After reviewing dozens of speaker applications, we’re thrilled to start introducing the fantastic people from DC and beyond who will speak at our inaugural WordCamp DC!
Without further ado, let’s meet our first group of speakers:
Aaron Jorbin
Aaron is a polyhistoric man of the web. Currently Director of Engineering for Some Spider, Aaron supports the editorial and business teams on scarymommy.com and cafe.com. He is also a WordPress Core Committer that focuses on improving developer happiness and making the internet usable and enjoyable by everyone. He tweets at @aaronjorbin and writes regularly at daily.jorb.in.
Nick Croft
Nick “the Geek” Croft has been developing on WordPress for 9 years now. Currently he is senior developer for Rainmaker Digital, which you may know as Copyblogger. He has created several plugins for WordPress.org mostly using the Genesis framework as well as custom work for clients and his employer. Lately he has been focused on highly efficient code and automating all the things. In addition to work he has a wife, 4 children, and a puppy and lives on a quiet cul de sac in the Shenandoah Valley. He enjoys hiking, river activities, and time with family.
Alexis Findiesen
I live and work in the heart of DC, and share a home with my husband, dog, and cat. I’m a Senior Web Developer at CHIEF, where, in addition to development, I also train colleagues, improve processes, and contribute to proposals. As a former web designer, I started coding out of necessity and over time grew to love it. The front-end is where I have the most experience and am most passionate. I’ve also built and launched a few major rebuilds in the last few years. I’m comfortable in both WordPress and Drupal, as well as with making random one-off static html sites.
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon is a professional educator, currently working on the JavaScript for WordPress Master Course. Previously, Zac taught WordPress for Treehouse. He has years of experience teaching WordPress and JavaScript at high schools, colleges, bootcamps and online learning sites. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, one of the world’s largest hosting companies dedicated to students and teachers.
Deepti Boddapati
Deepti is a full stack developer at Crowd Favorite. During her career, she has implemented many advanced CMS features for large high traffic sites, as well as smaller sites.
In doing these implementations, she discovered that the biggest obstacle wasn’t a technical challenge but a knowledge challenge.
She’s now committed to bridging this gap by providing everyone with the conceptual knowledge to implement these solutions effectively.
Joe Casabona
Joe Casabona is a Front End Developer and course creator that works in WordPress…a lot. You can find his courses over at WP in One Month. He also hosts a weekly podcast called, How I Built It, where he interviews product developers and business owners about how they create.
Tara Claeys
Based in Arlington, Virginia, Tara Claeys is the owner of Design TLC, and a founder of Nice Work, LLC, producing custom websites for small and medium businesses. She works closely with her clients to create effective, clean and personal communication platforms.
In addition to running her own companies, she is a regular attendee at the WordPress DC Meetup and recently started and runs the Arlington/NoVa WordPress Meetup. Tara is also a co-host of the new podcast Hallway Chats.
Ben Balter
Named one of the top 25 most influential people in government and technology and Fed 50’s Disruptor of the Year, described by the US Chief Technology Officer as one of “the baddest of the badass innovators,” and winner of the Open Source People’s Choice Award, Ben Balter is a Product Manager manager at GitHub, the world’s largest software development network, where he oversees a team of product managers responsible for the company’s business-to-business and community and safety products. Previously, Ben served as GitHub’s Government Evangelist, leading the efforts to encourage government at all levels to adopt open source philosophies for code, for data, and for policy development.
Daniel Olson
Dan is the COO at DigitalCube, a WordPress solutions company with offices in the US and Japan. He lives and works in Philadelphia PA, home to the first WordCamp US.
His work includes building WordPress SaaS products focused on security and scalability, offering advanced security services through AWS, and providing managed web hosting support for eCommerce clients, large media organizations, and higher education.
Away from the keyboard he enjoys experimenting in the kitchen, eating everything, tasting all the beers, traveling to meet new people and helping with the family business, a pet boutique and bakery named, Amelie’s Bark Shop.
Corey Brown
Corey Brown’s expertise in designing, inventing, building, leading, founding and tweaking successful websites spans more than two decades and a host of site types, from publishing and e-commerce to social platforms and user-generated content.
As founder and CEO of No Treble, Corey built the most-read magazine for bassists, online or off. Corey also co-founded and served as COO of the popular user-generated content platform Squidoo.com, established in 2005 with best-selling author/speaker Seth Godin. Corey led Washington, D.C.-area web strategy, custom content, design and development firm Solutions Factory from 1998 until 2003 and prior to that ran the highly profitable web division of Another Universe.
Adam Warner
Adam W. Warner first discovered WordPress in 2005 and has since founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners. In 2016 he brought his passion for WordPress to join SiteLock as a Product Evangelist. Adam has since delivered his zeal for WordPress to 20 different WordCamps all over the world and presented talks at 13. In addition to WordPress, Adam is passionate about his family, robots and of course, life, the universe and everything.
Lisa Petrovich Smith
Lisa Petrovich Smith is a web design and digital communications specialist with over 20 years of experience. She is the founder and creative director of LPS Web and Design, LLC, which specializes in WordPress websites and design solutions.
Lisa loves working with new and growing businesses to develop their strategic vision and a compelling visual identity and web presence to match.
Lisa spent over 10 years as a Systems Consultant and Project Manager with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, providing requirements analysis, systems design and strategic consulting to federal government agencies including IRS, GinnieMae, and the Department of Defense.
Casey Driscoll
Hello! My name is Casey Driscoll. I’m a Full–Stack Software Engineer.
With 10 years of experience and a Computer Science degree, I respect UX + CI methodologies. As a Polyglot, I ❤ writing Ruby, JavaScript & sometimes PHP.
I dream of building apps in React + Rails + D3. Code wants to be Open–Source & Free.
Adam Nekola
Adam is the Senior Digital Manager at the Online News Association, where he manages dozens of WordPress sites spread across four multisite installs. Although he has worked with WordPress personally since 2007, he started professionally with the CMS in 2012 when transitioning all of the Pew Research Center websites to a multisite environment.
Check back soon for the next round of speaker announcements! And if you haven’t yet, get a ticket to WordCamp DC!