Author: conradhallauthor

Jesse is one of our local speakers. He is speaking Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm in Rm 147. His topic about user experience (UX) and the role played by site design. Let’s get to know him…

My official bio says that I’m a UX designer who specializes in building insightful, creative, and usable digital experiences. That’s the nice, standard, boilerplate conference introduction I’ll always send (WordCamp Toronto being one of them).

These days, though, I’ve been introducing myself through my Twitter bio where I say, “”[I’m a] UX designer by day, Indoor Cycling instructor by night””. Yep, I’m one of those peppy instructors who make you climb, sprint, and dash for your life in spin class, and I’m a better designer doing all of it.” “”

“WordPress, Design, and You”” is a roadmap to the User Experience (UX) design process. It’s where we look at the stages of a web design project and the activities that happen per stage.

Throughout the talk, I’ll be relating Jesse James Garrett’s 5 planes of user experience – strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface – to the Continue reading “Jesse Emmanuel Rosario – Featured Speaker”

Shannon comes to us from Mont-Saint-Hilaire in Quebec. She is speaking Saturday afternoon at 3pm in Rm 129. Her topic is about new CSS toys for theme development. Let’s get to know her…

I’m a writer, open source web developer, sewist, hiker, modern quilter, slam poet, and mum of 4.

The W3C’s CSS Working Group is introducing a ton of new CSS modules in 2017. These include CSS Filters, Feature Queries, Native Mixins, Grid Layout, Native Variables, and more! We’ll learn how they work and when to use them.

This talk is intended for people who already have a basic understanding of CSS and theme development. We’ll be looking at code, but beginners will be able to follow along. And there will be lots of links to outside resources so that you can learn even more on your own after the talk.

My favourite things about Toronto: roti, gelato, bento boxes, dim sum, latkes, spanakopita! Pass me a fork, or a spoon, or chopsticks!

Connect with Shannon through her speaker profile.

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Chris is one of our local speakers. He is speaking Sunday afternoon at 1:30pm in the Auditorium. His topic is on virtual reality and integrating WordPress. Let’s get to know him…

I‘m a huge gamer! I’ve been a hooked on video games since the Sega Genesis and I currently love playing online multiplayer games on my PlayStation 4.

When I’m not gaming, I enjoy traveling around the world. I love visiting new countries, experiencing the culture and eating their delicious local foods.

I’m a fan of all things Disney! I love going to Disneyland and Walt Disney World, my dream is to visit every Disney theme park around the world.

That about covers my non-WordPress interests! My presentation will cover the basics of creating and adding 360° Virtual Reality content to your WordPress site. It also explores Continue reading “Chris Yee – Featured Speaker”

Neha is venturing to us from Montreal. She is speaking Saturday morning at 10:05am in Rm 149. She is showing you how to give your site an SEO checkup. Let’s get to know her…

I am born and brought up in India. I am a Web designer and developer by profession and an artist and entrepreneur at heart as I always tell everyone. Other than working full-time as a developer I also do henna tattoos and teach Web and Graphic design. I like to work with non profit organizations and volunteer for causes whenever I can and learn so that I can build my own non profit organization for kids and people in need in near future.

These days I am also really fascinated by the art of marketing on Instagram and Facebook. I regularly learn and practice different marketing tactics for my personal clients, my own business and my hobbies. When it comes to Marketing I am a great fan of Ryan Deiss, Brian Dean and Neil Patel.

I have different hobbies such as arts and craft, henna, cooking, hiking and learning about marketing. I am a great cook and love Continue reading “Neha Patel – Featured Speaker”

David comes to us from Kanata, Ontario. He is speaking Sunday afternoon at 3:30pm in Rm 149. His topic is about creating community with BuddyPress. Let’s get to know him…

I’m a Digital Marketing Consultant based in Kanata. I have 25+ years of experience building and supporting multi-tiered server applications and telecommunication systems. My recent programming and consulting experience includes six years of working with WordPress. I dream about reshaping the shopping experience with WordPress at https://modshopr.com.

I discovered WordPress in 2011 when I was looking for a better development framework for my first public website. Since then, WordPress has opened up into a full web application platform. I haven’t looked back since.

WordPress is a great platform where you can quickly create a web presence, but do you Continue reading “David Mackey – Featured Speaker”

Ian is one of our local speakers. He is speaking Sunday morning at 11am in Rm 129. His topic is on how to optimize your site for high traffic volume. Let’s get to know him…

I grew up in Prince Edward Island and moved to Toronto in 2013.  I enjoy going to Jays games and playing softball on Saturdays.  The best TV shows are all from the 90s: Buffy, TNG, X-Files, etc.

For my presentation, I’m going to be talking about a number of things developers can be doing to improve the backend performance of their WordPress applications.  Some of this will be WordPress specific, other aspects will be more general best practices.

I chose my presentation because I’ve learned a lot about WordPress performance over the past year and I want to share my knowledge.  I was at WordCamp last year and learned a lot, and I’d love to be able to help provide that experience for other developers this year.

WordCamp is great because it’s so community driven and affordable for most people to attend. I really care about these aspects and it makes WordCamp a conference that I want to contribute to.

One thing in particular that I like about living in Toronto is Bellwoods Brewery.  Everything they do is gold.

Connect with Ian through his speaker profile.

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Andrea is coming to us from California and WC Central. She is speaking Sunday afternoon at 1:30 PM in Rm 149. Her topic is on how to build community. Let’s get to know her…

I’m a sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast, former English teacher, and wine lover. This year, I started learning to play piano! (I’m not very good yet.)

I’m going to talk about how speaking and listening help create community, and what that community does for the WordPress open source project. I’ll be referencing an essay by Ursula K Le Guin called “Telling Is Listening” from her book “The Wave In The Mind,” and talking about how powerful it can be when people who are usually silent speak up, and how powerful it can be for people who are usually talkers, to listen more.

If you’re curious about what kind of place the WordPress open source community might have for you, this would be a great talk to attend. Also, if you are interested in helping improve communication in your local community or heck, any group of people that you interact with, this talk might be useful and interesting. 🙂

I have never been to Toronto in my whole entire life, so I’m looking forward to getting to know the city! I love WordCamps for a lot of reasons: I always enjoy learning about how WordPress touches the lives of so many people, and I love meeting people in “real life” that I’ve interacted with online over the years. So whether we’ve met before or not, please feel free to introduce yourself to me — I’m very friendly, and I love meeting WordPress enthusiasts!

Connect with Andrea through her speaker profile.

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Christina is riding in from Calgary. She is speaking Saturday morning at 11am in the auditorium and Sunday morning at 10am in the auditorium. Her topic Saturday is social sharing. Her topic Sunday is an introduction to WordPress security. Let’s get to know her…

I have been working in web for over 15 years, and nearly a decade of that has been working in WordPress. Over the years I have become almost totally ‘location independent’ so I can run my business from anywhere and travel more, which is something I love.

I will be doing two presentations – Security for the Non-Dev and Social Sharing. The security talk provides easy ways to make your site more secure that dont require programming experience. Everything is done in the WordPress admin with the help of plugins. The social talk focuses on the variety of ways to link to your social accounts from WordPress, and why it may be helpful for promoting your content.

I chose these presentations because they are practical and useful for a broad range of WordPressers. Both are based on my own experiences, so its a great shortcut to learn from other people’s successes and failures.

I’m not from Toronto, but it’s my favorite Canadian city, and I love coming to visit! The diversity, non-stop things to do and great food are a huge draw for me.

Connect with Christina through her speaker profile.

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Adrian is one of our local speakers. He is speaking Saturday afternoon at 4pm in Rm 147. His topic is monetizing your plugins. Let’s get to know him…

I’m a part time student at the University of Toronto for computer science. I’m an avid track cyclist. I enjoy building things with my hands, nothing beats looking at the fruits of your labour in the physical realm.

I’ll be showing you the step by step process I used to create my own passive income generating plugin FormLift. What techniques I employed, and how you can implement them to achieve similar results.

There are millions of plugins with millions of purposes. It’s hard to stand out, and harder still, it’s hard to make money with it.

If you’re looking for ways to learn how you can monetize your WP skills and plugin development,  then I’ll show you sure-fire ways to create loyalty, trust, recognition, and passive income.

The thing I like most about Toronto is it’s the only city on planet earth where you can have an Indian restaurant next to a Shawarma place next to an Irish pub next to Thai food restaurant next to a MacDonalds.

Connect with Adrian through his speaker profile.

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David is trekking to Toronto from Ottawa. He is speaking  Saturday afternoon at 3pm in the Auditorium. His topic is Google Analytics and common mistakes. Let’s get to know him…

I’m looking forward to another curling season this winter.

After my presentation you’ll never look at Google Analytics the same way.

You will know so much more and be able to take constructive action that improves your site!

This presentation is for beginners!  We’ll talk about plugins, and how to make your website stand out from competitors.

The thing I like most about Toronto is being around other Toronto Maple Leafs fans.

Connect with David through his speaker profile.

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Make sure you have your ticket to #WCTO before they sell out!