With just a few weeks to go before the event, we’re excited to (finally!) announce our first wave of confirmed speakers for WordCamp Toronto 2018. It’s a great lineup of WordPress talent from around the Toronto area and abroad.
We’ve also published the first version of our schedule, which will be updated as our sessions and timings are finalized.
This year’s WordCamp Toronto will focus heavily on Gutenberg and the future of WordPress. We’re working with all of our speakers to ensure there’s a relevant tie-in between their session and this central theme.
If you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, now’s the time to register!
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Andrea Zoellner
Andrea is the Chief Content Creator at SiteGround and the lead organizer for WordCamp Montreal. She trained as a broadcast journalist and worked in corporate communications before trading it for a career in tech. Now she spends her days developing brand messaging, copy editing and blogging. When she’s not at home in Montreal, she’s sampling the digital nomad life and documenting her adventures on her travel blog.
Andrea’s talk: Copywriting for better UX
“This presentation offers copywriting and communication tips that will immediately improve your user interface microcopy so your users experience is a more delightful and less frustrating one. The talk will focus on interface copy for end-users and note where elements can be edited with Gutenberg.”
Anthony Burchell
Anthony is a WordPress Innovation Developer at WP Engine and a core contributor to the Gutenberg Project. He spends his free time thinking of new and interesting ways to utilize WordPress.
Anthony’s talk: Building Gutenberg blocks – the Playlist block story (Case Study)
“In this talk, I will outline the story and what we learned from building the Playlist block for the Gutenberg editor. We will explore both the epic wins and failures in the course of building our first block. If you are learning Gutenberg or React and have hit road blocks in understanding the flow, data or tools available, this talk will clear the air on many of those issues. We’ll explore local development tools and design patterns used in block creation.”
Christie Witt
Christie recently audited the business processes surrounding the migration of 1,300 websites from HTML to WordPress. She specializes in corporate brand implementation across both print and digital platforms. Christie graduated from the Graphic Design course at Algonquin College, specializing in web/interactive design and motion graphics. Her hobbies are fine arts, traveling, and being a CSS whiz.
Christie’s talk: Migrating 1,300 websites from HTML to WordPress (Case Study)
“We migrated 1,300 websites from HTML to WordPress. Learn how I assessed the business processes beforehand, conducted a company-wide process audit and implemented improvements involving the client services, business account managers, sales, finance, marketing and IT teams […] Finally, learn how I would have evaluated the impact of Gutenberg on the migration had it been released prior to the project.”
Juan Pablo Gomez
From Juan: “NYC-based web designer. Built my first table-based site in 2004. Currently designing things for FC Harlem and New York City FC. UX Design Mentor at Bloc.io.”
Juan’s talk: CSS Grid, Gutenberg and the future of layouts
“Released last year, CSS Grid changes everything for the web and the WordPress community. It means that, for the first time, we can think of layout on posts and pages as two-dimensional and fully responsive. CSS Grid is not another plugin hack or bootstrap patch. Quite simply, it’s the solution for which designers have been asking. It is here to stay and right now is the perfect time to learn it.”
Mike “Demo” Demopoulos
Mike volunteers with The Joomla! Project as the treasurer of Open Source Matters (the not for profit organization for Joomla!) as well as serving on the Joomla! board. Mike Demopoulos has spoken on various open source topics including WordPress and Joomla! in addition to marketing related talks which have included A/B testing content.
Mike’s talk: Addressing Gutenberg facts & fears
“Traditionally, WordPress doesn’t make breaking changes. But with the upcoming release of the Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5.0, how can we realistically adjust both our attitudes and our workflows? […] In this talk, we will spend some time discussing the actual risk-benefit assessment of WordPress 5.0. You will leave with a better outlook — guaranteed.”
Rebeca Godin
Rebeca has been a WordPress developer for a little over 3 years. In that time, she realized that just creating websites for her clients was not good enough to help them with their business goals. She recently founded Geeky Chick Labs, a digital marketing agency that turns WordPress websites into digital hubs.
Rebeca’s talk: WordPress as a digital marketing hub (Gutenberg edition)
“We will cover plugins for reputation management, email marketing, social media feeds and sharing, retargeting, SEO and analytics. You will learn how to use plugins we recommend to get the desired exposure to get business growth.”
Ryan Moore
Ryan is the co-founder of Uncanny Owl, a Toronto-based WordPress agency. In building eLearning and automation solutions that are used on over 10,000 WordPress sites, Ryan has unique insights into the challenges faced when building complex WordPress sites.
Ryan’s talk: Building & automating WordPress workflows
“In this session, we’ll look at ways that tools can help you build and automate workflows to make your user experience as seamless as possible as well as keep your admin effort to a minimum. We’ll also look at the implications arising from the release of WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg.”
Thiago Loureiro
Thiago Loureiro is a freelance full stack developer based in Toronto. He’s been hacking and developing for WordPress since 2010. He’s worked on a number of marketing campaigns for high profile clients and made a core commit in version 4.6.
Thiago’s talk: Building my first Gutenberg block
“This technical session is for developers as well as users with at least a little coding experience. After a brief introduction to what Gutenberg is and what it can do, the presentation will show simple bits of code and demonstrate how these bits of code translate into a Gutenberg block.”
Troy Fawkes
From Troy: “I’ve managed and developed just under a hundred personal and client websites in WordPress over 8 years. I run a 7 person digital marketing agency that conducts SEO, paid ads, email marketing and conversion rate optimization campaigns on all types of sites, the majority of which are WordPress.”
Troy’s talk: Gutenberg’s marketing toolbox
“Can WordPress be the one stop shop for your marketing needs? Is it going to be there for you as you grow from a small business to a large one or will it let you down along the way? This session covers four critical digital marketing categories and how WordPress & Gutenberg support them through various stages of complexity.”
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A big thanks to all of our speakers for volunteering to share their time, knowledge, and experience with us this year.
We’ll have another group of speakers & sessions to announce soon.
In the meantime: don’t forget to register!