Nick Pelton
I currently live in Minneapolis, MN and I am the Technical Director at Westwerk and the brains behind WerkPress. I make a living creating things for the web and love finding new and creative ways to use technology. Find me at @nickpelton.
Tania Jones
Tania Jones is the online community manager for the Greater Twin Cities United Way’s United Front and former community manager at Communispace, a Boston boutique marketing firm.
Toby Cryns
Toby Cryns has been building WordPress sites full-time since he was a lad with the Twin Cities’ oldest WordPress-specific development shop, The Mighty Mo! Design Co..
In his free time, he manages MSP WordPress, the Twin Cities’ WordPress user group.
John Hawkins
John is a long time web developer. After a decade working for a web agency, John co-founded 9seeds, a WordPress development shop based in Las Vegas, NV. He also is an active member of the #VegasTech scene, co-organizer of the first Ignite Vegas and organizer of the Las Vegas WordPress meetup group.
Travis Totz
Travis started his love affair with WordPress at version 1.5, since then it has driven him to build and create countless WordPress projects. Travis was born and raised in the tundra of Minnesota. After being amazed by Photoshop and it’s limitless possibilities, he decided that a career in design was his goal. After graduating college with a degree in Graphic Design, Travis enjoyed working at various design agencies and traveling the world with his wife, Jenna. In one of his travels, he crossed paths with David Morgan and Jeff Milone of Organic Themes. After doing some digging into WordPress, Travis and WerkPress co-founder Nick, identified a need in the WordPress industry: an agency dedicated to customizing themes. That was the beginning of WerkPress. The rest is history, my friends (and also the present and future).
Travis’ passions outside of WordPress are reading non-fiction, making music, traveling, living a vegetarian/healthy lifestyle and anything involving ancient astronaut theories (what?!).
Stephen Haislip
Stephen Haislip is a graphic designer and web developer living and working in Minneapolis, MN. Since 2007, Stephen has worked with dozens of clients in a large variety of industries from all over the United States, plus select clients in Canada and the United Kingdom. In his free time, he is an artist and author, having worked in photography, short fiction, webcomics and short film, among other media. His new sequential art short film ‘Angelica’ which was shot and produced in Minneapolis is slated for a release sometime in 2013.
Rose Fields
Social Web Dzine is the realization of my dream to be a work at home, single mom. I’ve spent the past 9 years refining my business goals and raising four children. Today I focus on creating customized websites for local business and non-profit organizations. I speak regularly at my Appleton WordPress meetup group and in the summer I drive to Milwaukee to visit the WordPress group there as well. When I’m not at my desk, you’ll find me vegging out to an NCIS marathon with my kids – we own all the DVDs and can’t wait till the new series is out in stores.
Reid Peifer
I’m a partner with Modern Tribe, a ridiculously awesome digital agency specializing in industrial strength WordPress projects. We’ve built one off brochure sites, giant blogs, massive MU networks, iPad magazines, and launched a thriving premium plugin all on top of WordPress.
I’ve been lucky enough to work on WordPress builds for Gigaom, MTV, Steelcase, iOne, InStyle, and Busters (a sweet bar in my neighborhood) to name just a few.
When not designing, coding, or wrangling pesky freelancers, I run a lot with my goofy dog, and am trying to watch as many bad 80′s action movies as I can before my newborn son is old enough to know what’s what.
Peter Chester
Peter Chester is the Chief Technical Officer at Modern Tribe. He is a well known figure in the WordPress community and has released over a dozen open source plugins including the infamous image widget. He often manages the larger of the Modern Tribe technical projects, with budgets in excess of $250k, working exclusively with freelancers. Peter is a WordPress Junkie, Project Manager, Coder, Father, Musician, Artist, Blogger, Surfer and List Maker with an obsession over google spreadsheet formulas (though not necessarily in that order).
Nick Ciske
Nick Ciske spent 6 years in the book publishing/printing industry and helped launch a start-up for independent self publishers.
An in demand WordPress developer and solutions provider, Nick enjoys extending WordPress to serve needs outside the traditional website model, which includes book authoring tools like PressBooks.
Michelle Schulp
I am a graphic designer and co-founder of Marktime Media, a multimedia design and video production company based in Chicagoland that helps small-to-mid sized businesses effectively utilize digital media. I was formally schooled in many aspects of design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How People Think. Lately I have been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for my clients. I am a lover of WordCamps and the WordPress community, a WordCamp Chicago organizer, and love to travel around the country meeting people who feel the same way.
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Lisa Sabin-Wilson is the co-owner of WebDevStudios, a design and development company specializing in customized WordPress themes and plugins, and the author of WordPress For Dummies. As the “For Dummies” brand franchise author on all things WordPress she’s also written several other WordPress-related books. She’s worked with WordPress since 2003, and is also a regular public speaker on topics such as WordPress, blogging, design, and social media.
Julie Kosbab
Julie Kosbab has more than 10 years’ experience in SEO and online communications, working with both some of the Twin Cities largest companies — and some of the smallest. Her skills including bridging the technology gap between design, development, and business users, editorial development, and advanced analytics. Her industry experience includes CPG, high tech, legal, real estate, retail, and pharmaceuticals. Find her online at rideboldly.org or streets.mn or on Twitter at @betweenstations.
Josh Leuze
Josh Leuze is a WordPress developer from Minnesota who loves making themes. He is the author of the popular Meteor Slides plugin.
When not building themes and plugins in his garage, Josh can be found doodling with his kids at the kitchen table, digging in the garden, or pedaling his bike around town.
Josh Broton
Josh Broton is the Interactive Design Lead and front-end developer at VistaComm in Sioux Falls, SD. He has a passion for making things both beautiful and usable, and his work has been described as “perfect” and “the cleanest code I’ve ever seen.” At any given time, you’ll find him tinkering with JavaScript, working on his responsive WordPress theme boilerplate, Twitter-ranting at @joshbroton, and speaking at various conferences.
John James Jacoby
A native Wisconsinite, John has natural love of beer, cheese, and a strong dislike for sub-zero temperatures. He is a lover of naps, puppies, puzzles, and things with wheels and gears. When he isn’t helping build neat stuff with code, he enjoys traveling the world, taking pictures, a good cup-o-tea, and helping people use (and extend) WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress.
John Havlik
First introduced to WordPress in 2005, John Havlik has been an avid WordPress user, theme creator, and plugin author ever since. Among his various plugins is the popular breadcrumb plugin, Breadcrumb NavXT. When not working on his own projects, John helps support the small, 130 user, WordPress community at Weblogs.us. He also helps organize and frequently presents at MSP WordPress User Group meetings.
Joe Dolson
Joe Dolson is a freelance WordPress developer and accessibility consultant. He’s an author of several WordPress plug-ins, and is active in promoting accessibility in WordPress core development and in theme development. He’s lived in Minneapolis/St Paul for most of the last 15 years, and is a classical violinist on the side.
Grant Landram
Grant is a front end developer and founder of Freshmuse, a small WordPress design and development agency working with mid-market clients around the world crafting unique and high quality WordPress websites and blogs.
Dave Buchanan
Dave Buchanan is a data architect at The Dolan Company.
Product Development Manager for WordPress environment and other new products. Developer for 12 years, working with WordPress since 2008.
Daniel Espinoza
Daniel is a Support Ninja @ WooThemes, blogs about development and business at danielespinoza.me and he and his wife are living a Life with a Mission.
Becky Davis
Becky Davis is a web designer/developer from Chicago. She has been specializing in custom WordPress themes for the past 4 years. She is very active in her local WordPress community and runs the Northside Chicago WordPress meetup.
Andy Christian
Andy has been using WordPress since version 1.0.2, way back in 2004. He currently manages support and training for Tadpole.cc, a WordPress-based coop that provides hosting, support, training, and development. Andy’s spoken and volunteered at WordCamps and meetups in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Rhode Island, Phoenix, and of course his home town of New York City, where he has been involved in the local WordPress community for about four years. Andy is one of the organizers of WordCamp NYC, and is a member of the WordPress Events contributing group.
Alison Barrett
Alison Barrett has been working with WordPress since 2007, when she started using it to build custom sites for clients. She soon fell in love with it and ventured into the world of WordPress plugin development and theming, releasing several plugins on WordPress.org. She’s now a Code Wrangler on the WordPress.com VIP team at Automattic.
Dan Beil
I have been dreaming in code since 2009. As a Lead WordPress Developer, I am responsible for translating an approved design into a ‘living and breathing’ website, ensuring compatible and clean coding practices, and introducing new functionality.
In my spare time I enjoy engineering Death Stars that do not have an exhaust vent the size of a womp rat.