David Laietta is the owner of Orange Blossom Media, a web development and site health service and lead organizer of WordCamp Orlando. David is speaking on Remember to Breathe: Productivity Tips for Freelancers at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

“I wanted to try my hand at affiliate marketing, as well as start my own blog talking about video games. I used to collect older games and consoles, and played a lot of terrible NES games while testing them out.

I had been building static websites for clients for years, and getting into WordPress made me realize how much easier it could be to continually update and edit content over time.”

What do you like best about WordPress?

WordPress is a tool for empowerment. While it can do a lot of crazy things that require someone with a fair amount of skill to implement, it can also do a lot of common tasks very easily. Combine this with a large market of free plugins and themes, and you have a tool that almost anyone can use.

The empowerment is the ability for someone to share their thoughts, sell their products and start their own company or connect people together without having to become a developer. It’s opened up vast new markets and freed up voices of people who never would have built their own websites.

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

Framework

What would we not guess about you outside of WordCamp?

I try to be fairly open about who I am. In fact, I’m on a project right now to generally open source my life, and work on more transparency in general.

I suppose the things that’d be harder to guess are the things that don’t follow me to WordCamp. I am a fairly boring person, and would prefer to stay in and read than go out. I like to hang out with my friends playing games, not partying. I spend time out in the yard with my dogs running around or gardening. For the rest of my dating profile, I like long, sunset walks on the beach.

What do you like about WordCamps?

I love seeing old friends, as well as all of the people that I’ve met online only. I make plenty of time to meet new people as well. Come find me and say hi on my first trip to Minneapolis!