Joe Dolson is speaking on Web Accessibility with JavaScript at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What inspired or motivated you to give this talk at WordCamp?

Client-side applications and JavaScript are an important piece of the future of WordPress. But using JavaScript can both create amazing accessible experiences or applications that are completely unusable by people with disabilities. Knowing how you can use JavaScript to create great, accessible applications is crucial for the future of web development.

How do you “create intention” in your job, career, or life?

Advocating for accessibility is an ongoing, constant intention. Having a socially positive motivation for all the work I do is an amazing way of being intentional about the choices I make.

If you were a WordPress Plugin, what Plugin would you be and why?

WP Accessibility, obviously.

If you were not doing your current job, what profession would you be in and why?

Before going into web development, I was working in academic libraries during the day and as a freelancing musician at night. I imagine that I would have continued on one or the other of those plans—but we’ll never know!

What professional and/or research resource(s) can’t you live without?

The internet. 😉

Don Betts is speaking on Make It Look Pretty: Why We Need Beautiful Websites at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What inspired or motivated you to give this talk at WordCamp?

Years trying to figure out what makes something beautiful, and wondering if pre-enlightenment concepts of beauty could help graphic and web designers do their work well. Also, I’m worried that the focus on speed and mobile first in web design will mean a loss of images in web design and a move to pure text-based knowledge.

How do you “create intention” in your job, career, or life?

By constantly asking “Why?” about every choice and decision. It’s exhausting and takes longer to get anything done.

If you were a WordPress Plugin, what Plugin would you be and why?

A plugin that asks the user, “Why the hell are you doing that?” whenever they install a new plugin or theme.

If you were not doing your current job, what profession would you be in and why?

Travelling preacher who solves crimes in his spare time.

What professional and/or research resource(s) can’t you live without?

codex.wordpress.org, wordpress.stackexchange.com, stackoverflow.com, trello, kanboard.net

Pete Nelson is speaking on Advanced Permalinks in WordPress at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What inspired or motivated you to give this talk at WordCamp?

A site we recently launched for a client had a very complex permalinks structure and I ended up learning quite a bit about permalinks and rewrites on that project.

If you were not doing your current job, what profession would you be in and why?

Probably something where I would be building things, like woodworking or welding.

What professional and/or research resource(s) can’t you live without?

The WordPress codex

Steve Persch is speaking on Why your site is slow at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What inspired or motivated you to give this talk at WordCamp?

I want to move the web development community beyond a checklist mentality when it comes to web performance. Focusing on the technical checklists often obscures underlying problems that result in slow sites.

How do you “create intention” in your job, career, or life?

I perform with an improv company called Comedy Sportz and we have a game called “What are you doing?” In that game, the question is always answered with something other than what you are actually doing. In normal life and work I often ask myself that question too. I may want the answer to be “writing code to get a test passing” but the answer might actually be “checking email while tracking three Slack rooms.”

If you were a WordPress Plugin, what Plugin would you be and why?

WordPress GitHub Sync. Years ago I rebuilt my blog in Jekyll (and now again in WordPress with GitHub Sync) because I love the idea that anything (content as well as code) can be improved by anyone with a pull request.

If you were not doing your current job, what profession would you be in and why?

I got in to web development because I was working at a theatre company that needed a blog. I made a WordPress site and just kept digging deeper, thinking I might eventually hit bottom and come back up to working in theatre. Now it seems more likely that I’d take my coding experience to the data journalism community.

What professional and/or research resource(s) can’t you live without?

I have gotten hooked on PHPStorm recently. Compared to simpler text editors it makes navigating multiple files so easy. Learning a codebase gets much faster.