Category: Featured Speaker

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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Remy is joining us from Montreal. He is speaking Sunday afternoon at 1:30 pm in Rm 129. His topic is on plugin release workflow. Let’s get to know him…

Outside of my WordPress life, I’m very busy with my very lively corgi, and my two cats, who all want a lot of attention.

I’m also a WoW & Hearthstone player, hit me up if you play too, I love to chat about it!

My presentation goal is to share the whole process we have put in place at WP Media to release a new version of WP Rocket. I’ll show how there is much more work involved than just development, the tools we use, and how we split up the tasks in the team to be the most efficient possible, knowing we all work remote. It should be interesting for any other team doing product for WordPress, or even for agency/team being remote to learn about new tools and different process.

It will be my first time coming to Toronto so I’m looking forward to discovering it a bit! And I love WordCamp to connect with friends and meet new people!

Connect with Remy through his speaker profile.

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Gilles is one of our local speakers. He is speaking Saturday at 2pm in Rm 147. His topic is growing a website building business. Let’s get to know him…

Prior to starting several businesses, Gilles worked in the corporate world for some 15 years. When not serving his clients, Gilles plays squash, reads, cycles, learns, goes to the theatre and travels. He has also been a music composer and producer.

His web building business is TrueConnectionsWeb.com. He’s also a video producer and owns and operates TrueConnectionsVideo.com. One of his personal projects is TheWisdomSpeakers.com which he started years ago. The Wisdom Speakers showcases wisdom vignettes of extraordinary, ordinary people.

Gilles is also currently working Continue reading “Gilles Gagnon – Featured Speaker”

Matt is one of our local speakers. He is speaking in the Dev Track (Rm 129), Sunday morning at 10 am. His topic is MVC in Plugin and Theme Development. Let’s get to know Matt a little better…

I’m a husband to Heather, I’m a dad of two boys, my son Kaelen is 7 and my son Mackenzie is 5 years old. Mackie is legally blind; so I’m a big advocate of accessibility though I feel like I have so much to learn about it. I’m a Christian. I grew up Pentecostal, but I really like picking apart my and other’s beliefs and I’m not afraid to ask questions or say “I don’t know.” My default is “love everybody equally” even if I do a poor job at it sometimes. I’m into so many things: model building, electronics; car, pro and home audio; cooking, BBQ (low and slow makes meat sing); I love Star Trek and Star Wars equally; I’m not afraid of what JJ Abrams and Star Trek Discovery might bring to shake things up; I love music and singing; I think I could be a voice actor, but I just don’t have the time to pursue it. I’m one of those people who don’t have a favourite anything; the idea is foreign to me, and I’ve only come to accept this as normal recently.

I love clean, readable code. But so many times I’ve had to dive into a plugin or theme to find out how to override some code and I find a complete mess of spaghetti code with logic and HTML all jumbled up. I don’t like it, and I don’t want anyone else to have to experience that from my code. I take you through my method of creating clean, readable, testable, well categorized code by using OPP and MVC within WordPress themes and plugins.

If you, like me, have seen some really terrible code and don’t want anyone else to be on the receiving end of bad code that you’ve written, come to this presentation. I won’t tell you that it needs to be exactly what I do, but more of a mental framework of what OOP and MVC can be in WordPress Plugins and Themes.

I live in Whitby, a small-medium town east of Toronto. I like the diversity of Toronto. That you’re no more than a 20 minute subway ride away from a community with different experiences, different outlook, different food – or it could be right next door.

Connect with Matthew through his speaker profile.

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

Joshua is coming to Toronto from Idaho. He is speaking Sunday afternoon at 1:30 pm in Rm 147. His topic is Sketches in which he shows you how to lay out a project (or problem) with simple sketches. Let’s get to know him…

When I was 16 I was hired as a lifeguard for the summer and was excited to take the job. However, at the same time I got offered a job as a graphic artist at a screen printing shop. After some deliberation I chose the design job. I’m thankful for that decision as it has helped shape much of my life since, including how I met my wife!

I enjoy spending time in bookstores, running, drawing, playing with Lego (now that I have a 4 year old son I can use him as my cover to keep buying them), playing old computer games with friends (looking at you Age of Empires 2!), and much more.

As a teenager I decided Continue reading “Joshua Wold – Featured Speaker”

Rodrigo comes to us from Brazil. He is speaking Saturday at 4 pm in Rm 149. His topic is Tips To Shield Your WP Site. Let’s get to know him…

“I started my life with WordPress eight years ago, and on the beginning like anyone, I’ve studied, tested and understood how it works this CMS and from this point I start to create my own things like themes, plugins and others.

I’m a nerd, software engineer, husband, father and curious about everything is around me, not necessary in this order.

Currently I’m a global speaker, teacher and WordPress evangelist. I’m a person very involved with the community.

Also I’m one of the organizers of the WordCamp Porto Alegre in south of Brazil.

Currently I’m Software Engineer and Technical Screener at Toptal.”

My presentation have main focus in help WordPress user in general, developers and sysadmins to Continue reading “Rodrigo Donini – Featured Speaker”

Conrad is one of our local speakers. He is speaking Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm in the auditorium. His topic is the launching of new programs in Toronto. Let’s get to know him…

My favourite thing to do is grooming; not mine though. I have just enough hair to cover my head and it requires very little care.

Growing up with horses, I used to wile away hours brushing them and talking to them. When Silas was with me (a black lab), I brushed him every day. There is something soothing in the activity.

In the more mainstream line of activities… Reading tops my list (a good thing since I’m an author). Walking, hiking, camping are near the top. I enjoy cooking and baking, but I do a lot less of it now since I’m single. If I cook/bake it now – I end up eating it!

I’m doing a presentation Sunday afternoon on the future of WordPress in Toronto. That probably sounds all official, but it’s Continue reading “Conrad Hall – Featured Speaker”