Author Archives: Andy McIlwain

About Andy McIlwain

Andy wrangles content at GoDaddy and co-organizes WordPress meetups & WordCamps in Toronto. Find him on Twitter and his personal site.

Featured Speaker: Denise Williams

Denise Williams has been living the logistics of tech-reliant content delivery for 15 years. She produced pioneering websites and internationally-distributed print magazines on girls skateboarding and self-righteous book reviews from the late 90s through the mid-2000s and has directed production for a wide range of print and digital publishers, from alt-weekly newspapers (like the Santa Barbara Independent) to luxury custom publications (like Mercedes-Benz) to iOS Newsstand magazines (like Reader’s Digest).

These days, she works as a digital project consultant and builds custom WordPress themes for business clients at her company Odeler Services in Montréal. Follow her at @lettergrade.

Presentation: Control your content presentation by breaking out of the_content field

I’ll be talking about the different techniques you can use to add more content areas to your posts and pages, using templates, custom fields, custom post types, et cetera.

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Featured Speaker: Terry Heenan

Terry created his first WP website in 2008 to promote a business and was immediately captivated by its ease of use. He attended his first WordCamp in 2010 and was motivated to take a 2 day WordPress training course.

He is deeply indebted to the “open source” movement and the contributions that make learning about WordPress available. Terry has been an active member of WordPress Meetups since January 2012.

Presentation: Use WordPress to become a Social Proprietor

I want to demonstrate the power of WordPress so that the audience will understand the various ways they can present their business story on the web. To go beyond the 5 minute install and choosing a theme, to understanding how to engage their audience and build an economical website.

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Featured Speaker: Jordan Quintal

Jordan Quintal is a 15 year web development veteran. He has been developing with WordPress for over 6 years now and will continue to advocate WordPress as a premium content management system solution.

In 2007, Jordan founded The Genius Web Media, which currently specializes in WordPress development and “”responsive”” technologies. The Genius Web Media has developed custom Themes and Plugins, and everything in between. Jordan has attended many WordCamps across North America and has presented at several across Ontario.

Presentation: WP-Admin for Beginners

My presentation will be a crash-course on the WordPress Administrative Area. To start, I will demonstrate how to access, and login to WP-Admin. From there, I will briefly summarize the Dashboard and what it can be used for. Then, I will quickly touch on the Media section, the Links section, the Comments section, the Tools section, and the Users section. Next, I will explain in detail and go through the Settings section and demonstrate how to update certain settings. Moving on, I will explain in detail and show a demonstration on how the Posts and Pages sections work. From there, I will explain and demonstrate how to operate the Appearance section and sub-sections. Lastly, I will explain and demonstrate how to manage the Plugins section.

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Featured Speaker: Richard Martin

Richard is an online entrepreneur focused on health services. Once he started to use WordPress, his online business took off and continues to grow at a robust clip.

He wants people to know that if they want to succeed online, then WordPress needs to be part of their online strategy. He is a WordPress evangelist.

Presentation: How Video Can Boost Your Traffic

I will be speaking about how video can drive quality traffic to your WordPress site/blog.

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Featured Speaker: Christopher Ross

Christopher loves WordPress, he loves that it lets him live a great life and he wants to teach others how to enjoy WordPress as much as he does.

Presentation: How WordPress let me quit the rat race.

We all dream of winning the lotto, but what if we don’t need to leave it to chance? Let’s talk about a frank truth. WordPress is awesome. Let’s talk about how I left corporate Canada behind, and how WordPress let me live the life I wanted.

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Featured Speaker: Brian Hoke

Brian has worked as a web developer at Bentley Hoke, a web development consultancy in Syracuse, New York, since 2000; he has worked extensively in WordPress for a number of years now. Brian finds that more and more of his work involves extending and customizing WordPress. He is particularly intrigued by the combination of client-side technologies like jQuery with server-side feeds in XML or JSON to enhance the user experience, both on the same WordPress installation and between foreign sites.

Presentation: Wordpress as API: how to distribute and share content for fun and profit

Twitter, Google, and other sites offer access to their content via an API, often via JSON. This presentation will explore how one might set up a similar API for a WordPress site: expose posts and other content with JSON, and offer client sites access via both embeddable code and through a more complex, authenticated API.

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Featured Speaker: Taylor Lovett

Taylor is a core contributor, plugin contributor, and plugin author. He works for 10up as a Senior Strategic Engineer. He has a BS in Computer Science. He builds really cool stuff on the web with WordPress!

Presentation: What You Missed in Computer Science

Computer Science is a big part of web development and WordPress whether you know it or not! This talk will explain what Computer Science actually entails. You will see WordPress through the lens of someone with a Computer Science degree.

We will talk about ways to describe code performance using Big-Oh notation comparing different post meta and taxonomy queries. We will also discuss concurrency as it applies to WordPress, specifically data races and how they can occur while counting post views.

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Featured Speaker: Jennifer Johannesen

Jennifer Johannesen runs Low to the Ground, the Toronto-based WordPress development and training company she founded in 2008. Jennifer has almost 20 years of experience developing websites for clients and digital agencies, and for the past five years has worked exclusively with WordPress. At last count she has built just over 200 custom WP sites for a wide range of clients.

Jennifer thinks of WordPress as the Great Enabler – helping individuals to realize their dreams and organizations to achieve their goals. Because she doesn’t get out much, she’s especially excited about coming to Toronto WordCamp and meeting fellow WP enthusiasts!

Jennifer is also an author and active blogger with a particular interest in bioethics and patient advocacy.

Presentation: WordPress for your Small (but Mighty!) Business

Using real-life examples and helpful dos and don’ts, we will look at how WordPress can be implemented to accomplish your business goals.

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Featured Speaker: Lucas Cherkewski

Lucas is a passionate advocate of web publishing, and he’s worked with WordPress for 3 years. He designs and develops websites for clients of all sizes, finding the web publishing solution that works for them. He lives in the outskirts of Waterloo, ON, where he can be frequently found walking around or experimenting with his other passion, cooking. You can follow him on Twitter at @lchski.

Presentation: Be the Perfect Client: A Guide for Hiring a Developer

Moving all the way from finding a good developer to how to work with them effectively, we’ll cover the whole process. We’ll learn how a good developer can save you money, and what you should do to be the perfect client that makes the whole process as smooth as possible.

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Featured Speaker: Avery Swartz

Avery Swartz is a Toronto-based award-winning web designer, consultant, speaker, and tech skills instructor. A self-described design geek, she helps to demystify the web for small business owners, charities, and arts organizations. In addition to her web design work, Avery is the founder and lead instructor of Camp Tech, offering practical, professional tech skills training in a fun and friendly environment.

Avery has been an active participant in Toronto’s WordPress community for a number of years, and as one of our illustrious Sunday panelists, she’s bringing her tech and business chops to WordCamp Toronto 2013.

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