Amanda Giles
Amanda Giles is WordPress Evangelist and Enthusiast who loves converting people to WordPress. She’s been developing websites since 1994 and has been building WordPress themes since 2009. She founded the Seacoast NH WordPress meetup in 2011. You can often locate Amanda by her loud sneezes and it’s likely because of these sneezes that she leads such a blessed life. Follow her on Twitter: @AmandaGilesNH
Andre Gagnon
Andre Gagnon has been a software engineer for 30+ years and a WordPress developer since 2009. His roles include custom theme development and development operations. He gives back to the WordPress community by teaching theme development techniques at WordPress MeetUps (x8), and as a WordCamp Speaker (x1). Previous industries include: defense, semiconductors, 3D computer games (with 1M+ units sold). Also a runner, organic farmer, craft beer enthusiast, NY Times puzzle solver, and an avid reader.
Christopher Ross
I am a WordPress designer, developer, speaker, teacher, and consultant who enjoys long walks with shortcodes, functional arguments, and playing with other people’s APIs.
Daniel Santoro
I’m a late twenty-something (which is so weird to say) who has been working with WordPress for around four years. Out of school, I ran marketing and web for major international brands, and then left to start my own freelance company. For two years, I’ve been working at WooThemes and then Automattic with WooCommerce. Aside from code, I went to school to make movies (which I love) – chaotic, but that’s where I thrive. 🙂
Doug Vanderweide
Doug Vanderweide does terrible things to WordPress for MaineToday Media, publisher of the Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram. His WP work revolves around plugin development, custom post types, XML-RPC and otherwise hammering the platform into odd shapes.
Elisa Doucette
Elisa has worked for over a decade creating compelling content and writing for various businesses and publications. A frequent guest writer, podcast guest, and event speaker, her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yahoo! Small Business, The Huffington Post, Froemmers Radio, and The Chris Hahn Talk Radio show, among others. She is also a syndicated online columnist for Forbes.com with her blog Shattering Glass. In addition to her writing work, she serves as the founder and managing editor for Craft Your Content, an editorial and publishing agency.
Emma J. Gibbon
Emma Gibbon is the Adult Services Librarian at Topsham Public Library. In this role, she wears many hats: the collection hat, the library events hat, the social media and web presence hat, in addition to any other hats she is required to cram on her head as needed. When she is not hat-cramming, she tweets for the Maine Library Association and lives in a small house with her husband, Steve and their one-eyed dog, Odin.
Frank Turek
I’m Frank Turek, freelance web designer, as f.turek design, and WordPress educator at Portland Adult Education. I’ve introduced over a hundred new users to WordPress over the years and in the process have learned from them what they need to know to use it most effectively.
Gary Thayer
Gary builds custom solutions for clients by combining the power of WordPress with Hall’s own internally developed tools. With a strong background in HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, SASS, and responsive frameworks, Gary is passionate about providing simple and elegant solutions for complex problems. One of Gary’s professional highlights since joining Hall in 2013 has been his work developing analytics and tracking tools for e-commerce sites.
Jennifer Ecker
Jen is a principal and the creative director of shines & jecker labs, a web development firm in Portland, Maine. She has over 13 years of experience in digital design, doing everything from creating original graphic design to writing CSS. Her strength is her ability to master the latest technologies quickly to provide clients with modern, current designs. Jen spends her free time reading, running, and serving on the board for her local library.
Jesse Friedman
Jesse Friedman has been building websites for 17 years, and exclusively with WordPress since 2006. Since then he has written several books, taught 100’s of students as a professor, and organized dozens of local meetups along with a few WordCamps. He has spoken at tech conferences worldwide and has utilized his expertise as a consultant for small agencies and billion dollar international companies. Today he’s a proud team member of Jetpack at Automattic.
Karalyn Thayer
Karalyn Thayer is a graphic designer and artist based in Portland, Maine. She holds a BFA in New Media from Maine College of Art. She is currently a Graphic Designer at Mainely SEO and works with clients to create user friendly sites for their businesses.
Konstantin Obenland
Konstantin is a WordPress developer, and Core contributor based in Southern California. You might remember him from projects like Twenty Thirteen, the new WordPress.org Theme Directory, or leading the 4.3 release. At Automattic he’s is part of a team that contributes to Core and WordPress.org full time. He enjoys bourbons, craft beers, and good food—sometimes so much that he blogs about it.
Mel Choyce
Mel Choyce is a Design Engineer at Automattic, WordPress core committer, and co-organizer for the Boston WordPress community. She loves big typography, cold brew coffee, and craft beer. You can find her on twitter @melchoyce.
Mendel Kurland
Hey there, I’m Mendel, an intrapreneurial change-maker, developer, speaker, and teacher. I love the outdoors, so you’ll usually find me hittin’ the trails between tech events and code-slinging. I’ve also usually got my nose in a cup of single origin, Chemex-brewed coffee. As a GoDaddy Evangelist, I spend most of my time hanging out with developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and creative people all around the world to make sure their opinions and suggestions are heard.
Michael Ackerson
Michael Ackerson is the lead developer and co-founder at The Midnight Corporation, a software development and design consultancy in Portland, Maine. He has been developing themes and plugins for WordPress since 2004. When he isn’t helping people achieve their dreams and objectives online, he’s working to make the world a better place through open source software. He loves wet process photography, camping, and video games in equal measure.
Michelle Zimmerman LCSW
Michelle is a writer, photographer, and clinical social worker who has a passion for writing and utilizing writing to help others achieve a better quality of life. She posts peaceful photographs, poetry, musings, and essays on her mindfulness-oriented blog, clunkyshoe, which encourages readers to be their best selves, appreciate the restorative qualities of nature, and be a voice for good. Michelle lives in the Greater Portland area and appreciates dry humor and a good laugh.
Moira Ashleigh
Moira Ashleigh is a multi-talented professional and businesswoman, with 20+ years of experience in internet design and development, as well as managing small and large groups in both the non-profit and corporate environments. Through her work with clients she has developed a set of guidelines to help users to create dynamic, responsive, usable, and more secure web presences.
Patrick Rauland
Yoga monkey, minimalist, web enthusiast, gamer, poly, author, Product Manager for #WooCommerce at @automattic, and the guy who makes crazy sound effects.
Rep. Diane Russell
Diane Marie Russell is an American politician who serves in the Maine House of Representatives. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Sam Hotchkiss
Sam has been developing sites with WordPress for over 10 years. He built and ran an agency, then built a plugin business (in Bath, Maine) around BruteProtect, a security plugin which was acquired by Automattic in August of 2014. Sam now lives in New Mexico where he leads the team working on the Jetpack plugin which is in use on millions of WordPress sites across the internet.
Sam Sidler
Tim Archambault
Run a digital marketing agency in Ellsworth, Maine that serves roughly 100 clients across many different industries including healthcare, ecommerce, manufacturing startups, local retail and many more. Earned MBA from Maine Business School in 2002, BS – Finance UMO 1993. Developed first 3 iterations of bangordailynews.com as Online Manager from 1998 to 2008. Extensive experience in database development, project management, website development and marketing analysis. https://www.linkedin.com/in/timarchambault
William P. Davis
I’m currently an assistant news editor for news platforms at The New York Times. Previously, I was Director of Research & Innovation at the Bangor Daily News, where I used WordPress to build an open-source, complete digital-to-print publishing system. I’ve built WordPress-based for many other organizations and media companies, including for the Los Angeles Times. Note: This talk is in not in my capacity as an employee of The New York Times.
Xiao Yu
Xiao leads the data infrastructure group at Automattic where he’s responsible for keeping the stats and analytics systems humming. When not dealing with big data he enjoys big beers and trail running to rid himself of those beers.