That’s a wrap!
Another weekend of WordPress is behind us and we want to thank all our speakers, sponsors, volunteers, organizers & attendees for another awesome WordCamp Toronto. This year we managed to connect several IT communities in Toronto by having speakers from a11y community (Billy Gregory), devto community (Henri-R Brisard) & Ember community (Taras Mankovski). Also, besides having speakers coming from all over Canada & US, we had 2 speakers from Europe, too – Florian Gottschall from Germany & Daniel Kanchev from Bulgaria. We are very proud we have achieved this as we wanted to show that WordPress connects people from all over the world & across IT communities. Another first this year for WordCamp Toronto was having several workshops (without purchasing an additional ticket) where people had the opportunity to learn WordPress hands-on.
How did we do?
Because we want to continue improving our WordCamp we are very interested in what you have to say about WordCamp Toronto 2016. We have created a short, 5 minutes survey where you can tell us about your experience with WCTO16 and help us improve it in the future. The results will be posted on our website.
What’s next?
- Slides will be posted as we receive them from speakers.
- Videos are being worked on.
- View our speakers, sponsors, volunteers, organizers and attendees.
- Join Toronto’s WordPress meetup group! We meet at least once a month.
Thanks to Ted Rogers School Of Management, Ryerson University
This was our first year at TRSM and we want to thank them for being the marvelous host.
Thanks to our Sponsors
A huge thanks to all our wonderful sponsors:
- Platinum: Jetpack, Bluehost, WooCommerce, Boldgrid, Hover, WP Engine
- Gold: GoDaddy, Pantheon, SiteGround, Flywheel
- Custom Sponsorship: Constant Contact
- Silver: Plesk, Dreamhost, WPML.org, Testlauncher, Carbon60
- Bronze: Pluginize, ManageWP, Beaver Builder, SiteLock, Flowpress, A2 Hosting, HYPEStudio, GreenGeeks, Simplistics, ThemeIsle, Art & Science
- Consultant: WinningWP, InterServer, SkyVerge, Brightsite, Live Composer Page Builder, Search Boost Marketing, Notorious Webmaster, Public Storage Canada
A Special Thanks to:
- Greg Mount and Pasada Media for handling our A/V.
- Sujin Choi for providing photography.
- WCTO16 organizing team for pulling another successful WordCamp Toronto.
See you all next year and don’t forget
Rebecca is founder and president of Web Savvy Marketing. She has as a well-rounded business background within SMB and enterprise organizations, as well as over fifteen years of experience in sales and online marketing. She provides one-on-one SEO coaching, teaches group on-site boot camps, and speaks at various WordCamps throughout the country. 
Billy Gregory is an accessibility professional and Sr. Accessibility Engineer with The Paciello Group. As a former front-end developer, Billy can relate to many of the challenges and the apprehension faced by developers who are new to accessibility. He enjoys working with developers of all levels of experience to strengthen their skills and understanding of accessibility. Based out of Toronto, Canada, Billy is active in the Accessibility Community as an advocate, practitioner, and public speaker. He is co-organizer of both Accessibility Camp Toronto and it’s monthly meet-up group. 
Christina owns and operates a creative design and commercial photography studio called Varro Creative based in Calgary. She has over 15 years of experience in graphic and web design, and has primarily focused on WordPress based projects for her web clients for the past 6 years. She is new to speaking at WordCamp, and recently gave her first talk at WordCamp Calgary. She is excited to collaborate and share knowledge with others in the WordPress community. 
Dustin Meza is the Director of Customer Experience Operations at WP Engine. He has been in the hosting industry for 7 years and has been with WP Engine for 3 years. At WP Engine, Dustin oversees many aspects of the WordPress platform including WordPress upgrades for over 100,000 WordPress installs. Outside of WordPress, Dustin loves being outdoors in Nashville with his wife Megan, and black lab, Maddy. He enjoys all kinds of sports, both watching and playing, and has been known to play some video games when time allows. 
I am the owner of Web Moxie Media, where I assist business owners in social media strategies and content strategies to grow their business and increase their online influence. My tactics revolve around SEO as a strategy, Social Media & Blogging, and Content Creation and Curation for their specific business, market and buyers. I use Yoast SEO and All In One SEO plugins on WordPress. 
Paul Bearne is a freelance senior WordPress full stack developer. He discovered WordPress in 2006 when asked to explore the use of collaborative tools internally for a multinational corporation, setting up a 200+ multi-blog site using WPMU on IIS7. As part of this project, he created his first plugin, Author Avatars, (https://wordpress.org/plugins/author-avatars/ ), which now has 10,000+ active installs. Paul has made core commits in 3.9, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6, leads the virtual bi-weekly meetup, Contrib2Core & is a WordCamp Toronto 2016 Co-Organizer. 
I have been building WordPress websites for over seven years and currently am part of the OnTheGoSystems WPML Customer Support team. I love building WordPress websites and have worn many hats in the world of web development including Project Manager, Customer Service Representative, Account Strategist, and Web Designer. Originally from Massachusetts USA, I now live in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, USA. I enjoy sharing my knowledge along with tips and tricks that I have learned either through furthering my education or personal experience.
I help build great digital experiences and software through usability research, IA concepts, and prototypes. Outside the office, you’ll find me spread across regional meetups and conferences—evangelizing IA/UX, accessibility, and a variety of open source dev projects. When I’m not doing responsible adult things, I grow the world’s hottest chili peppers and bottle my own hot sauce. I’d divulge something funny from my past, but these days the Internet does a better job of surfacing our embarrassing moments; find me anywhere by Googling “anthonydpaul”. 
20+yr Technology Leader, Public Speaker, Columnist, USCG Veteran, Brewer of beer, Coffee Evangelist – Director of WordPress Development at Reader’s Digest. 
Shawn Hooper is the CTO at Actionable Books, where he enjoys combining code and data to build intelligent tools for teams and leaders. Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Shawn has been building web applications since the late 90s, with a focus on WordPress since 2011. As a freelance developer, he has built sites for clients in the public and private sectors in both Canada and United States. He loves making use of great 3rd party APIs, promoting web accessibility and secure coding practices. 
I run Code Diva, which specializes in WordPress theme development and coaching, and I teach Advanced Web Design at Sheridan College. 
Andy is a longtime WordPress advocate and former organizer of the Toronto WordPress meetup group and WordCamp Toronto. He’s passionate about content marketing, community management, and most importantly, helping small businesses succeed online. 
Do-it all developer working at Art & Science Toronto.
I’m a serial entrepreneur and full-stack developer who loves to turn dreams into reality. Passionate about helping fellow plugin developers to become more data-driven and making a living working on plugins with Freemius. I co-founded @Freemius, @RatingWidget and @SenexxInc. 
I am a digital marketing professional from Buffalo, NY – specializing in WordPress and SEO. 
Coder, speaker, teacher – Meagan does it all! Lead-Organizer of WordCamp Ottawa 2016 and the Ottawa + Arnprior WordPress Meetups. Providing freelance solutions for businesses of all sizes since 2000.
David Vogelpohl is the Vice President of Web Strategy at WP Engine, a premium managed WordPress host designed for speed and reliability. Since 1996, David has been managing web development and online marketing efforts in support of a wide range of business and billing models. David is an avid contributor to the WordPress business community. 
I am CEO at 10up and one of the founding organizers of WordCamp Boston. I’ve developed a number of miscellaneous things including some Drupal modules and WordPress plugins, the most visible of which is probably WPBook.
Alan Lok is the owner of WirelessLinx Inc., a consulting company in the GTA area that helps with website development (WordPress, Joomla, Liferay) and stack performance tuning/analysis. He also manages the DevOps team at Mercatus Technologies and have been in most development roles in the past.
Michelle is the owner and marketing diva at Marketed by Michelle, where her primary goal is to reach success by helping her clients achieve their highest success. Michelle is the organizer of the Rochester area WordPress user group, organizer of WordCamp Buffalo 2016, and Lead Organizer of WordCamp Rochester 2016.
Brian Messenlehner is a Co-Founder & CTO of WebDevStudios. Brian enjoys learning about new technology and believes open source software like WordPress is the key to successful cost effective web solutions in any situation.
A full stack WordPress designer and developer with a mean mentoring streak. I really enjoy learning myself and helping others to understand how WordPress has become the Web Tool for the Rest of Us. I lead the Toronto WordPress Group Meetup | West Edition.
Adam W. Warner discovered WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since. To feed his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners. He is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that also happens to be his job title with SiteLock.com. 
As front-end developer Hector ensures that the projects that he is involved follow accessibility and web standards. At work… communication (content, graphics and interfaces) accessed via multiple devices and channels. When free… travel, food, adventure and vintage stuff. Hector is a WordCamp Toronto 2016 Co-Organizer.