“Hi, I’m Dara and I’m an independent web designer and front-end developer from Toronto. I’ve worked at a number of places from large organizations to small agencies, and now I run my own one-person shop where I design and code websites for entrepreneurs, creatives, and big-hearted small businesses. I’ve been creating websites professionally for many years, and these days the majority of them are in WordPress!”

Presentation: Help Me Help You: Practical Tips for Designers from A WordPress Developer

“In addition to doing full website projects where I’m both the designer and the developer, a lot of my work is doing development for designers who either don’t know how to code or prefer not to code.

While the designers I work with regularly are great, I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from both designers and developers about terrible working relationships, and I’ve come across lots of designs that look nice but just don’t work well from a development perspective. I’ve had many one-on-one conversations with designers about how to make their designs more web-friendly, and I realized that since I was saying the same things over and over again, a lot of people could probably benefit from knowing this stuff. And that, in a nutshell, is why I decided to present on this topic.”

What unique perspective are you bringing to this talk?

“Since I’m both a designer and a developer I empathize with both roles, so I think both designers and developers will take useful information away from my talk.

I’ve also been told that I talk about technical topics in a non-jargony, amusing way!

Because I’m a one-person shop, my talk will probably be most useful for freelancers, small teams, and people who partner with designers/developers remotely.”

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

“I love the WordPress community so I’m looking forward to hanging out with both old and new friends!”

What’s one really cool thing people will discover during your session?

“My aim by the end of my talk is to help more designers and developers get along with each other! We’re all on the same team (that’d be the team that creates awesome websites, of course), so life is much better when we can all be friends and speak the same language.”

More from Dara: Dara on Twitter, Dara’s website