Speaker: Ricky Blacker – How WordPress Changed My Life!

Posted on August 26, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Rick Announcing Ricky Blacker to our line-up of WordCamp Sydney 2016 speakers.

Ricky is a self taught web professional who found and fell in love with WordPress, and the community behind it while looking for a CMS platform to build websites for clients.

He soon fell down a rabbit hole full of plugins, themes and passionate WordPress devotees, which forever changed his life and has taken him on an extraordinary journey, filled with late night talks with equally enamoured Wordies and fueled by craft beers.

Ricky runs Data Guru, a small web design business based on Brisbane’s Northside, which develops sites for small to medium sized businesses, as well as doing Pro Bono work for not for profit groups.

He is a Co-Organizer for the Sunshine Coast & Brisbane WordPress Meetup Groups, as well as the Brisbane Web Design Meetup group, and was one of the amazing team who put together the Sunshine Coast WordCamp earlier this year.

In his spare time (not that he has much of that), he is a temporary Australian (motorcycle rider), plays keyboards and sings in a local Brissy band and tries to stay on top of the ever changing Web Development world.

He is passionate about sharing his knowledge of WordPress with anyone who will listen, and loves helping newbies find their legs with the WordPress back end, and show them what can be achieved with this powerful platform.

Ricky’s first exposure to WordPress was at WordCamp Sydney in 2014 and since then he’s been rockin’ da WordPress groove.

He’s going to be talking about his journey from newbie to Wordie.

You can follow Ricky on Twitter.

Speaker: Sharon France – Honey – you’re not even responsive

Posted on August 25, 2016 by DeveloperWil

sharon-france Give a warm welcome to Sharon France joining the speaker line-up at WordCamp Sydney 2016.

Sharon is a relative newcomer to all sorts of things including environmental advocacy and WordPress.

She has owned and run Looking Glass Press – a boutique publication design company since 1987, but has studiously ignored web design up until now.

Wanting to take control of the content of her company’s website and its design, she had a brief flirtation with WordPress in 2013, but wasn’t able to really commit, so the site stood untouched, unloved for three years.

Inspired by the people she met at a recent WordPress WordCamp (Sunshine Coast May 2016) and others at her local WordPress Meetup in Brisbane, she has grasped the nettle and has recently redesigned and relaunched her site.

‘Honey, you’re not even responsive’ is Sharon’s ‘good, bad and ugly story of go to whoa’. She freely admits she is still somewhat mystified by parts of the great WWW but is happy to share tips, hints and her ‘don’t do this’ list with anyone who is just starting out.

And no, you can’t follow her on Twitter because she doesn’t see the point (yet).

Speaker: Kat Slump – Making Free Stuff Work For You

Posted on August 24, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Put your hands together and welcome another one of our awesome WordCamp Sydney 2016 speakers Kat Slump.

Kat is a rising senior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where she is pursuing a degree in IT Innovation.

She has had experiences in a variety of areas- from development to marketing to design- interning at Interface School, Flywheel, and Apple.

In her spare time, Kat loves playing with her kitten, Swift, who happens to be named after her favourite programming language.

She also has a love for fashion and blogging.

Kat will be taking you on a whirlwind tour of all things free to bring together a killer website that can stand up with the best of the paid ones.

You can follow Kat on Twitter and Instagram.

Speaker: Andy Henderson – Website In A Day

Posted on August 22, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Introducing Andy Henderson to our amzing line up of WordCamp Sydney 2016 speakers.

Andy has been a web developer since the early 1990’s (Yes the internet really did exist then).

He has run an SEO Agency since 2001 and has been using WordPress exclusively to build websites for more than 8 years.

In 2008 Andy created a training business called In a Day which focuses on teaching complete beginners how to create and manage their own website – using WordPress of course.

In a Day’s flagship Workshop – called “Website In a Day” – guides people through the process of creating their own website from scratch (including setting up a domain and hosting). Most beginners are initially skeptical what they could create in a single day, but are invariably shocked (thanks to WordPress and a little guidance) what they can actually achieve.

Andy runs a number of Meetup Groups in Brisbane (with thousands of members) about Photography, SEO and running a small business.

What’s his talk? A Website in a day – can an absolute beginner really build a WordPress website in a single day ?