Tom Auger is Senior Partner at Zeitguys, a downtown-Toronto based digital design agency.
Tom believes passionately in the value of Open Source, and his personal philosophy and professional profile mirror these convictions. He is an active member of the local and global WordPress community, while also attempting to be the creative and tech lead of a growing digital agency, a dad of two confirmed rapscallions, an Ontario Great Lakes surfer, a Toronto cycling activist, an educator (currently with Centennial College in Toronto), and a craft beer connoiseur (not necessarily in that order).
Tom is able to survive on 4 hours of sleep each day, has negligible body odour and the uncanny ability of being able to identify a type of clam from 100 meters. Consequently, he hates shellfish. He is immune to hyperbole, riddled with muscle, and obviously the one who is typing out his own Speaker post on the WordCamp Toronto 2014 website. Who gave this guy admin access, anyway?
Panel Moderation
I do nothing in moderation, but I will be moderating:
Agency Panel in the Agency track
What do you hope people will get from the panel?
I’m hoping that this panel will have something for everyone. I’m pretty stoked. We have curated a bunch of really cool, WP-dialed-in folk from independents through to large development studios, so there’s going to be a lot of variety in the answers and perspectives these people have.
I think this panel will bring different things to different people. Folk that are looking to have WordPress website done for them are going to enjoy asking some blunt questions about pricing, workflow and what to look for in a vendor. Freelancers are going to be able to ask questions around project scoping, best practices and taking it to the next level. Webdev shops and studios will wonder about challenges and “gotchas”, and how to overcome them. And I’m hoping there might be some dialogue from other big agencies (10Up, I’m looking at you!) around scalability and how to monetize / justify contribution back to the community.
What drew you to WordPress in the first place?
For years I dreamed of creating our own web-based CMS. I even had an entire roadmap planned out for it. Then one day I stumbled upon WordPress and realized “oh crap. This does all that, and a whole bunch of other stuff I never even thought of”. We dropped the whole homegrown CMS instantly and moved all our energy toward WordPress and haven’t looked back since.
What’s your favourite WordPress plugin or theme and why?
I’m generally wary of commercial themes, though we’re re-evaluating our opinion of their role in the WordPress ecosystem as a lot of them are starting to mature and developers are becoming more conscientious about adhering to the WordPress coding standards. So I’m not going to go out there and recommend a theme. Our own starter theme is based on _s (pronounced “underscores”) so of course we’ve named it _z (pronounced “underscorez”) which is, frankly, cooler. But I’m sure wd_s (pronounced “dubya dee ess”) is better.
As for plugins, I’m digging Ben Moody’s Post Ratings Plugin, because it’s really cool and, he’s put me on the contributor list.
Why did you decide to speak
I’m not going to lie. Ego.
What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?
Um. Everything?
We have met weekly for half a year to put this sucker together and it’s going to be awesome. The people I have met putting this together, from volunteers to speakers to attendees who have reached out have been just amazing. I’m just excited to meet y’all and learn how WordPress is making your life better.
And the afterparty @ the Gladstone. That should rock.