Anthony D Paul is a user experience researcher, designer, and prototyper at EightShapes, offering strategic, design, and full-stack development skills to clients large and small, spanning government, non-profit, and commercial. Anthony is speaking on Lean Requirements, Without Skimping on the Meat at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I taught myself PHP by writing plugins for phpBB. WordPress was a natural progression with a similar plugin and templating system, and ultimately matured into a better system.

What do you like best about WordPress?

The product is great, but primarily the community. I like that the community fosters members of all backgrounds and professional focuses (content, marketing, development, design, etc.).

What WordPress project has been your favorite?

Probably the copy of Miles Davis I learned on. It was fun to explore the WordPress source for the first time, Frankenstein in the phpBB installation, design every UI detail (unheard of in non-open-source projects before), and build something 100% tailored to my audience.

What’s your WordPress design preference?
○ Starter Theme   ○ Free Theme   ○ Premium Theme   ○ Framework   ○ Other

Free Theme

What would we not guess about you outside of WordCamp?

I’m a chili pepper enthusiast. I grow a variety of peppers and my friends buy hot sauce and BBQ sauce from me, made from my garden.

What do you like about WordCamps?

I have a handful of community and internet friends I only see at WordCamps. I also enjoy seeing the many cool ways the world is bending WordPress and other open source technologies.