WordCamp speakers are entirely volunteer. They self-fund their travel and accommodations to speak at WordCamps all over the world. We are grateful for their commitment to the Rochester WordPress community!
Tricia Isham
Tricia is a web designer who creates sites for small service-based businesses. She believes every business deserves a strategic, professional-looking website, not just a pretty one. She goes the extra mile to help business owners get online and loves to come alongside others and help them learn WordPress.
Trevor Johnson-Steigelman
Trevor is the owner of Coaches of Technology, Inc., a company that provides classes on the programming of robotics and microcontrollers for youngsters. The company also provides technology training for adults, including iPad classes, Windows training, and Video Lesson creation. More information is available at coachesoftechnology.com.
He is also an Assistant Professor of Physics at Finger Lakes Community College. He uses his website, physicsthisweek.com, to help students at FLCC and other schools learn the fundamentals of physics.
Terri Parthum
Terri is a web designer and professional photographer. In 2010 she built her first WordPress site for photography and fell in love with web design. A business website is essentially a storefront and you want to put your best foot forward to attract customers and be easily found on the web. Terri’s own experiences with her businesses will help others who are getting started as freelancers.
Tara Johnson
Tara Johnson owns AlchemyThree: a digital design and marketing agency in Concord, MA. She’s committed to humanizing the online experience by way of smart design, compelling content and elevated branding. Tara’s been building sites with WordPress since 2006 and adores the WP community!
In her free time Tara loves to knit, ride bikes, hang with her 2 kids and drink the hoppiest IPAs she can find!
Sue Jenkins
Sue Jenkins is a fine art photographer, designer, illustrator, writer, speaker, and founder/creative director of Luckychair.com, a full-service web and graphic design studio serving companies across the U.S. Sue worked as an Adobe Certified Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator software instructor at Noble Desktop in New York City for eight years. Sue currently works as an assistant professor of art at Marywood University teaching courses in graphic, web, and interactive design. In addition to authoring several “For Dummies” and other instructional books on Web Design, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Photoshop including Web Design All-in-One For Dummies (Wiley) and Smashing Photoshop: 100 Professional Techniques (Wiley/SmashingMagazine), she is an award-winning Adobe Certified Expert & Adobe Certified Instructor appearing in several internationally renowned online courses at Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. Sue holds a BA in Sociology and an MFA in Photography and lives with her family in Pennsylvania.
Shanta R. Nathwani
Shanta has spoken at more than 30 WordCamps, mostly in beginner and content architecture talks. She was a professor in Web Design and Development at Sheridan College for 5 years before joining Weever Apps Inc. in Hamilton, Ontario a year ago as the Customer Service Co-ordinator. She is now the Quality Assurance Supervisor, overseeing the QA Department.
She blogs at shanta.ca and can be found on Twitter @ShantaDotCa
Shakir Ali
Shakir Ali is a Senior Systems Engineer at 10UP, having more than 11 years of experience in systems administration. While working with 10UP from last 3 years, he is involved in providing reliable, scalable and highly secure web-hosting environment for WordPress websites of its clients.
Shakir Ali is also a co-organizer of WordPress Community chapters Islamabad and Abbottabad (Pakistan)
Seth Gitner
What he teaches …
Seth Gitner teaches graduate and undergraduate students to think both visually and digitally so they can tell stories in new and innovative ways. Specifically, he teaches web journalism, visual news reporting, and multimedia storytelling, including such topics as interactive storytelling, web design and web development. Gitner, who advises the student journalists at the award-winning school publication The NewsHouse, also extends his reach beyond Newhouse via online courses and his text book, Multimedia Storytelling for Digital Communicators in a Multiplatform World.
Bio
Seth Gitner teaches multimedia storytelling at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Gitner has a dual appointment in both the magazine, news and digital journalism department and the visual communications departments.
Before coming to Newhouse, Gitner was a newspaper photojournalist and multimedia editor at newspapers in Maryland and Virginia. While at The Roanoke Times and Roanoke.com, he pioneered integrating video and interactivity into a legacy print newsroom. His video and interactive work garnered awards such as the APME Convergence Award, the Scripps Howard Foundation Web Reporting Award, the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge Award for most innovative multimedia storytelling, and the Online News Association Award for general excellence.
He is the former head of the visual communication division for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and a former secretary of the national board of the National Press Photographers Association where he is currently the co-director of the NPPA Multimedia Immersion Workshop held each May at Syracuse University. He has received NPPA’s Joseph Costa Award, NPPA’s President’s Award and NPPA’s Robert F. Garland Educator Award, and has also been awarded two-life memberships for his volunteer work with the association.
Gitner is currently under contract to write the second edition of “Multimedia Storytelling of Digital Communicators in a Multiplatform World,” a textbook he published in fall 2015 with Routledge/Taylor & Francis. The first edition is currently being used in the COM117 classes at Newhouse.
Sarah Rowe
Sarah has a passion for increasing efficiency with information technology. As a self-employed mother of twin daughters and a resourceful self starter, Sarah balances her freelance business between designing WordPress websites and technical writing and training. Her husband is a self-employed contractor so she has plenty of experience to share about starting a freelance business.
Nick Adams
Nick is the Chief Operations Buff at WP Buffs which is a WordPress Maintenance and Support company. He loves talking about WordPress and business.
Miriam Goldman
Miriam is the lead developer at Pondstone Digital Marketing, a boutique agency in Ottawa. She started playing around with WordPress for personal projects in 2009, and for professional projects two years later. Miriam is also one of the co-organizers for WordCamp Ottawa, and recently begun the re-launch of Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa. She also speaks at various WordCamps across North America.
Outside of her web development life, she is an instructor at her local karate dojo, plays clarinet in a community band, and also competes in the pro-am categories in international latin ballroom dance.
Mikey Veenstra
Mikey is a researcher, writer, and speaker who specializes in malware identification and taxonomy. He is passionate about information security, data privacy, and the open source community. He holds a GWAPT certification and is a member of the GIAC Advisory Board.
As a Threat Analyst at Defiant, Mikey analyzes threat intelligence in order to provide up-to-date malware signatures and firewall rules to Wordfence users worldwide. Outside of his work he enjoys tabletop gaming and cooking, and dreams of starting a nonprofit to make DFIR more accessible to charities.
Find Mikey on Twitter at @heyitsmikeyv.
Michelle Hayes
Michelle Hayes began working with WordPress about two years ago. What started as a self-imposed challenge to beat a developer’s $6k quote turned into a passion for building websites with increasing complexity, without developer help or coding experience. Michelle shares her love for Gravity Forms and all of its capabilities at builtwithgravity.com.
Michelle Ames
Michelle completed her MBA in Marketing, E-Commerce and Information Systems from the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business. She has over twenty years of experience in higher education; ten years owning a web design and marketing company; and currently serves as the Head of Customer Success for Impress.org (developers of GiveWP.com and WPBusinessReviews.com).
Michelle is a veteran of public speaking. She’s been an instructor for a wide variety of topics including Using Quantitative Data Analysis Software, Meditative Drawing, Intro to WordPress, and Marketing for Massage Therapy. Michelle speaks at conferences all over North America. You can find many of them recorded on WordPress.tv including “Little Things That Make a Big Difference” and “Hidden Features of WordPress Revealed,” as well as panel discussions on marketing and women in technology.
Michelle is the author “A Good Firm Handshake (and other essential business tips)” available on Amazon.com.
Say hi to Michelle on Twitter at @michelleames and check out her website at clickhappydesigns.com.
Matt Graham
A seasoned coder and a clever video and audio producer, Matt uses a wide range of technologies to bring even the most outlandish ideas and designs to life. His innate curiosity translates into exceptional problem solving skills. With over 10 years of technical experience behind him, Matt is an expert in both mobile device and computer development.
Even before he was a developer, Matt was using WordPress for his blogging needs, back when he was a “prolific” blogger, before it was cool. Matt has been developing with WordPress for 6 years, almost exclusively for 2 years.
Matt is from Whitby, ON, Canada and he is currently Co-Founder and Developer at Ywallit, a startup financial service provider and a web development freelancer.
Kathy Zant
Kathy has been working with WordPress for well over a decade. She leveraged her WordPress expertise to help site owners recover from hacks three years ago, and now helps agency and enterprise customers understand site security and how to get the most out of WordPress. She’s passionate about security, owning your own content, open source, beginners, and making technology accessible to everyone.
Ken Behn
Ken Behn is the Director of IT at the Southern Tier Library System, a non-profit agency serving 48 public libraries in NY state. Ken is a Dark Fiber/Data Center/IT Security guy and figured it sounded fun to inherit the backend support for a 50+ site WordPress VM where admins could do whatever they wanted. His goal is to provide access to stable and secure online applications his colleagues can use with the public libraries they support.
Joe Cartonia
I am a Buffalo native working in Virginia Beach as a WordPress plugin and API developer for BoldGrid since 2014. Technology (electronics, computer hardware, and software) has always been a major interest of mine since the first grade. I also enjoy traveling, motorsports, snowboarding, playing guitar, and spending time at the beach.
Jim Echter
@JimEchter – Jim and his wife Kathy run three businesses under the umbrella of True Creations. True Creations Woodturning (tcturning.com), True Creations Quilting (tcquilting.com) and Quilting by Mail (quiltingbymail.com). Jim has an extensive background in high technology sales, marketing and customer service. He has been involved in several start-up companies but now follows his passion with his woodworking. Jim has a MS – Service Innovation and Leadership from RIT. He and his wife live in Penfield, NY and they have two adult children.
Erika Jenns
Erika Jenns is the Engagement Consultant for the Southern Tier Library System (STLS), based in Painted Post, New York. Erika previously worked as the Scholarly Engagement Librarian at Herman B Wells Library on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, Indiana. At STLS, Erika provides support to 48 member libraries for WordPress website development. She has been a casual WordPress user for 5 years, but after starting in her role at STLS, she became responsible for the oversight of libraries’ WordPress sites. Erika works with library staff to help them learn to use WordPress; she leads workshops and one-on-one instruction sessions on getting started with WordPress, installing updates on existing sites, and making changes to content. Her goal is to facilitate the creation of low-maintenance websites that are easily managed by users with low tech experience, no coding experience, and no time to dedicate to website development.
David Wolfpaw
David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.
Andy McIlwain
Andy McIlwain is a Senior Marketing Manager at GoDaddy overseeing technical content and community projects. As a former web freelancer, Andy has a zeal for helping local small businesses work with the web. You can follow Andy on Twitter, LinkedIn, and his personal blog.
AJ Morris
Web applications developer and developer turned Product Innovation and Marketing Manager at iThemes, AJ Morris has a well-rounded background that is ideal in Open Source.
AJ has a passion to teach those afraid of technology but who use it daily. Before he came to Liquid Web and changed roles managing product for iThemes, he taught business owners how to get their sites up and running in a week. He speaks at WordPress events on a variety of topics from WP-CLI to Product Marketing.
When he’s not spending time with his family, you can find him tweeting at WordCamps, being a guest on podcasts, and looking for the perfect roast of coffee.
Say hi to him on Twitter at @ajmorris and visit his website at ajmorris.me.