Introducing Our WCSTL 2018 Speakers – Round 1

Posted on by Nile Flores

Now that we’ve announced out keynotes, it’s time to announce our speakers for WordCamp St. Louis. Since we have well over several dozen, we thought it would be nice to split the announcements into rounds. We’re including their bio, where they’re from, and where you can connect with them on the interwebs.

As soon as we finish announcing all of our speakers, we’ll be finishing up on the schedule, so you can see what topics will be at our WordCamp this year. We worked hard to include a variety of talks.

Our WCSTL 2018 Speakers

Karissa Skirmont

Karissa Skirmont tames technology for women entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed and tired of trying to figure it out by themselves. She does this through through WordPress websites, branding and strategic systems. As an experienced web developer/graphic designer & business strategist, in her business Kissa’s Kreations, she has helped hundreds of small business owners and entrepreneurs build and improve their businesses since 2005. She has over 10 years experience working with WordPress, specializes in WordPress Mulitsite & founded the first WordPress Multisite Community Facebook Group, has been a co-organizer for WordPressKC and WordCampKC since 2013 and is obsessed with all things purple.

Where Karissa is from: Kansas City, Kansas

Connect with Karissa:

Travis Pflanz

Travis Pflanz is a search engine optimization strategist and owner of WebWorks of KC. Travis specializes in SEO for small businesses who target local customers and clients.

Travis is also a co-organizer of WordPress KC – the Kansas City area WordPress enthusiasts Meetup group – and has been on the WordCamp Kansas City organizing team since 2014, serving as Lead Organizer in 2015 & 2016. When not building WordPress websites and creating SEO strategies,

Travis volunteers at Wayside Waifs Humane Society, serves on the Spay & Neuter KC Advisory Council and organizes the Kansas City Dog Club – a social club for dog lovers and their pooches.

Where Travis is from: Kansas City, Missouri

Connect with Travis:

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.

She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”

Where Michelle is from: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Connect with Michelle:

Will Hanke

Will Hanke has two passions: supporting our US veterans and helping businesses tell their story online – providing them with increased exposure, more customers, and higher revenues. For over twenty years, his company, Red Canoe Media, has helped mom & pops, startups, and multi-million dollar companies with their digital marketing strategies.

Will teaches monthly classes and speaks at events throughout the area on a wide variety of topics from analytics to ecommerce. Along with his daughter Amber, he also holds coaching and training sessions for small business owners in his private membership group, ‚”Red Canoe Elite‚”.

He is an avid business & marketing blogger and has published several ebooks including an Amazon Bestseller in Marketing.

Where Will is from: St. Louis, Missouri

Connect with Will:

Michelle Ames

Overextended, overcommitted, entrepreneur, volunteer, and social butterfly. Avid Scrabble player. Tea snob. Photographer. School board member. Marketing enthusiast. 11th hour expert. WordPress fanatic. Lead organizer of WordCamp Rochester, NY. WordPress Rochester meetup organizer. Co-organizer of WordCamp Buffalo. Michelle is the Implementation Partner Manager at GiveWP.com.

Where Michelle is from: Hilton, NY

Connect with Michelle:

Joe McGill

Joe McGill is a St. Louis native, a Contributing Developer to WordPress, a maintainer of the Media component, and is a Senior WordPress Engineer at Human Made.

Where Joe is from: St. Louis, Missouri

Connect with Joe:

Chance Strickland

A true jack-of-all-trades digital, Chance started his career as a graphic designer and PR practitioner. After working in various agencies as a project manager and marketer, he discovered a love of code and has been a self-taught, full-time web developer ever since. His newly launched podcast, Chance the Developer, focuses on mentor-ship and career growth for junior developers.

Where Chance is from: Nashville, Tennessee

Connect with Chance:

Dwayne McDaniel

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. Dwayne first started building in Drupal and WordPress for the San Francisco Improv teams and projects.

He fell in the love the community and then found a position at Pantheon at the end of 2013. As a Community and Agency Success Manager, he has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland to MIT and Stanford.

Outside of tech he loves producing and performing improv theater, reading webcomics and singing karaoke!

Where Dwayne is from: San Francisco, California

Connect with Dwayne:

We’ve got more speakers to announce in the next few days, so keep checking back. WordCamp St. Louis is May 12 & 13, 2018, so please don’t miss out on our yearly event- Buy a ticket!

One Reply to “Introducing Our WCSTL 2018 Speakers – Round 1”

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