The Great WordPress Get Together
August 23 – 25, 2018
It’s the most wonderful time of the summer. Join us for a three day educational gathering on all-things WordPress and the infamous Minnesota State Fair opens the same weekend! Topics range from development, design, business, community, blogging and marketing.
Grab Your Ticket
Speakers
Jennifer Brueske
Jennifer is a website developer at Iceberg Web Design. Throughout her career, she has worn many hats including high school math teacher, tutor, bookkeeper and administrative assistant. During her last employment she was asked to develop and manage the company website and rediscovered her love of code. She then decided to pursue web development as a career.
Jennifer regularly speaks at website development conferences throughout the United States, and enjoys sharing her passion for website development with others. Jennifer lives in Becker with her husband, Justin, and four kids, Jarrod, Rhiley, Katelyn and Isabella. She enjoys reading, gaming, and sewing. Tony Tellijohn
Lynn Winter
For the last 18 years, I have grown my expertise in the areas of user experience, content strategy and project management. This wide range of skills allows me to provide a wholistic approach when solving problems. I am currently a freelance digital strategist helping agencies and clients by solving complex problems, providing expertise in areas they might not have, and offering support when their workload is too much. This past year I founded and hosted the first annual Manage Digital conference (managedigital.io) for local digital project managers in Minnesota. You can find me at lynnwintermn.com.
Cory Webb
Cory Webb is a senior full stack developer at Reaktiv Studios hailing from Waco, Texas, home of Dr. Pepper, Baylor University, and shiplap. Before joining the team at Reaktiv, Cory ran a small web development company specializing in WordPress and Joomla development. His educational background is in engineering and business, but his true passion has been web development since he built his first web page as a freshman electrical engineering student at the University of Texas in 1997. When he’s not busy manipulating 1’s and 0’s, you can usually find him spending time with his wife and 3 kids, traveling, watching movies, and serving at his local church.
Sherry Walling
Dr. Sherry Walling is a licensed clinical psychologist, the co-host of the ZenFounder podcast, and the founder of ZenFounder LLC. Her life’s work is to help WordPressers protect again burnout, depression, isolation and other threats to mental health. She tries to help folks have fun too.
Her book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together came out in 2018 and became an Amazon best-seller in a matter of days.
Married to a serial tech entrepreneur, Sherry has a unique combination of psychological expertise and 18 years of experience in the trenches of the startup world. She brings these worlds together with her extensive experience as a psychotherapist.
When she’s not in the consulting room or hopping conferences; Sherry can be found on her paddleboard, in the yoga studio, practicing her circus skills, or ushering her three kiddos through an art museum in some fabulous city.
She can also be found online at ZenFounder.com, SherryWalling.com or on twitter as @ZenFounder.
Jeremy Ward
A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Jeremy got his start in web development as a hobby, learning to build static websites for his bands and friends. This part-time curiosity eventually blossomed into an interest in database queries and server-side languages, and by 2013, he began his career in computer programming.
Jeremy is passionate about code quality, modular design, and developer tools, and currently works as a Senior Backend Developer at WebDevStudios.
Andrea Trew
Andrea Trew is the Art Director at Flywheel, a delightful WordPress hosting and development platform built for designers, freelancers, and agencies. Andrea is responsible for overseeing all aspects of this “Silicon Prairie” company’s in-house design efforts, from the tiniest piece of swag to the most complex creative campaigns. Having worked with brands such as Disney, Panda Express, and Cuties, she has a serious knack for elevating brands through logo design, social media creative, photography, web design, animation, and local/national campaign work. Outside the office, you can typically find her trolling vintage shops, making questionable puns, or snuggling with her pug, Leela.
Travis Totz
Travis Totz is an award-winning designer with a passion for creating profoundly usable web experiences. He began using WordPress over 10 years ago and has never looked back.
His intentionality and empathetic leadership skills have shaped him personally and professionally, guiding him through the journey of WordPress entrepreneurship and a long history of successful client projects all over the globe.
As the Director of New Business for Modern Tribe, Travis focuses on being intentional each day, being inspired by the talented team he surrounds himself with, and contributing a high level of strategic energy to large-scale client projects.
Andrew Taylor
Andrew currently works for Pantheon as a Developer Programs Engineer providing consulting with their agency partners on complex workflows and giving back to the WordPress community.
As a former web developer, Andrew spent his time on large scale projects for clients such as AMC Networks, Frito Lay, National Van Lines and more. With over 10 years of web development experience, specializing in WordPress, he is a seasoned veteran.
Jessica Spangler
Jessica is an experienced sales leader from Omaha, Nebraska. She has over 10 years of experience in sales, customer experience, management, training, and operations.
Her current role is sales coach for Flywheel, a managed WordPress hosting provider for creatives. In addition to consulting design agencies and marketing teams, she mentors a team of sales representatives.
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?”
Patrick Rauland
Patrick Rauland is obsessed with WooCommerce. He’s used it as a customer, worked for WooCommerce support, developed core functionality in WooCommerce itself, led three releases, and helped plan their yearly conference (WooConf).
He now helps people by writing on his blog, creating courses for LinkedIn Learning / Lynda.com, and by writing books like WooCommerce Explained & the WooCommerce Cookbook. He still works with WooCommerce helping them with their conference & writing content for their blog.
Patrick lives in Denver Colorado where you can probably find him at a local coffee shop typing away.
Jacqueline Quintanilla
Straightforward, strategic, and just a bit sassy, Jacqueline loves to work with the movers, the shakers, and the do-gooders to help them make their mark. As a front-end developer with a background in non-profits and education, she works to solve tough problems to build powerful brands, stronger communities, and a more equitable and sustainable world. Jacqueline is motivated to make stuff that matters. So, let’s get to work.
Kimberly Pigeon
Kim is the Director of Design and Marketing for BNG Team (BNG Design’s parent company). She leads the developers, designers, social media experts, and marketing experts to create a vision for the products and services BNG creates. She has a passion for working with businesses and teaching them how their website and marketing efforts can impact their business.
Steve Persch
Steve is a developer with 12 years of experience building WordPress and Drupal sites. While interning at a theatre company in college, Steve overheard the artistic director say they needed a blog and an online magazine. Steve volunteered to build the sites and WordPress 2.0.4 got the job done. His path was changed and he’s been building sites since.
In his role at Pantheon, Steve works primarily with agencies as they learn Pantheon’s tools. Often that means guiding developers as they use Terminus, Quicksilver, and other Pantheon power tools. You can see some of Steve’s work on GitHub in the Continuous Integration scripts that test Pantheon maintained WordPress plugins and Drupal modules.
Reid Peifer
Reid Peifer is a co-owner and Chief Creative Officer of Modern Tribe, a ridiculously awesome fully distributed digital agency specializing in enterprise WordPress projects. He’s designed, coded, and managed websites of all imaginable makes and sizes, and a thriving premium plugin business (Events Calendar Pro) all on top of WordPress. In his free time he’s a giant coffee snob, runs long distances very slowly, is dad to two small humans, and husband to a nice lady.
Kevin O’Brien
Kevin O’Brien is a Front-End Development Discipline Lead at Clockwork and co-founder at Token of Trust. He has championed front-end development for 9 years at Clockwork. He also heads up front-end development and user experience for Token of Trust, a cloud-based identity verification company.
David Needham
David Needham is a Developer Advocate at Pantheon where he focuses on developer education and training. David serves on the board of directors of Enjoy Creativity. David enjoys blogging about productivity at davidneedham.me and sharing his experience by speaking at conferences. David is based out of Champaign IL, enjoys biking with his wife and kids, and playing board games.
Jocelyn Mozak
Jocelyn is a Cornell & Stanford graduate and Intel engineer turned entrepreneur.
While her education in engineering certainly refined her technical and analytical skills, it is her passion for what she does that makes her an outstanding WordPress web designer. She is an expert in thinking outside the box and filtering out the key points amidst all the noise.
She has over a decade of experience building, running and wrangling a 6-Figure WordPress Web Design Agency working while having two boys at home under the age of thirteen.
Jocelyn’s “say it like it is” realness enables her to connect with audiences large and small. She loves life, family, friends and her team!
Thomas McMahon
I’m a Team Manager & Senior Software engineer working at The Nerdery in Minneapolis, MN where I specialize in WordPress development. I’ve contributed to projects for multiple Fortune 100 clients and led development teams on many engagements large and small. I’m also a dad who enjoys playing board games with the family and losing at Monopoly.
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 basement, Josh can be found doodling with his kids, playing board games, or pedaling his bike around town.
Raquel Landefeld
Raquel Landefeld* is a serial volunteer with a young soul. In 2010 she co-founded Mode Effect a Phoenix-based WordPress agency that specializes in WooCommerce integration. Intentional about community building, she believes that wherever her feet are is where the building happens. Currently, she is active in several communities from tech to government to neighborhoods and more. You can usually find her organizing a WordCamp or volunteering pretty much anywhere.
On the personal side of her life, she is a wife & mum, an active dancer, a music lover, an amateur photographer, and has a 20-year-curated Wonder Woman collection.
*Loves doing cartwheels
Jen Jamar
Nathan Ingram
Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.
He is also the creator of >ADVANCE Coaching, working with WordPress business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.
Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he is the lead organizer of WordCamp Birmingham.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.
Angela Holden
I’ve been working with WordPress professionally since 2013, and I have extensive agency, contract and freelance experience. I was a freelancer and custom WordPress theme builder for three years before I accepted a position as a frontend developer at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul where I’m responsible for all of the University’s WordPress websites.
Vasken Hauri
Vasken is currently the VP of Platforms and Systems at 10up, a leading provider of digital creative services for content creators.
A strong believer in open source technologies, Vasken has spoken and hosted panels at numerous WordCamp, NERCOMP, and EDUCAUSE events, on subjects ranging from Green Computing to WordPress-based centralized authentication systems.
Jessi Gurr
Jessi’s love for website development started back in 1993, when at the age of 12 she learned HTML and secured her first dot-com. Remember Geocities, black backgrounds, lime green text, and the running dog .gif? Man, those were the days…
Jessi started Iceberg Web Design in 2005, and grew the business from two employees in her basement to a full staff of 7 in less than two years.
Jessi lives in Ramsey, Minnesota with her husband and two young boys. She enjoys organic gardening, making candles every fall, and vegan cooking.
James Grumish
James Grumish is a Minneapolis-based developer and team lead at Windmill Design where data-backed websites are built for smart-minded business marketers. Aside from creating and maintaining agency-built websites, James’ 10+ years of software experience includes specific roles in marketing/SEO and hosted e-commerce application development. James believes that the best developers work to improve their listening and analysis skills in order to identify systems and recognize patterns.
Drew Gorton
Drew leads the Developer Relations team at Pantheon. He gets to work with developers all over the world, sharing best practices and helping us all get the most out of both Pantheon and the Open Source tools we all share, including WordPress.
Drew began working on the web in 1996. He started his own web firm in 2001 and joined Pantheon in 2015 when he sold their automated website backup product to Pantheon.
Drew has a broad range of other interests, has lived and worked in Asia, Europe and North America and speaks several languages. He holds a liberal arts degree from St. Olaf College.
Ellen Goodwin
Ellen Goodwin is a sought-after TEDx speaker, trainer and productivity expert who inspires digital entrepreneurs to cut the BS, turbo-charge their results and become the action hero of their business and their life!
No stranger to the entrepreneurial roller coaster, she nearly fired herself from her own graphic design business after procrastination nearly shut it down. Knowing that something had to change fast, she dove headfirst into the world of neuroscience to understand the brain’s natural triggers and signals related to productivity and focus, and transformed her life and livelihood… in record time. She has made it her mission to help others do the same.
Tyler Golberg
Tyler has been playing and creating with WordPress since 2011. What started out as a simple need for a blog, turned into a obsession with the open-source platform we all love. Tyler only works with WordPress at CYBERsprout and wouldn’t have it any other way!
Joshua Giowaya
I’m Passionate about creating well-crafted, visually engaging and highly usable digital experiences. I have 10+ Years in web design & development at advertising and digital agencies, plus a number of years running my own consultancy. I also bring an extensive background in design that has proven invaluable when contributing to the design process and communicating with creative teams. Currently, I’m a WordPress consultant extremely active in the WordPress community. I regularly attend and speak at local WordPress Meetups. My hope is to give back to a community that has shared so much knowledge with me.
Marcus Genzlinger
Marcus started his professional career by spending 11 years at financial services company holding a variety of roles from customer service, business analysis, project management, product management and user experience. Before leaving he managed an enterprise content management system with a team of 10 people and 12,000 pieces of content while adhering to legal, compliance and branding requirements. He now consults growing businesses on how to achieve extraordinary results using content strategy, paid/earned/owned and social media for greater conversation rate optimization in lead generation activities mostly on the WordPress platform.
Katie Elenberger
All in. Go-getter. Laughs the loudest. Katie excels at developing comprehensive solutions through strategy, design and messaging that cuts through the clutter and connects with target audiences as the founder and creative brand strategist at Spark27 Creative. Critical design thinking and dedication to developing high-quality strong concepts have earned her recognition in her field and 16 American Advertising Awards for design. Katie’s enthusiasm for her work is contagious and she will naturally coach you through any process or project.
John Eckman
After a first career as an academic, John’s been working in digital agencies for the last 18 years, and with WordPress for the last 10. He has been one of the organizers for WordCamp Boston since 2010, and has been the CEO of 10up since early 2014. Though born in Duluth and raised largely in Richfield, MN, he went to Boston for college, then Seattle for graduate school, and now lives in Salem MA with his wife and dogs. He blogs (very occasionally) at Open Parenthesis.
Scott DeLuzio
Scott DeLuzio is a WordPress plugin developer from the Phoenix, AZ area. He began working with websites while in college in the early 2000s while studying to be an accountant. After graduating college, Scott worked in accounting for several years while serving in the Army National Guard and continued to build websites in WordPress. Scott has since made development his full-time job and has 15 free plugins on WordPress.org, as well as Conditional Checkout Fields, WP-CRM System, WP1099, and Full Screen Background Images.
Eric Debelak
Eric Debelak has been creating WordPress sites for over 10 years. He is currently a co-founder and senior developer at 11 Online, a full service digital agency in Albuquerque, NM. At 11 Online, Eric works with a variety of technology, including React.js, Python, Laravel, Android and of course WordPress. Eric also previously taught full-stack web development at Central New Mexico Community College’s STEMulus Center.
Toby Cryns
A community-builder at heart, Toby Cryns has helped get a handful of businesses, user groups, and conferences off the ground in Minneapolis. The creator of six free & open source WordPress plugins which are available on WordPress.org and two awesome musical performances, he is also an active participant in local Arduino, Raspberry Pi, WordPress, and open-source tech communities.
He has been a featured presenter on various business- and WordPress-related events (WordCamps, WordUps, MIMA Summits, MinneWebCons, MinneBars, UnSummits, and more). In his free time, he teaches WordPress at venues around town and is a believer in and product of free public education.
Brenda Cimbura Ed.D.
Dr. Brenda Cimbura is the co-founder and COO of LuminFire, a software company that creates smart technology that delivers business results. LuminFire, located in Minneapolis, specializes in custom app development, systems integrations, and digital strategy. Brenda is responsible for helping LuminFire grow its operations, services, and products by managing sales, marketing, business development, legal, human resources, compliance, privacy and communications. Brenda has a doctorate in administration with an emphasis in change management. In her free time, Brenda loves to experience great coffee, plan parties, and travel (especially Disney vacations).
Rachel Cherry
Rachel Cherry is a freelance software engineer with a background in higher education and other enterprise-level organizations, like Disney. She is the Founder and Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in higher education. She is a strong advocate for the importance of accessibility and universal design. Rachel lives in Alabama but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.
Joe Casabona
Joe Casabona is a Front End Developer, Instructor, & Course Creator. When he’s not writing code, he’s teaching people how to build things with and for WordPress. He also hosts a weekly podcast called How I Built It, where he interviews product developers and business owners about how they create. You can find him at Casabona.org
Laura Byrne-Cristiano
Laura started her first WordPress site in March 2006 when she started a website with a blog and forum for fans to discuss a then little-known book called Twilight. What started as a small site with maybe 30 visitors a week, rapidly grew into the most popular Twilight website on the Internet with millions of visitors each day from around the globe.
This lead to Laura transitioning from a career in teaching to one in marketing as she hit the ground running with a whole new skill set including podcasting, video editing, SEO, social media management and content marketing and more.
Since then, she’s created/written for 20+ WordPress sites mostly in the areas of education and entertainment.
Ben Byrne
Ben Byrne is one of three founders of Cornershop Creative, a web services agency that plans, designs, builds and maintains websites for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions around the country. Ben oversees most the design and development work that Cornershop does, putting his fluency in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to good use on a variety of platforms and systems, but primarily WordPress.
Born and raised in suburban Minneapolis, Ben has a BFA in Graphic Design from Iowa State University, and has been working on the web professionally for about 20 years. Ben now lives in Santa Rosa, California
Jennifer Bourn
Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative, a full service design and development company. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, blogs about food and travel at Inspired Imperfection, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento, and writes often for other websites on freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding. She is also the creator of the client management course Profitable Project Plan. Learn more at https://jenniferbourn.com
Michael Babker
Full time PHP developer, part time open source advocate, Michael Babker enjoys sharing knowledge gained and lessons learned from his 13 years in the Information Technology industry. Previously a Systems and Network Administrator, he transitioned into development after finding a passion for building with and contributing to open source and since 2012 has been an active leader and contributor to Joomla. When not writing code, Michael is very comfortable offering his opinions on all things and is an avid traveler who enjoys the many sights the world has to offer.
Tracy Apps
Tracy (@tapps) has been creating the web for over 20 years, and solving user experience challenges well before the term “UX” became the thing in technology. She currently owns and operates tracy apps design, a full-service creative agency based in Milwaukee, WI. Tracy’s client list is just as eclectic as she is, ranging from large corporations like Kohl’s and GE Healthcare to colleges, to nonprofits, small businesses… and even a fiddler. Many times her approach is non-traditional, but always focused on pushing design and user experience to higher levels. She ties her own bowties, and could probably deadlift you.
Heather Acton
Heather Acton is the founder and technical director of Helio Interactive. Heather grew up on the mean streets of Lindenhurst, IL. Like any kid with a passion for music and minimal parental supervision she learned how to pirate massive amounts of music. Turns out that deviant behavior was perfect training for today’s digital engineers.
Russell Aaron
I started out like many others. I was building MySpace band layouts. I would create table based layouts all day. I would use the blog feature on MySpace to share my triumphs and failures. After writing my first 50 blog posts, a friend of mine showed me WordPress.com. I signed up for free and I started to blog over there. After my next 50 blog posts, the same friend showed me how to install WordPress on my own website. Since that day, I’ve spent every minute of every hour learning WordPress. I’m obsessed, to say the least.
I’m on a mission to become a better Role Model. I use to be the guy who showed up and heckled a speaker. Now, I want to become a better teacher.