WordCamp New York City 2009

November 14–15, 2009
...was awesome!

Speakers

WordCamp NYC 2009 will feature a wide variety of local and visiting speakers presenting on everything WordPress, from blogging tips to hardcore development.

Photo of Barry AbrahamsonPhoto of Kenn BellPhoto of Sheri BigelowPhoto of John BintzPhoto of Casey BissonPhoto of Erin BlaskiePhoto of Amanda BlumPhoto of Jeremy BoggsPhoto of Lisa BrundagePhoto of Steve BrunerPhoto of Anthony BubelPhoto of Keith CaseyPhoto of Lin ChenPhoto of Scott Kingsley ClarkPhoto of Jeremy ClarkePhoto of Stephanie CockerlPhoto of Allan ColePhoto of Jim DoranPhoto of John EckmanPhoto of Corey EulasPhoto of Serena EpsteinPhoto of José FontainhasPhoto of Brian GardnerMikhail GershovichPhoto of Matt GoldPhoto of Dan GoldmanPhoto of Boone GorgesPhoto of Grant GriffithsPhoto of Jim GroomPhoto of Shannon HauserPhoto of John HawkinsPhoto of Perry HewittPhoto of Noel JacksonPhoto of John James JacobyPhoto of Mark JaquithPhoto of Paul KimPhoto of Daryl KoopersmithPhoto of Beau LebensPhoto of Michelle LederPhoto of Dave LesterPhoto of Ted MannPhoto of Matt MartzPhoto of Naoko McCrackenPhoto of Steve McNallyPhoto of Dan MilwardPhoto of Nick MomrikPhoto of Raphael MudgePhoto of Matt MullenwegPhoto of Sudar MuthuPhoto of Daisy OlsenPhoto of Andy PeatlingPhoto of Andrea RennickPhoto of Ron RennickPhoto of Adria RichardsPhoto of Lisa Sabin-WilsonPhoto of Justin ShrevePhoto of Ramil TeodosioPhoto of Jamie TrowbridgePhoto of James VasilePhoto of Luke WaltzerPhoto of Jane WellsPhoto of Brad WilliamsPhoto of Tom WoodwardPhoto of Dennis WakabayashiPhoto of Mushon Zer-Aviv

Barry Abrahamson

Photo of Barry AbrahamsonBarry, Systems Wrangler for Automattic, was born and raised on the banks of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. During the day, he makes sure the WordPress.com servers are zipping along while trying not to get too much BBQ sauce on his keyboard and at night… ok, well, he’s doing the same. : ) When he’s not on AIM, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, or reading about the latest and greatest in MySQL optimization, Barry enjoys traveling and playing a little lacrosse.

Kenn Bell

Photo of Kenn BellKenn Bell became a prominent player in the fields of graphic design and independent filmmaking working with advertising agencies Saatchi & Saatchi and Grey Worldwide Health Group and in 2005, Kenn formed GraphicPlanet Creative, a digital media company specializing in video, design and the web working on Miami Dolphin & Madison Square Garden commercial campaigns. In 2008, he launched his newest venture, The Dog Files, a video and news site featuring “Every Thing You Ever Wanted To Know About Dogs And The People Who Love Them.”

Sheri Bigelow

Photo of Sheri BigelowSheri is a designer, developer, and photographer currently living in Northern New York near Montreal. She earned a Bachelor’s in Business and a Chemistry minor from the University of Utah before spending eight years managing websites for Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City. She has always considered herself a WordPress evangelist, and now her endlessly positive nature makes her a perfect fit as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic.

John Bintz

Photo of John BintzJohn Bintz is a professional Web developer with an interest in comics and an obsession with automation. He entered the WordPress realm with development
on the ComicPress theme and various plugins, and has become focused on promoting test-driven plugin and theme development. John is also the creator of two webcomics, both published with WordPress and illustrated with open source software.

Casey Bisson

Photo of Casey BissonCasey Bisson is on a mission to replace everything with a WordPress plugin. Scriblio, a plugin that turns WordPress into a library catalog, was honored with a Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration and earned Casey recognition as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker. Now, as Plymouth State University’s Information Architect, he’s continuing on that mission by replacing the school’s CMS with WordPress and building out applications based on it. Casey blogs about his passion for WordPress, libraries, roadside oddities, and hiking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains at MaisonBisson.com. Many of his plugins are in the WordPress directory.

Erin Blaskie

Photo of Erin BlaskieWhen you think of passionate love affairs, it’s not often that you also think about Internet Marketing. However, when you meet Erin Blaskie, you realize that those two things meld together in a way that just makes sense. Erin Blaskie started her first company at the age of 21. As a multi-faceted entrepreneur, Erin has been featured in three print books, honored as Office Arrow’s 2008 Runner-Up Business Woman of the Year and featured in ABC, CBC and Chatelaine.

Amanda Blum

Photo of Amanda BlumAmanda Blum is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, and Creative Director of Howling Zoe Productions, a creative strategy firm involved in design, marketing and public relations. Helping microbusinesses and non profits find new ways to reach their target demographic for over 10 years, Amanda represents a wide range of clients including P.R. Agents, boutiques, entrepreneuers and web 2.0 companies. Amanda has been active in community volunteering for almost 20 years including HIV agencies, Red Cross, animal disaster rescue and environmental causes, and is dedicated to helping non profits utilize social media tools to help further their mission.

Jeremy Boggs

Photo of Jeremy BoggsJeremy is the Creative Lead at the Center for History and New Media, where he manages the web design/development team and oversees development on Omeka. He’s also a PhD student in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University, where his research focuses on digital history, the history of technology, and the history of web design. A regular user of WordPress in his research and teaching, Jeremy started ScholarPress in 2006 as a development hub for education and scholarly plugins for WordPress. He writes about his work in the digital humanities on his blog, ClioWeb.

Lisa Brundage

Photo of Lisa BrundageLisa Brundage is a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and holds an MA from the New School for Social Research. Prior to beginning work as an ITF at the College of Staten Island in 2005, Lisa was a CUNY Writing Fellow at Brooklyn College. She has also taught composition and literature at Brooklyn College and courses in women’s studies at Hunter College, in addition to teaching after-school computer classes in New York City’s public elementary schools. Lisa is currently writing her dissertation on the use of visual arts to explore tropes of gender, cosmopolitanism, and racial identity in the novels of Jean Rhys, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, and Jessie Fauset.

Steve Bruner

Photo of Steve BrunerSteve Bruner is the CEO of SlipFire LLC, a New York City based WordPress development studio. His first taste of HTML was over 14 years ago when he built his first “website” and used Mosaic to create in-store kiosks. Years later, he discovered and embraced open-source technologies, and has been a strong proponent of WordPress for almost four years. When he’s not working with clients, Steve runs the NYC WordPress Meetup, which boasts a membership of over 500 WordPress lovers.  Steve is a co-organizer of WordCampNYC.

Anthony Bubel

Photo of Anthony BubelAfter earning a B.B.A from Temple University in 2008, Anthony decided to put away his suit and work for Automattic so that he could shower happiness over the WordPress community. When not supporting WordPress.com users, you can find him cooking and listening to Pearl Jam with his future wife in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Keith Casey

Photo of Keith CaseyD. Keith Casey, Jr. has been a PHP developer for about six years and a professional agitator within the local Washington, DC tech community for a few years longer. To pay the bills, he works as the CTO of Blue Parabola, LLC on large-scale PHP-based systems for organizations ranging from major news media companies to small non-profits. In his spare time, he is a core contributor to web2project, works to build and support the DCPHP community, blogs regularly on technology issues at http://CaseySoftware.com/blog and is completely fascinated by monkeys.

Lin Chen

Photo of Lin ChenLin Chen is president of New Circle Consulting, a web development and design firm based in Chicago. Lin has held positions with cutting-edge technology companies, working on projects that were both complex and challenging. An expert programmer, she has helped build online stores and communities, and a wide range of web-based applications. She is adept with assembling disparate pieces of the technology puzzle to tailor a solution that expertly resolves each client’s unique challenges. Lin holds two masters degrees from Indiana University, in physics and computer science.

Scott Kingsley Clark

Photo of Scott Kingsley ClarkWeb Developing since the age of 15, Scott has worked on hundreds of website projects. Scott specializes in WordPress and Pods CMS Framework development using PHP, MySQL, and AJAX/Javascript. Outside of work, Scott focuses on spending as much time as possible with his fiancee, Cassidy and his “error folk” music project titled Soft Charisma.

Jeremy Clarke

Photo of Jeremy ClarkeJeremy Clarke is a PHP, HTML, CSS and
WordPress hacker from Montreal. He loves his job working on the nonprofit citizen media site Global Voices, where he manages dozens of WordPress sites, blogs, plugins, themes and a couple of bitchy Linux servers. He has a communications degree from Concordia University, but is mostly a self-taught web developer.

Stephanie Cockerl

Photo of Stephanie CockerlStephanie M. Cockerl, a native New Yorker, is the owner of nextSTEPH, where she helps companies of all shapes and sizes measure and manage their websites. With over 10 years of experience, nextSTEPH has won numerous web design awards. Currently her projects include managing multiple blogs for Metropolitan College of New York, as well as working on search engine optimization and various online marketing initiatives.

Allan Cole

Photo of Allan ColeAllan Cole is a web designer and developer based in Brooklyn, NY. He specializes in front-end user experience and WordPress customization. He can be found online at his portfolio and his WordPress blog.

Jim Doran

Photo of Jim DoranJim Doran is a hybrid Web designer/developer residing in Baltimore, Maryland. By day, he’s a software engineer for Johns Hopkins University, where he maintains a slew of WordPress blogs, MU and bbPress sites. At night, he teaches Web design for the Community College of Baltimore County. He is currently contributing curriculum to the WaSP interact curriculum. When not doing these things, Jim is an artist and uses WordPress to publish his ideas and experiments at http://jimdoran.net/.

John Eckman

Photo of John EckmanJohn Eckman is a Sr. Director at Optaros, a professional services firm offering strategy, design, development, and consulting services to enterprises interested in leveraging free and open source software. He is also the primary developer of WPBook, a plugin for integrating your WordPress blog with Facebook, and the organizer of WordCamp Boston 2010. John blogs at Open Parenthesis as well for Optaros Labs.

Serena Epstein

Photo of Serena EpsteinSerena, a recent University of Mary Washington graduate and survivor of UMW Blogs, spends most of her time working at the Alliance Française de Washington and pining for Jim Groom. She freelances as a graphic designer and photographer, and has been addicted to WordPress for three years. In her free time, Serena walks into door frames, bakes strawberry pies, and plays the accordion with vigor rather than accuracy. Her completely fantastic, WordPress-powered website is at www.serenae.com.

Corey Eulas

Photo of Corey EulasCorey has been involved in web development and internet marketing since late 1990s. He currently works at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell as a Senior Search Engine Optimization Specialist and at Wine King as the Director of Search Marketing. Corey also runs Ninety Seven Media, where he helps small to mid-sized businesses increase their internet visibility via SEO & SEM. When he’s not busy working he spends his free time with his fiancée Sandy and dog Coby at his home in New Jersey.

José Fontainhas

Photo of José FontainhasZé has spent a long time spent trying to solve people’s WordPress-related problems in five continents and as many languages. Since he grew up in Portugal, Angola and Belgium, went to school and worked in Austria and the U.S., and one of his daughters is American, he gets where most people are coming from. He’s still trying to figure out what any one of his three daughters wants, though.

Brian Gardner

Photo of Brian GardnerHopeless Starbucks addict. Internet consultant. Founder/CEO of StudioPress and AgentPress. Blogs here, skis hard and loves music. He’s been known to Tweet, compulsively plays fantasy sports and most importantly, is a loving husband and father. He has no college degree, never took any computer courses and learned everything he knows about WordPress by trial and error.

Mikhail Gershovich

Mikhail GershovichMikhail Gershovich is the Director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute and a Coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at Baruch College, CUNY. Among other duties, he oversees the development and integration into the curriculum of the college’s two newest instructional technology initiatives, Blogs@Baruch and the Video Oral Communication Assessment Tool (VOCAT). He holds a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and occasionally teaches composition, literature and film courses.

Matt Gold

Photo of Matt GoldMatt Gold is Project Director of The CUNY Academic Commons, an academic social network that draws together faculty members of the 23-campus City University of New York system. Built upon a WPMu/BuddyPress/BbPress/MediaWiki platform, the site has quickly galvanized many collaborative projects across CUNY. Matt is an Assistant Professor of English at the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn and a faculty member in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Doctoral Certificate Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also Project Director of Looking for Whitman, an experiment in cross-campus digital pedagogy also built upon a WPMu platform.

Dan Goldman

Photo of Dan GoldmanDan Goldman was until recently the Executive Director of Interactive at WNET.ORG, the leading NYC public television broadcaster. Before that, he spent six years launching and managing satellite channels and pay TV platforms for News Corp around the world. In 2003, Dan launched an online video game company which built an instant-messenger-based MMOG with venture capital financing. Dan has an M.B.A. from Columbia and B.A. From Yale. He
is a life-long Brooklynite, residing there with his wife, two children and 10 hens (it’s true!).

Boone Gorges

Photo of Boone GorgesBoone Gorges is as an instructional technologist at Queens College, where for several years he has been the administrator and primary pedagogical support for QC’s blogging program, which hosts over a thousand active users on Movable Type. He’s also the lead developer for the CUNY Academic Commons, a social networking platform meant to facility scholarly collaboration between faculty and staff across CUNY’s 23 campuses. The CAC is built on WPMu, BuddyPress, bbPress, and MediaWiki. Boone is also a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Grant Griffiths

Photo of Grant GriffithsGrant Griffiths is co-founder of Headway Themes, a premium WordPress theme which launched on July 31st, 2009. In addition to Headway, Grant is co-owner of G2WebMedia, a blog consulting and design firm who works with clients building custom blog sites for their small businesses and professional service firms. Grant blogs at Blog For Profit where he discusses using a blog and social media to promote and market a business. He launched his first blog February 2005 as a marketing tool for his former law firm.

Jim Groom

Photo of Jim GroomJim is an Instructional Technology Specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He has been working for over a decade in education with a consistent focus on the development of teaching and learning in higher education. In addition to his extensive experience teaching at the college level, for the past four years he has worked primarily in the field of instructional technology.

Shannon Hauser

Photo of Shannon HauserFor administrative purposes, Shannon has declared herself a history degree-seeking undergrad at Mary Washington, but most of the time she is doing non-history activities. She spends an abnormal number of hours at the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies where she works as a student aide; there she has explored the intersection of blogging and education. As a senior she hopes that what she has learned in college will be applicable in the real world (although she has her doubts).

John Hawkins

Photo of John HawkinsJohn started his first blog back in 2003, moved to WordPress a short time later and hasn’t looked back. John has been active in all aspects of the WordPress Universe; creating custom themes and plugins, hosting WordCamp:Las Vegas and presenting at WordCamps all over the US. You’ll currently find him blogging at JohnHawkinsUnrated.com.

Perry Hewitt

Photo of Perry HewittPerry Hewitt is Director of Digital Communications and Communications Services at Harvard University, where she is charged with the University’s efforts to develop a comprehensive digital footprint across the internet, as well as to bring editorial, multimedia, and technology best practices to enhance websites and applications. Hewitt has held significant digital marketing, editorial, and client services roles at firms including Crimson Hexagon; Razorfish; ArsDigita; Harcourt Online; and Lotus Development Corporation. Areas of particular interest include: social software; multimedia; data visualization; content strategy; user experience; and online communities and networks. Perry holds an A.B. from Harvard University in Russian and Soviet Studies.

Noel Jackson

Photo of Noel JacksonNoel is an übergeek, designer, and developer. He loves the internet and dreams in HTML quite frequently. A self-proclaimed polymath, Noel was once a secret agent, fashion photographer, and ran a successful post-production studio in NYC. When not pushing pixels and babbling about regexes, he’s probably listening to music (300 LPs and 250 gigs in all) or reading a good book. He lives in Detroit with his beautiful wife, a fish named Hiro, and a chinchilla named Elvis.

John James Jacoby

Photo of John James JacobyJohn is a web slinger originally from Milwaukee, WI but currently living in Miami, FL. When he isn’t playing Spiderman, he can be found contributing to BuddyPress core, moderating the BuddyPress forums, or singing the praises of BuddyPress from the mountain tops. He likes puppies, dislikes bright lights, and if he could be a Muppet, he would want to be Beeker.

Mark Jaquith

Photo of Mark JaquithMark Jaquith has been working with and contributing to WordPress since 2004. He is one of the lead developers of the WordPress core and offers freelance WordPress consulting services through Covered Web Services with a focus on scaling, security, and custom functionality. Mark likes patches that have more red than green, and his favorite WordPress features are the ones that you’re not even aware of. He eagerly looks forward to shooting down your feature suggestions with, “No, but it would make a great plugin!”

Paul Kim

Photo of Paul KimPaul spent 4 years at Mozilla, where he worked with a global community to launch four major releases of Firefox. He recently joined Automattic, where he is focused on growing the community and finding ways to introduce people to WordPress (and keep them excited once they’ve started blogging). Paul’s been happily blogging with WordPress since 2005. He lives with his family in Oakland, California, where, against all his better instincts, he’s developed a running habit.

Daryl Koopersmith

Photo of Daryl KoopersmithDaryl is a junior majoring in Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He created the Elastic theme framework and a WYSIWYG theme editor plugin as his student project with WordPress for Google Summer of Code 2009.

Beau Lebens

Photo of Beau LebensBeau is a web developer who hails from Australia, but lives in San Francisco. He’s been working on the web since about 1996 and developing PHP/MySQL systems since 2000. He has been involved in a variety of technical enterprises ranging from an exclusively-online division at a University to a niche Search Engine Marketing firm, with a short stint building an online scrapbooking network for parents. Interested in all things social, tech and web-related, Beau holds a degree in online community, culture and governance, and spends most of his time these days hacking web apps for Automattic.

Michelle Leder

Photo of Michelle LederMichelle Leder runs the site footnoted.org, which she launched in August 2003. The site digs into the details in Securities and Exchange Commission filings and has been called a site for “those in the know” by the Wall Street Journal and a top financial site by BusinessWeek, CNN/Money, and the Financial Times. In 2006, it was named a top site by Time Magazine.

Dave Lester

Photo of Dave LesterDave is the Omeka Developer Community Lead at the Center for History and New Media, collaborating with open source developers across institutions. He is a graduate of American Studies, a HASTAC scholar, and the founder of HistoryPlot. Dave lives in Washington, DC, and you can find him blogging, organizing conferences, and developing WordPress plugins for scholars.

Ted Mann

Photo of Ted MannTed Mann is the Digital Development Director for Gannet New Jersey’s five websites – app.com, courierpostonline.com, dailyrecord.com, mycentraljersey.com, and thedailyjournal.com. When he isn’t directing the newspaper group’s strategies for live video, digital sales, and mobile development, he personally maintains the 100+ WordPress staff blogs across the state. He is also the architect of InJersey.com, a series of seven hyperlocal community blogs, authored by both Gannett’s reporters and citizen journalists, and powered by BuddyPress.

Matt Martz

Photo of Matt MartzMatt Martz is a Linux Systems Administrator from the sticks of Western Maryland and a loving husband and father, or at least that’s what his wife says. When not at his day job, he spends the majority of his time making special WordPress BBQ sauce and playing Football (not American Football!). Matt is also the creator of http://freemyfeed.com/.

Naoko McCracken

Photo of Naoko McCrackenNaoko (“now-co”) grew up in Fukuoka, Japan. Since she started her blog in 2003, she has been involved in the Japanese WordPress community from her home in Michigan – 6,000+ miles away from Japan. She has written three Japanese books on WordPress.

Steve McNally

Photo of Steve McNallySteve oversees True/Slant’s technology architecture, software development and site operations. He came to True/Slant from Condé Nast, where he spent eight years, most recently as Senior Director, Product Development. In that role he managed the build-out of Parade.com’s core platform and publishing tools. Prior to that, Steve managed channel development for About.com, where he designed, built and launched an affiliate ad network. Steve previously worked for Prodigy and IBM building communication and collaboration tools for distributed teams.

Dan Milward

Photo of Dan MilwardDan Milward is a New Zealand-based developer and entrepreneur working with Instinct, makers of (amongst other things) the world-famous WP e-Commerce Plugin.

Nick Momrik

Photo of Nick MomrikNick started using WordPress in 2003 and wrote some of the early plugins. He works for Automattic, writing code and providing user support. In the Michigan summers you can find him on the golf course in search of the perfect swing.

Raphael Mudge

Photo of Raphael MudgeRaphael is a code hacker and technology entrepreneur. He developed After the Deadline, the intelligent proofreading software used on WordPress.com and available as a free GPL plugin on WordPress.org. Raphael resides in Washington, D.C.

Matt Mullenweg

Photo of Matt MullenwegMatt is the founding developer of WordPress, the open source blogging software that runs millions of sites around the world. In 2005, he started Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, bbPress, IntenseDebate, and BuddyPress. Matt lives in San Francisco and has a crush on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Sudar Muthu

Photo of Sudar MuthuSudar is an experienced programmer in AJAX, JavaScript, PHP and everything web related, and works as an Engineer at Yahoo Research in Bangalore, India. He’s been passionate about WordPress for over four years, and has contributed quite a few Plugins to the WordPress community. Sudar is also an active blogger and discusses WordPress programming and Plugin development on his personal blog and Twitter @sudarmuthu.

Daisy Olsen

Photo of Daisy OlsenDaisy Olsen has been working with computers since the Commodore 64, with php/MySQL content management systems since 2001 (Anyone remember PostNuke?) and has been dedicated to working with WordPress for the last several years. After starting a WordPress powered hobby blog in 2006 she quickly discovered that her heart was on the backend and developing blogs for others was far more fulfilling than actually blogging. Since then she has worked on many blogs and non-blog websites to create individualized website solutions built on WordPress as both a blogging platform and a CMS. She works as a blog/website development consultant from WP Mama. She is also the Director of Operations for Blissfully Domestic, a web-based magazine powered by WordPress with over 400 contributing authors.

Andy Peatling

Photo of Andy PeatlingAndy Peatling is the creator and lead developer of the BuddyPress project, a social networking layer built on the foundation of WordPress. Andy has been working with WordPress since the early days and enjoys the challenges of both plugin development and theme design. Originally from the UK, Andy now lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Andrea Rennick

Photo of Andrea RennickAndrea_R, as she is known online, writes about WordPress MU at http://wpmututorials.com and is a heavy poster in the mu forums. She also likes to bake cookies and help others learn new things.

Ron Rennick

Photo of Ron RennickRon goes by wpmuguru on twitter and the wordpress.org sites. He had his first taste of programming in 1980 and has been doing it for a living for over 20 years. He and his wife (Andrea_r) freelance as WordPress/WordPress MU developer/consultants.

Adria Richards

Photo of Adria RichardsAdria Richards has been in the IT industry for 10 years. An active supporter of open source software like WordPress, she promotes using technology to save time. Adria founded Freshworkshops, which offers live online training for WordPress, Joomla, SEO, Social Media and website development. She blogs at ButYoureAGirl.com and does a weekly technology show live at AskAdria.com Adria holds her Microsoft MCSA, MCDST and A+ certifications. Adria will be speaking next year’s SxSW on “How Sci-Fi Shaped The Internet.”

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Photo of Lisa Sabin-WilsonLisa Sabin-Wilson is a creative designer and owner of E.Webscapes where she has been providing custom design solutions for WordPress users since 2003. Lisa is the author of the official WordPress For Dummies book and the soon-to-be released BuddyPress For Dummies (Jan. 2010). Keeping up to date on the fast-paced development coming out of the brilliant WordPress community is one of her favorite ways to pass her time! You can follow Lisa on Twitter @LisaSabinWilson.

Justin Shreve

Photo of Justin ShreveJustin Shreve is a freelance developer, writer and a student from Kent, Ohio. He is studying Computer Science at Kent State University. He participated in the Google Summer of Code program in the summer of 2009 and produced a Search API to improve the WordPress search engine.

Ramil Teodosio

Photo of Ramil TeodosioRamil Teodosio is self-proclaimed technology evangelist. He holds a Business Administration degree with a concentration in MIS from Brockport College and a Management Systems graduate degree from Clarkson University. His IT career spans working as a software development and process consultant with companies such as Accenture, Cognizant and DDS. He continues to be a subject matter expert in the telecommunications, advertising and health care industries in the areas of ordering, provisioning, billing, and customer care.

Jamie Trowbridge

Photo of Jamie TrowbridgeJamie Trowbridge is the Founder & President of Tierra Innovation, a leading strategy, design and technology firm based in NYC. This past year, Tierra helped WNET.ORG build a content management system (CMS) on the WordPress Multi-User platform, enabling WNET.ORG to increase its capacity to launch and maintain websites by as much as 700%. Tierra subsequently released and continues to roll out plug-ins for the WordPress community that were originally developed for WNET.ORG. Prior to Tierra, Jamie was Co-Founder and COO of Moeo, Inc, a pioneering wireless software firm. He spent 7 years as an equity analyst in Latin America for Credit Lyonnais Securities and Indosuez Capital. Jamie received a BA in English from Georgetown, an MBA from Yale and he studied computer science at Harvard.

Joseph Ugoretz

Photo of Joseph UgoretzJoseph Ugoretz is Director of Technology and Learning at Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, serves as a member of the Consortial Faculty for the CUNY Online Baccalaureate, and is on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center’s certificate program in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

James Vasile

Photo of James VasileJames Vasile works as counsel at the Software Freedom Law Center and holds a Juris Doctor (JD) from Columbia Law School, where he was a member of the law review and a Stone Scholar. He also has a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Fordham University. He spent several years in the litigation department of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he worked on a range of cases and dealt with a variety of new media issues. Vasile has also contributed code and documentation to numerous FOSS software projects. He is admitted to practice in the State of New York.

Luke Waltzer

Photo of Luke WaltzerLuke Waltzer is the Project Manager for Digital Learning at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, where he runs Blogs@Baruch and edits Cac.ophony.org, a blog on communication across the curriculum authored by the Institute’s fellows. He holds a PhD in American History from the CUNY Graduate Center, and has worked previously for the American Social History Project and the Macaulay Honors College.

Jane Wells

Photo of Jane WellsJane is the user experience lead for WordPress, and has worked in the web industry for 10 years. Though her apartment is in the East Village, she spends much of her time traveling to WordCamps and meeting WordPress users to incorporate their feedback into each new version. Jane is also the co-organizer of WordCamp NYC, and really wishes more companies would volunteer to be sponsors so there could be more snacks.

Brad Williams

Photo of Brad WilliamsBrad Williams is the CEO and Co-Founder of WebDevStudios.com. He is also a co-host on the SitePoint Podcast and an Advisor on SitePoint Forums. He was one of the original co-hosts of the WordPress Weekly Podcast and still joins the show on occasion. Brad has been developing websites for over 12 years, including the last 3 where he has focused on open-source technologies like WordPress. Brad has given presentations at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic and WordCamp Montreal, is the organizer for the New Jersey WordPress Meetup Group, and is the co-author of the upcoming WROX book Professional WordPress.

Tom Woodward

Photo of Tom WoodwardTom Woodward works for the Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia. He has worked with at-risk students in Virginia and New York, as an educational technologist at the University of Richmond, and then returned to public schools several years ago. He spends most of his time being trying to make education suck a little bit less.

Dennis Wakabayashi

Photo of Dennis WakabayashiDennis, Founder and Chief Online Officer of Mojofiti, has handled international business operations for a number of years where he personally experienced the challenges language barriers create. His daily confrontation with localization and SEO has made him passionate about breaking down cultural barriers and expanding the power of the Internet globally, which led him to found Mojofiti. He and his team are developing real-time language-enabled solutions that can be used across multiple communication mediums. Dennis has been involved in a variety of technical enterprises ranging from founding the crowd-source thinktank “thaJungle”, to acting as the Director of Media Arts for a TBWA agency and most recently the Director of Online for the global hosting provider, Verio.

Mushon Zer-Aviv

Photo of Mushon Zer-AvivMushon is a designer, an educator and a media activist from Tel-Aviv, based in NY. His work explores media in public space and the public space in media. In his creative research he focuses on the perception of territory and borders and the way they are shaped through politics, culture, networks and the World Wide Web. He is the co-founder of ShiftSpace.org – an open source layer above any website; Shual.com – a foxy design studio; YouAreNotHere.org – a dislocative tourism agency; Kriegspiel – a computer game based on Guy Debord’s Game of War; and the Tel Aviv node of the Upgrade international network. He is an honorary resident at Eyebeam – an art and technology center in New York. He teaches new media research at NYU and open source design at Parsons the New School of Design.

10 Responses

  1. Damon cook says:

    I’m so excited about this awesome lineup! I have a lot of questions for my fellow academia. Yippee!!

  2. Wow, this will be my first WordCamp. I am so excited!

  3. This is a great list of presenters! Unfortunately I’m unable to attend, but I’m hopeful that either live or recorded video will exist of these presentations.

    (fingers crossed)

  4. Andrea_R says:

    Wow, what a great list. This is going to be epic. 🙂

  5. Sarah Bush says:

    This does look like a fantastic lineup–I’m really looking forward to the conference!

  6. Ron Suarez says:

    I am posting this here, because the “Location” page doens’t allow comments and says there is no subway from LaGuardia Airport. Please add this where it makes sense.

    LaGuardia bus to the subway:
    Take the Q-33 bus from the main airport terminal lower level to the last stop and take the E train 3 stops to Lexington and 53rd St. Transfer for the 6 downtown and get off at 23rd St. If you can find an MTA vending machine it is a single fare. Coins or MTA cards only for $2.25.

  7. jane says:

    @Ron: There is no subway directly from LGA, as you yourself point out. You need to take a bus to get to the subway. People from out of town with luggage will have it easier in a cab from LGA.

  8. MDLewis says:

    Hello,
    I’ve been using WP for about 8 mos now and I love it and I’m thinking of attending this conference but I wanted to know… is this the right conference for me considering that I’m hoping to launch a couple of new blogs soon?… in particular I need help with: 1-step-by-step guide on how to upload a theme I found onto WP for my domain and how; 2-and since I’d like to design the top banner for the new site should I bring the new banner already designed (as .jpeg, etc.?), or can I just bring the different elements (font, graphics) and I’ll be able to design it there? I’ve read that for newbies we’ll be able to walk out of there with a site designed but I neeed somebody to dig down in the specifics and let me know if I’ll be able to get the above stuff done… I know there are a lot of pros but I’m still getting started with this stuff and I don’t wanna cough up the loot if I’m gonna be going to a bunch of sessions about great plug-ins… thanks…just checkin…

  9. Alex says:

    Looking for one more speaker or have room for one more?! Please shoot me a reply 🙂

    Bests,
    Alex (GuruOfSales)

  10. jane says:

    Alex: We’re full up, but you’ll be free to propose unconference sessions at the event itself.

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