A lovely hello to more lovely speakers who will be at WordCamp DC!
Melanie Phung
Melanie Phung is a digital marketing consultant specializing in search engine optimization and content strategy, with a successful track record of driving results for businesses, education sites, and non-profit organizations. She has worked with brands such as PBS (and its affiliates) and the World Bank – to audit websites, launch content programs, lead workshops and, in some cases, grow organic search traffic by more than 500%.
Kelly Dwan
Kelly Dwan has been a developer for over 10 years, with the last 5 at Automattic. She’s worked across Jetpack, WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and now builds tools for WordPress community events. For the last year, she’s had a focus on modernizing existing workflows to use Gutenberg, and is excited to share the future with everyone. She is also passionate about accessibility, both on the web and in real life.
Adam Silverstein
Adam started programming writing games in assembly code, and eventually a CMS in Java and many websites before discovering and embracing WordPress. He is an active core committer and focused on improving WordPress core’s JavaScript. Adam is a Developer Programs Engineer at Google where he helps make the open web better for everyone by empowering developers. Adam loves long rafting trips, playing mbira, travel, taking walks and tending his over-sized garden.
Marissa Goldsmith
Marissa Goldsmith is a digital analytics specialist from Washington, DC. She works with not-for-profit organisations, governments, and SMEs on auditing and implementing digital data collection strategies, helping them to use the data gleaned from analytics reports in a privacy-friendly way to maximise donations and resource allocation. When she’s not elbow-deep in spreadsheets (and loving it!), her side-passion is accessibility.
Michael Dance
Michael has been building websites with WordPress for over ten years. He currently works as a web developer for the Motley Fool’s Global Tech team.
Eileen Violini
I’m a designer and developer of user experiences and interfaces for WordPress websites and products. With over seven years experience building WordPress solutions, I currently put my skills to work for nonprofits, organizations and agencies as cofounder at Sidetrack.Studio and wpBlockShop.com specializing engineering custom WordPress block solutions and site conversions for organizations upgrading to the new editor. Get in touch on my website beyondpretty.design, @itsjusteileen on Github, WordPress.org and WordPress Slack and on Twitter @itsjusteileen.
Solomon Scott
Solomon is based in Washington D.C. where he is a Full Stack developer at Reaktiv Studios. There he helps to solve and build solutions to suit a client’s needs. He has plenty of experience developing products from the ground up into functional websites and applications. When he’s not coding, you can find him playing tennis, practicing and coaching flying trapeze, reading comics, traveling, or watching cult classic movies.
Kyle Bondo
Kyle M. Bondo is dedicated to simplifying the complicated world of Podcasting. As the Chief Creative at Gagglepod, and co-host of Podwrecked, Kyle has been podcasting for 5 years, designed and produced several podcasts, and hopes to make a small dent in your podcasting universe by evangelizing the principles behind good podcast design.
Cami Kaos
Cami lives, works, and parents in the rainy city of Portland, Oregon. She’s had a love of WordPress and WordCamps since the last century, when she happened to stumble upon the first WordCamp Portland. Since 2013, she has worked at Automattic, as a community organizer for the WordPress open source project. In that role, she gets to work with WordCamps and their organizers from around the world, every day. She continues to write on an irregular basis at camikaos.com where she explores concepts from the plight of modern parents to mental health to marveling at the seemingly mundane. Cami is active on a number of social platforms but can be most readily found as @camikaos on Twitter.
Matt Kopala
Matt is the founder of SiteDistrict, a powerful & flexible WordPress hosting platform. He has a degree in Computer Engineering, and started off his professional career as a member of the design team for AMD’s first 64-bit processor. Matt is passionate about understanding and helping people solve technical problems. He feels that WordPress hosts should do as much as possible to provide good performance, security, and automation, so that you can focus on your business while your host takes care of the rest. He enjoys travel and previously spent 3.5 years backpacking non-stop across South America, Oceania, and Asia.
Micah Wood
A professional WordPress developer for over a decade, Micah has worked on sites for Fortune 100 companies, has released over a dozen WordPress plugins, is a frequent speaker at WordCamps, is a WordCamp Atlanta organizer, is a co-host on the WP Square One podcast, and shares his knowledge by blogging on WordPress development topics. Currently, Micah works at Bluehost and spends most of his time contributing back to WordPress.
Corey Brown
Corey Brown is the Director of Web Services at Knucklepuck (Knucklepuck acquired his agency in 2018). He offers expertise from over 23 years of designing, inventing, building, leading and tweaking successful websites spanning publishing, e-commerce, social platforms and user-generated content. He’s also a WordPress evangelist and enthusiast, working exclusively with that platform as a CMS. Corey is the CEO and founder of No Treble (notreble.com), now the most read magazine for bassists, online or off. Corey was the COO and cofounder of Squidoo.com, the popular user-generated content platform he started with Seth Godin in 2005. From 1998-2003, Corey was the CEO of Solutions Factory, a web strategy, custom content, design, and development firm based in the Washington, DC area. During the go-nuts-now, make-money-later 1990’s, Corey still managed to run the highly profitable web division of Another Universe, where he designed and led development on a contextual commerce platform. He also led business development on e-commerce partnerships with The Sci-Fi Channel, Marvel, and Sony. Corey was one of the first to use Paul Graham’s Viaweb, soon generating the highest sales of all Viaweb stores. Corey has been staring at a computer screen for hours on end since the 1980s (first, a VIC-20). To keep his eyes from crossing, he spends time goofing off with his daughters and granddaughter, playing bass and piano, and tinkering with his always growing list of new ideas.