Organisers

Hello! My name is Alex. I’m a product of the prairies – from a very small town named Vegreville. In fact, both my wife and I grew up there and first met in grade 4. Vegreville has the distinction of having the world’s largest Ukrainian Easter egg. Take that, world!

After living on Vancouver Island for four years, I moved to Toronto in 2001 to complete a degree in Jazz Performance at UofT – Double Bass (the cello-like instrument that seems to force people to say “Don’t you wish you played the flute?”). I’m active in the Toronto jazz scene (you can often find my group at the Rex), and have toured the country four times as part of my own quintet. We have three CDs, were featured on CBC, and are on a small Toronto-based label. As it turns out, being a perpetually broke jazz musician was the reason I created my first website!

I’m a freelance developer – creating my own custom WordPress themes, diving into the WP REST API, and developing small plugins.

Other things in my life include brewing my own beer, throwing various meats into the smoker, and wheezing around on my bike. Oh, and I’m going to be a dad in November. I guess that’s a thing too.

@alexwc

The story started from the 1st day of 2015 when I developed a WordPress theme with a WooComerce shop, then till now good things happen. Currently, I am lead WordPress developer at a local agency, and building WordPress community in my country Lebanon through monthly meetups.

Angela LaGamba is an experienced digital marketer based in Toronto, Canada. Her area of focus is on inbound, content, email, and social media marketing. She’s excited to be a part of the WCTO 2017 team.

Hello!

My name is Carley Cooper. Born and raised in London, Ontario Canada, I am a designer currently starting a Post-Grad program in Interactive Media Management at Sheridan College.

I started creating WordPress sites for fun at the beginning of college and by graduation I knew the web was where I wanted to work and play. I am a hobby artist, as well as a musician that loves all kinds of piano and jazz. I love the great outdoors as well as my dog who is my partner in crime with everything I do.

Nice to meet you!

Conrad Hall is a retired Master Carpenter and Field Engineer who has also authored eight books, performed at The Second City, and learned how to iron his own shirts.

He is the founder of CERIOHS (go ahead – ask him), a WPToronto Co-organiser and the Lead Organiser for WordCamp Toronto 2017 (#WCTO). He has developed a partnership with the City of Toronto doing economic development using WordPress as a foundation. This partnership also reaches out to youth to encourage entrepreneurship, development of coding skills, and the pursuit of careers related to WordPress and website design.

He coaches business owners on how to break free from the slavery their business has become to enjoy the freedom they have always desired. His coaching motto is Cranium Ex Rectum. He also enjoys the Toronto Islands, live theatre, cycling, and doing laundry. He’s also a wee bit of a cheeky monkey.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conradhallauthor

Twitter: @conradauthor

I was born and raised in Italy. Since I was a child I always loved drawing, I used to spend my time with coloured pencils and a few white papers. Today, I still love art but I prefer to use my computer instead of pencils. After a long career in graphic and web design I became a User Experience Designer and Information Architect, this means that I project easy to use and beautiful to see digital interfaces for humans.

I started working with WordPress in 2015 with my first personal website and, after a while, it became a job. I already participated at two WordCamps in Turin: in 2016 as a participant and in 2017 as a speaker. It was so wonderful that, when I moved to Toronto, I decided to contribute with the local WordPress Community.

Living in Toronto in a valuable and rewarding experience but, of course I miss home or, at least, what I love from home: family, food and my two and a half funny little cats. The half one is my neighbour’s cat that is most interested in our home then he is in his. I’ve always been a very sporty person that’s why I fill my free time with good, long hikes and Crossfit sessions.

On her fourth and final attempt at blogging, Daphne Boxill stumbled across WordPress and hasn’t looked back since. She, with the help of her devoted friend and writing partner, has also kept up the blog (RattyandMole.blog) for which they review movie trailers, answer burning questions and ruminate on things they hate. 

A fan of street photography, Roz Chast and Ladies Learning Code, Daphne is very excited about volunteering at this year’s WordCamp. 

When she’s not at a cafe people watching and writing for Rattyandmole.blog, she sits in a cubicle, bathed in fluorescent light, drinking subpar coffee, wondering if 11:15 a.m. is too early for lunch.

I’ve been supporting technology since doing manual data recovery in 1982. Five years later, I discovered you could get paid for it, and I never looked back. I spent 6 years troubleshooting computers at Hudson’s Bay Company, then founded Almost Painless Computing to do the same thing for small businesses in Toronto. I alternately describe myself as a computer tamer or rent-a-nerd. I’ve been developing websites since 1996, first in HTML, then Drupal, now WordPress.

wctospeakers@gmail.com

www.almost-painless.com

Before entering the world of advertising, I had been involved in the arts, from jazz and classical voice to some acting/voice overs. My creative bent naturally led me into advertising, having enjoyed the copywriting part of preparing radio commercials. This led to an entrepreneurial career; while working in fashion advertising, professionals were now able to advertise for the first time, so that became my niche market. I had a successful stint promoting professionals of every kind.

My family background in showbusiness instilled in me an ease for showmanship, presentation and marketing. It was a natural path. My talents combine traditional advertising with digital marketing. And within that broad scope is my passion for designing, writing, idea generation, creative lead and execution of all marketing activities. I love working with retail, fashion and professionals.

I have been attending WordPress meetups around the city for a while now which is what brings me to WordCamp. The energy behind my work is “moving people emotionally” with your message. My slogan is: Ideas That Move People. And that applies to websites and social media, too. Even more so in digital because if you don’t, the reader will bounce off rather than being intensely engaged. My interests include  jazz and classical music vocals, theatre and art, but I also find fulfilling networking and sharing with like-minded fellow marketers.

I live in Toronto with my family, and our four legged pal, Baby Roo – named after A. A. Milne’s storybook character Kanga-Roo.

Although I studied to be an accountant – and I must say, I have enjoyed a very rewarding career working for such multinationals as Nike, IBM, and Cisco – I wanted to try something new.

Since I’ve always had a passion for art – my dad is a fine artist – and technology, I decided to combine the two, and start learning how to design websites… enter WordPress! Nothing gives me greater pleasure than collaborating with business owners, and creating a standout website that attracts clients, and helps a business to succeed. Whether it’s accounting or web design, it’s all about problem-solving, but with a much more creative twist!

I’m very excited to be participating in the #WCTO kids’ camp event on September 30^th.  Please drop by and say hi!

Hi, I am from Mumbai,India. I came to Canada last year in April. I have been using computer when I was 3 and been into Technology since then.

Back home, I was interning as an Hardware Engineer cum Computer Technician who repairs computers and troubleshooting the problems with the Hardware. While studying IT, I changed my track from Hardware to Databases and Big Data and also I started working as a freelancer and built a few websites on WordPress and some really cool Software.

I was thinking about the next 10 years of IT on how is it going to be and which track should I take next, So, I changed my track again from Software and Web Development to IT Security and Networking.

Now I am employed as a Microsoft SQL Database Administrator in a small company and on side by side I am pursuing my CISSP Certification as well as a certification in Penetration Testing. I like to be part on any IT community and get knowledge as much as I can.

For the last two years, I have been supporting my husband Paul Bearne’s freelance WordPress business and am gradually becoming more directly involved in the WordPress community.

WCTO has been a big event for Paul for the last seven years so volunteering, giving support in whatever way I can, just seems like a natural part of what we do. Much of our commitment to WordPress rests on the strength and inclusivity of its community, so contributing to that community is very important to both of us. I am supporting Paul’s involvement, keeping him on track with speaker selection, his Contrib2Core session and the Happiness Bar and may also help with registration or as needed.

What drives me? The desire to make a difference each and every day, however small! Whatever I do, I do with passion.

My career has spanned a wide range of environments, but, the focus of my work has always been creating environments in which individuals and/or organizations can grow and change, and making connections – between people and to information. Essentially, I am a facilitator. I have also been called a ‘network weaver’, an identity I would love to inhabit ever more fully.

I’m more of a content creator than a developer, but, as a small element of wider roles, I created my first websites back in the 1990s and have been using WordPress since 2009, initially with a blog for friends and family when we emigrated from the UK to Canada.

I love living rurally, surrounded by nature, enjoy kayaking, hiking and just soaking up the ‘noisy’ peace!

A student for being a web developer. A Korean who came to Canada last year. I love to play with HTML&CSS. It is interesting that a few lines of code change the result

I was born in Hong Kong, and came to Toronto when I was 11. Toronto has been my official home ever since and I love it! Originally started out in this field as a freelance web developer, currently I work as a QA Engineer with a firm called Konrad Group, and I still do some web development on the side. I found WordPress when I first started web development, it was a requirement for my very first contract and made for an interesting challenge since at that time I didn’t even know what HTML/CSS was (insert sweat-smile emoji). I’m a bit of an odd duck in that I stumbled into web development, I graduated from university as a Mining Engineer, so this is quite different then my original discipline.

I have a big white fluffy dog called Pockets. He’s a Samoyed and I love him tremendously. I’m EXTREMELY biased and believe that my dog is the best looking, and also has a great heart. My favourite thing about him is his personality, he’s very gentle hearted, but extremely playful. Even when he’s doing things that are slightly naughty (if he jumps on you due to excitement, or nibbles on your sweater because it’s a texture he likes), you can tell from his face there’s no ounce of malice, it’s just because it seems fun.

I like to play video games and watch movies during my spare time, love to read up on new tech and try my hands on building/utilizing them, but most of all I love spending time with my girlfriend and my dog (if you can’t tell, we’re a pack).

A Web developer plus media guru writing about both on TheOpensourcery.com & ThePhotofinishes.com­. Also working on finding good WP PageBuilders, how to manage WP on Amazon Web Services, and making connections from WP to good BI tools.

I just arrived in Canada in late April this year and I come from France. My parents and my 2 sisters are still living there, as well as my beloved 3-legged cat Tiko.

I work as a DevOps engineer, so my daily tasks can for instance consist in deploying software to virtualized environments or writing scripts to automate processes. I’ve also been a software developer for about 8 years when I was still living in my country.

I heard about WordPress for the 1st time about 10 years ago I think: I was working on governmental websites using 2 different CMS (SPIP and Typo3), and it opened my eyes to the world of open sources website software that I didn’t know before. I finally used WordPress for the 1st time 3 years ago in order to create 2 websites: 1 for my sister’s business (www.lesgugussesdecarine.com) and the other 1 for my girlfriend’s portfolio (www.digitamag.fr). Since then, I’ve been amazed by WordPress’ ability to be highly extensible while keeping it really simple to use. And when I heard about the WordCamp taking place in Toronto, I didn’t think twice before offering my help!

Aside from my work, I really like to spend my spare time away from technology so as to revitalize myself. I love nature and animals, so I enjoy hiking, canoeing and all this kind of outdoor activities. I’m also a huge fan of music, and I started to learn playing electric guitar this year, and I’m really interested in trying to play other instruments like cajon drum or ukulele for instance.

Catalyst. Co-Founder @ wptestdrive.com – Co-Founder @ canopymedia.ca – Partner @ mudtownrecords.com – Father to 5. Musician. Outdoor Activist. Vintage Land Cruiser. Future Biodiesel Developer. I Am Here Now as often as possible. Thankful for the opportunity to practice gratitude and contentment every day.

Kiera is a software developer and business owner (AKA Chief Geek) of Wiley Solutions in Toronto, Ontario.  Specializing in business applications and automation, she builds web solutions for businesses.   She also has taught WordPress in a college environment.

Kiera discovered WordPress in 2007, as an administrator and has been building on it ever since.  She frequents WordCamps and has spoken at them several times on multiple topics.  She has built WordPress plugins and themes for a wide variety of purposes including teaching, business intelligence and automation.

When not coding, you will find Kiera riding her motorcycle, photographing the world, and hanging out with friends, cooking and, sometimes, practicing sign language.

I’m a newborn in the WP world, squelched out when i attempted to create a website for my just-as-newly-born business.

As you can guess, that site has been sitting like a certain POTUS-in-the-White-House — but much quieter, nicer and prettier 😀 — so i thought i’d jump head-first into the WP community, volunteer at WordCamp TO and learn by osmosis.

Looking forward to meeting everyone, helping out and having fun!

Went from small town – Peterborough, Ont. to larger – London ont to attend University of Western Ontario and received a degree in Psychology.  Moved to London England for a few years and used my degree working in the Psychology dept. of a maximun security prison in central London.  An interesting experience indeed!

Moved back to Toronto and have been here ever since.

From office admin to holistic practice – colon therapy, reflexology and hypnotherapy and NLP.  Love having my own business.  A friend introduced me to computers and it has been a learning journey ever since.

I studied WordPress and love it – created my own site for my business.  I appreciate the WordPress meetups in Toronto – great sense of community and opportunity to keep learning.  Have been volunteering for WordCamp Toronto for 3 years.  WordCamp is a great experience for young and old to share, teach, and communicate with each other.  I am looking forward to WordCamp 17!

I am from Croatia with family in Peru. I speak 3 languages…English, Spanish and Croatian. My Klingon and Romulan are out of practic. Based out of Scarborough, Canada. I have worked out of a few European countries in the past.

My WordPress story started on July 2006, so WordPress 2.0. Currently I work with small businesses and non-profits. I have written articles on technology, including WordPress. I appeared on TV and Radio over the years.

My dream would be to have a 10 minute section on local news to talk about WordPress. My favourite show is on BBC called CLICK. I don’t have cell phone service. I prefer dogs over cats. My favourite Star Trek ship is the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-E.

Seasoned Marketing and Events professional with over 14 years of experience. An Entrepreneur, Leader and Growth Marketer with a proven record of success in Startups, Enterprises, and SaaS companies. Google Certified, Team-Builder, and Hustler that doesn’t think twice before getting his hands dirty to get things done.

I am a designer and developer passionately involved in the technology field. I love to fiddle around by pushing buttons, coding and seeing things happen…. so WordPress is the slice bread to my butter…my bread and butter so to speak on my off days. So joining this team of volunteers helps me feel part of the community and be around people who care about what I care about. As a designer I enjoy what WordPress does for me, development made simple and plenty of room to grow! ope to see you there!

As someone who makes a very good living from WordPress, I am always keen to give back to the WordPress community – and WCTO has been my ‘home’ WordCamp for the past seven years; volunteering/speaking is a given for me! This year I will be speaking, leading a Contrib2Core session and supervising the Happiness Bar, as well as helping with speaker selection.

I am a freelance senior WordPress full stack developer. I live and work in Southern Ontario, Canada, serving both a local and an international client base.

I 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, I created my first plugin, Author Avatars which now has 10,000+ active installs.

From this point on, the community, the flexibility and the velocity of WordPress has made it the platform of choice for my work.

I specialize in creating highly performant scalable, accessible and SEO friendly code (plugins and themes) for large WordPress sites that are often multi-site, multi-language, VIP and/or e-commerce.

I have made core commits in 3.9, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 and lead the virtual meetup, Contrib2Core. I also continue to support my growing list of plugins and the wider WordPress community.

Retired but enjoying a second life in the WordPress world, learning to develop websites. Two years of WordPress learning done, more to come. Primarily a front-ender.

Avid needleworker.. Learning Minecraft from my granddaughter. Provide encouragement to girl coders and kids generally anytime!

WordPress Origin Story

Post retirement from IT management at a major Canadian bank, I was looking for ways to go back to more hands on IT work (sooo much better than managing!). Tried playing with Python but life is too short to become a full stack developer.

Pre-retirement I had spent my darkest moments working on the concept for trickswithsticks, a site for beginning and intermediate knitters to grow their skills and for me to distribute my pattern designs. Found WordPress and the great Toronto WordPress community. Serendipity! Now the question is whether I prefer developing websites or developing knitting patterns?

Peter is a Senior WordPress Developer based in Toronto. He’s been building themes and plugins for WordPress at least since Coltrane was released back in 2008. He lives in Kensington Market with his wonderful wife and two unruly dogs. When he’s not working he can be found on a sailboat on Lake Ontario or racing across oceans. Find him in the Happiness Bar during WordCamp eager to help you with your WordPress questions.

Robin has built WordPress sites, written their content and organized their navigation, search, categories and content for 10 years now. With an enterprise CMS background, he brings frontend UI/UX, information architecture and digital workplace skills to businesses of all sizes.

At times outspoken, rude, pontificating, verbose, intimidating or just plain obnoxious, he’s the kind of person you tend to love or hate. His only saving grace is his sense of humor and perhaps, when you’ve brought your glorious opportunity or gut-wrenching mess to him, that what really matters is getting the job done.

His session is SEO with Structured Data – WordCamp Toronto 2017. His most recent WordPress Meetup was WordPress Pros: 7 page speed techniques — the 2nd half – The Toronto WordPress Group Meetup.

Workspace Builders | LinkedIn | @Robin_Macrae

Seema has a Masters Degree in Computer Science with 7+ yrs experience teaching Computer Science subjects for college at University of Mumbai. Moved to Canada 4yrs back.

WordPress Developer from past 2yrs . Building web solutions for businesses ,writing content and designing site layouts. Besides that Seema is volunteering for many community services and enjoys being social at community.

Shirag is lifelong learner, teacher and programmer. Whether its reading about social implications of digital technology or its impact on health or learning/using a new programming language, Shirag is in his realm. WordCamp 2017 marks his first foray into the WordPress world.

WordPress has been a part of my life since I started a book blog in 2009. That blog didn’t last long, but my passion for development endured and flourished. I recently pivoted from the content side, having been a professional blogger and content strategist for many years, into full-time web development. I currently spend my days helping businesses troubleshoot and optimize their WordPress sites as Support Engineer for Performance Foundry, a managed hosting and development company. Attending WordCamp Toronto has had such a positive influence on my career, and I’m delighted to help organize WCTO 2017.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephspencer/

I graduated a design school, but my first job was the advertisement account executive. I made several advertisements and marketing plans for companies like Samsung and SK Telecom, which is a biggies mobile service provider in Korea. However, I am a developer now. Coding was one of my hobby, and it became my job. Because of my background, I like to make a beautiful and well-organized applications.

I am pretty sure I am the first Korean professional WordPress developer. It was a version 2.8 when my company started developing WordPress for our clients. I have contributed several WordPress plugins https://profiles.wordpress.org/sujin2f#content-plugins as well. Most of them are outdated because (life is not easy) and I am more interested on React recently. My website http://sujinc.com/ is developed with React + WP REST API.

Photography is also one of my hobby. I am happy with contributions for the WPTO with my photos. Make big smile when you see me in WPTO!