
Ryan O’Neil started using “developing” websites by downloading WordPress themes online and clicking “activate.” Project by project, he taught himself everything from server maintenance to php development. He built Stemcounter.com as a tool for his wife’s event floral company and it has grown to a recurring income stream. He’s a web developer, a branding nerd, a floral shop owner, and a Pastor.
Mike Hale
Mike Hale is a developer at Rainmaker Digital where he helps build the Rainmaker Platform. He had over 15 years or software development experience and started working with WordPress in 2010 building custom plugins and sites using the Genesis Framework. He is also a writer, podcaster and co-organizer of the WordPress Naperville meetup.
David Smith
David Smith is a systems engineer at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to that, he was an everything-engineer for a small ISP, giving him a broad background in servers and networking. His Twitter (@dsXLII) very rarely has anything related to WordPress.
Ryan Markel
Ryan engineers happiness for WordPress.com VIP from St. Louis. He’s been blogging in some form or another since before WordPress was event a thing, eventually learning and loving WordPress. He enjoys the study of games, being part of Cardinal Nation, and helping his wife (try to) control his five children.
Alex Miller
Alex Miller is the head of WordPress developer at IQComputing, a St. Louis web design company that specializes in custom WordPress website development featuring ground-up theme work.
Lucas Lima
I’m an active member of the WordPress Brazilian community and St. Louis WordPress community. Advocate of the Free Software and Open Source projects, I’ve been working hard to learn and spread the world of the free software and free web through WordPress and other amazing tools.
Jennifer Swisher
Originally from the Grand Rapids, MI area, Jennifer came to St. Louis in 2008 to pursue a degree in music education. Four years later, and a college major change, Jennifer graduated with a degree in Web Design. Since then, she has worked as a PR/Web Dev/Graphic Designer/Marketer/Jen-of-All-Trades. Currently, she works for a managed care organization as a web specialist where she provides ongoing support for the websites of healthcare companies in 23 states.
When Jennifer isn’t helping plan WordCamps, Jennifer volunteers at Blank Canvas Studios, where she helps adults with developmental disabilities create art and access their community.
Kristofer Raske
I am a web developer working at Washington University in St. Louis. I spend most of my time working with PHP and JavaScript to create dynamic experiences using WordPress.
Eric Juden
Eric in an application developer at EPC, Inc. in St. Charles.
Chris Flannagan
Raised in South Alabama, I started toying with computers at a very young age. By 12 I was building geocities websites and the rest is history. I picked up on WordPress in the mid 2000’s and really got serious about it a few years ago. I’ve been the Webmaster for Sarasota Memorial Hospital and University of South Florida (I won bid to bring first WP Campus to our school this July!) since living in Sarasota. I’ve developed plugins available at WordPress.org and been featured in blogs such as WordImpress! Shiny New Toys.
Website: http://whoischris.com
Curtiss Grymala
Curtiss Grymala, the founder of Ten-321 Enterprises, is the Senior Web Technologist at the University of Mary Washington. Prior to starting that position in November 2010, he worked as the Webmaster at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Va. for nearly four years. He has consulted with various divisions and organizations at the University of Michigan, University of Virginia, Southern Arkansas University the University of Florida and others.
James Hipkin
James is an accomplished, forward-thinking marketing professional with 25+ years of multi-disciplinary experience in marketing and marketing communications companies serving high-profile, global brands and B2C clients in consumer packaged goods, durables, transportation, telecommunications and financial services.
He has been involved in digital for more than ten years, first as President of a direct marketing agency in San Francisco, where he led the evolution of the agency from traditional direct marketing to digital. Clients included Apple and Wells Fargo online bank. And then as the head of a mid sized agency’s interactive group, with Toyota as the main client. He joined Red8 Interactive, a long term vendor, as an owner and managing director, five years ago.
Teresa Lane
Teresa Lane is director of digital content strategy at Washington University. She stumbled upon the world of digital strategy after finishing graduate studies in literature and hasn’t looked back since. Teresa finds WordPress a godsend because it allows both sides of her brain to coexist in harmony; the writer/editor side and the SEO side can finally play nicely. You can find her on Twitter @teresaalane.
Brian Hilliard
Brian Hilliard is a popular speaker and author of the best-selling book Networking Like a Pro!
As creator of the popular program How to Ask for the Business & Get Paid What You’re Worth. Brian specializes in showing Designers, Developers, and WordPress Professionals how to ask for and get the business, while still being nice!
Over the last 15 years Brian has authored 5 books, created 3 blogs (all through WordPress) and published over 200 videos/podcasts, and he can tell from firsthand experience what it takes to market and get more business through WordPress without feeling like a Used Car Salesman in the process.
Some of Brian’s work has appeared nationally in Black Enterprise and the Martha Zoller Morning Show, where his interview was broadcast to over 2 million listeners.
When not traveling and speaking at his popular ClientBuilder Networking Events, Brian enjoys playing golf, basketball and spending time with his wife and their dog Barley.
Mike Schroder
Mike Schroder, known as Shredder to many, is a cross-cultural kid, coffee-drinking sailor, and lover of Open Source.
Working at DreamHost as WordPress Platform Lead, he’s a Core Committer and was Release Lead for WordPress 4.5.
You can find him blogging on geeky things at http://getsource.net
Chris Lema
Chris Lema is a storyteller – and a storytelling evangelist.
You heard that right.
He tells stories about the importance of storytelling.
Until mid-April the CTO and Chief Strategist at Crowd Favorite, Chris has spent the last two decades managing high-performing teams who build software products. (Largely, by telling them stories.)
Usually, that’s been SaaS products across a variety of B2B vertical markets. But the description also applies to his coaching practice, as he’s helped startups – in recent years primarily WordPress startups – develop more viable products and take them to market faster.
Pippin Williamson
A WordPress plugin developer from Hutchinson, KS, Pippin runs PippinsPlugins.com, the founding/parent company of Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP and many more.
He’s is the lead developer on those products as well.
Outside WordPress, Pippin has a love for sour beer and home brewing. He’s also an avid cyclist.
Twitter: @pippinsplugins
Nile Flores
Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she eventually settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at Blondish.net, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design.
She also loves contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. She loves helping people and supporting Open Source projects.
In other news, Nile is a proud support member at Team Yoast. She also runs a 8,000 member Facebook group dedicated to helping WordPressers, called All About WordPress. Nile is also the 2014 and 2015 Community Choice Winner at the Small Business Influencer Awards, hosted by Small Business Trends. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user.
Twitter: @blondishnet
Chris Koerner
Chris Koerner’s devotion to people and technology show in just about everything he does.
By day, he’s a Community Liaison for the Wikimedia Foundation, working closely with volunteers and developers to make magic happen.
Under the shadow of night (and weekends!) he helps local nonprofits and small businesses build their web presences using — you guessed it! — WordPress.
Chris is also a co-organizer of the St. Louis WordPress community and WordCamp St. Louis.
Chris blogs at clkoerner.com
Twitter: @ckoerner
Michele Butcher
A self-styled, proud graduate of the University of Inspect Element — aren’t we all? — Michele is a triple threat in the WordPress world:
- Accounts Coordinator for Valet.
- Support Guru for Give.
- Support Engineer for Yoast.
Hailing from Carbondale, Illinois (the other, prettier part of Illinois), she’s also the lead organizer of the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup and teaches beginners’ WordPress at John A. Logan College.
Twitter: @Michele_Butcher
Site: Can’t Speak Geek.
Joe McGill
St. Louisan Joe McGill is a web designer at Washington University.
An active WordPress contributor, Joe helped lead the effort to add responsive image support to WordPress in version 4.4.
Find him on the Twitter: @joemcgill.
Jason Yingling
Jason is the Director of Development at Red8 Interactive in St. Charles, where he builds custom WordPress sites for medium-sized companies.
Self-taught in the ways of WordPress, he has three plugins on the WordPress.org repository — and is working on a theme.
Not content to give back to WordPress from behind the screens, Jason also joined this year’s WordCamp St. Louis organizing team.
Gregory Ray
Owner and principal of Dot Gray Inc, a technology consultancy, Gregory Ray is a veteran system administrator (both Unix/Linux and Windows) with special expertise in web services.
A WordPress deconstructer/fixer, he’s also active in the St. Louis WordPress Meetup, where he shares his latest scary stories — kinda like The Night Stalker, only developer-style.
Twitter: @dotgray
Chris Miller
Chris Miller speaks around the world at conferences on both technology and social privacy.
When he’s home (rarely), Chris speaks at local WordPress events and for the last three years has been the organizing team’s go-to guy when it’s time to run all the video equipment you see at our WordCamps, year after year.
A grateful WordPress community thanks you, Chris!
When he puts down the cameras and cables, Chris tweets at @idonotes.
Andy Nathan
In the last five years, Andy Nathan has worked with hundreds of clients in more than 75 different industries, helping them improve their blogging and social media.
In that short period, he’s also personally written more than 4,000 articles for clients and his own projects.
That level of productivity has drawn Andy a lot of attention from news organizations of every size, including some major players: on the national level, Fox News and WGN have interviewed him about his approach to content. Closer to home, AM 560 the WIND and many more have brought Andy’s story to their audiences.
You can find Andy on Twitter at @andynathan.
Aaron Jorbin
Aaron Jorbin is a polyhistoric man of the web. Currently CTO of Happytables, Aaron is working to put the power of smarter, data-driven decisionmaking directly in restaurant owners’ hands.
He’s also a WordPress Core Committer whose priority is improving developer happiness — as well as making the internet usable and enjoyable for everyone.
He tweets at @aaronjorbin and writes regularly at daily.jorb.in.