Alain Schlesser
WordPress is planning to raise its minimum PHP version requirement and if all goes according to plan, we will have a required minimum of PHP 7.2+ for December 2019.
Alain says: “Few WordPress plugin developers currently know how to make the best use of the language features that PHP 7.2+ provides. That’s why I worked on a new open source plugin boilerplate that provides you with a robust, strictly typed OOP framework and incorporates a lot of applied best practices.”
In this session, he will introduce this new boilerplate and go into the details of why this can improve your plugin code and reduce its maintenance cost in the long run.
Alain contributes to Make WordPress core, WP-CLI and Polyglots teams, and is a MeetUp Organiser.
Alison Rothwell
A former charity and government press officer, Alison decided to take her offline marketing skills online and launched two web retail businesses. Once she got them to the top of the search engines she was hooked on WordPress!
Alison then created a website management company, WP Fiddly Bits, to work with small businesses to keep their websites safely up and running, fix those niggly issues that occur and enable them to keep their sites and their online marketing up to date.
WP Fiddly Bits has grown to a team of six based in the UK, the Philippines and India with clients worldwide. They work with businesses ranging from blast cleaners to soap actors.
When not buying domain names online ‘just in case’, Alison can be found walking her border terrier on the Lancastrian moors.
Andrea Zoellner
She is the Chief Content Creator at SiteGround and the lead organizer for WordCamp Montreal, in Canada. Andrea trained as a broadcast journalist and worked in corporate communications before trading it for a career in tech.
Now she spends her days developing brand messaging, copy editing and blogging. When she’s not at home in Montreal, she’s sampling the digital nomad life and documenting her adventures on her travel blog.
Anne Allen
Founder of Nustart Solutions, a small WordPress design and development company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Anne started creating child themes for the Genesis Framework in 2011 and since then has built up her WordPress, PHP, JQuery, CSS and HTML skills to a level where she seeks out projects which require extensive customisations.
My client base extends from local companies here in BC, to larger corporations based in the USA.
As a small company, she says she has seen the benefit of encouraging clients to sign up for monthly maintenance packages. She also offers technical SEO packages. She uses a combination of custom code, a JSON-LD Generator tool she created and Yoast SEO.
Bet Hannon
She has worked with businesses and non-profits for more than 10 years, helping them build WordPress websites, integrate other communication channels, and learn how to use digital marketing tools more effectively.
She is the founder and COO of BH Marketing, which designs, builds and maintains accessible sites, including membership and e-commerce sites. Bet is a member of the Make WordPress Support Team.
Bet lives in Bend, Oregon, US, and runs the WordPress MeetUp there. This will be her first trip to the UK.
Calin Don
He describes himself as a ‘perfectionist, language-agnostic day-and-night code tinkerer’, loving and hating WordPress since 2005. In 2011, he started building a complex infrastructure to host demanding WordPress sites as the CTO’s and co-founder’s of Presslabs.
Now he’s on a mission to simplify and open a scalable WordPress setup that powers millions of page views. He is a contributor to the Make WordPress core team. He likes skiing in the Austrian Alps, swimming and making road trips with his family.
Chris Brosnan
He is a self-taught developer with seven years of professional experience and several more as a hobbyist tinkerer.
Chris has a particular interest in PHP and developing for WordPress, and has shared his passion for both in different industries including the charity sector, travel, financial software, blockchain and property sectors. When not coding, he enjoys film, comic books, board games, blogging and watching football. He is also a part-time postgraduate student at Birkbeck College.
David Lockie
His interests are in WordPress, blockchain, and other associated open source and decentralised tech. David is the founder and director of Pragmatic – the largest WordPress agency in Europe, which he started in 2012. David loves working with the team at Pragmatic in delivering websites that add real value to businesses, and in turn enjoys sharing his expertise on this topic at international conferences, such as WooConf and WordCamp.
Last year, David set up Dcent – an agency specialising in blockchain development. Through Dcent, he’s looking forward to exploring the exciting possibilities decentralised technologies have to offer.
Felix Arntz
A Developer Programs Engineer at Google and WordPress core committer from Germany, Felix currently resides in Switzerland.
He has been involved in contributing to WordPress and the open web for several years. His efforts revolve around both user experience and developer experience, with adoption of progressive web technologies and modern best practices, and application of proper data structures and design patterns. Within the Make WordPress core team, he is a maintainer of the Multisite, Capabilities and REST API components. He has published numerous open source plugins and libraries. Before joining Google, he was a freelancer and part-time contractor for Yoast.
When not doing WordPress stuff, Felix spends his time producing music, playing the piano and soccer.
He also contributes to documentation, meta and plugins on Make WordPress, has been a WordCamp organiser and is a translator.
Francesca Marano
Francesca is the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround. She is part of the WordPress community team, organising meetups and WordCamps in Torino and taking part in many other WordPress events worldwide.
She founded C+B, a blog with an editorial staff of more than sixty authors offering daily advice for Italian female creative entrepreneurs. Now we are more than 80 authors at C+B!
Francesca is a passionate speaker and you can find her in Italy and around the world talking about WordPress, community, open source, women in tech, and small businesses.
Franz Vitulli
A multicultural and multidisciplinary product manager and growth specialist, Franz is a half-full glass kind of person. He is in deep love with the digital space and all the good things it makes possible. His day-to-day life consists of several activities, mainly including product management / research / growth, writing things up, and all things considered just getting stuff done.
He likes technology, openness, sharing the knowledge, wandering around, and he’s constantly looking for new things to learn. As an Open Source evangelist, WordPress contributor and remote working advocate, Franz loves sharing his knowledge and helping other people in the greater tech community succeed.
When he’s not in front of his laptop, he’s probably playing one of his bass guitars, rolling on a Brazilian jiu-jitsu mat, or enjoying a strong double espresso. Chat with him on the Slack Make WordPress and UK WP Community workspaces (@franz).
Graham Armfield
Working as a Web Accessibility Consultant, Graham runs his own company Coolfields Consulting. He works with organisations to help them improve the accessibility of their websites – testing the websites for accessibility, and advising the designers and developers on how to fix issues found. He has written detailed training courses on accessibility for developers which he presents on a regular basis.
He’s also a WordPress developer, and has built many accessible WordPress websites for clients – both large and small. He has contributed to the Make WordPress Accessible Team and speaks on accessibility at WordCamps and WordPress MeetUps. He has also supported the WordCamp London 2019 team in a review of website accessibility.
Outside of work you’re likely to find him playing his guitar, recording his next album or performing at local open mic evenings.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy
She has been organizing and promoting events across the US since 2010. With experience in SEO, data science, and excellent written communication skills, Josepha began working with MMGY Global, the largest travel and tourism marketing firm in North America.
She spent five years volunteering her time to the WordPress open source project.
In 2015, she was hired by Automattic. In her role, Josepha helps guide the future and support the ongoing health of the world’s largest volunteer open source community. This includes financial planning, sponsorship relations, volunteer training programs, and several diversity initiatives on a global scale.
She is also well-versed in conflict mediation tactics and has a knack for explaining complex topics clearly and respectfully.
Judith Schröer
As a digital business administrator, Judith consults freelancers and small companies on all aspects of online marketing and digitisation.
She has always had a soft spot for niches and small businesses because she likes people who follow their passion. She has gained 20 years of professional experience in small service businesses, mostly in the tourism industry.
She started her own business in 2015 and became a passionate WordPress fan. Since 2017, she has been involved in the WordPress Community (Orga, volunteer and speaker at MeetUps).
Luminus O.Alabi
A WooCommerce Happiness Engineer at Automattic, Luminus has a penchant for helping people figure out the easiest and most reliable way to achieve their objectives with WordPress, WooCommerce and everything in between.
Sometimes coder, abysmal designer, equal opportunities hug dispenser and wannabe social butterfly with a 6th-degree black belt in hanging out.
He contributes to Make WordPress core and the plugin teams.
Mark Wilkinson
A developer and co-founder of Highrise Digital, Mark has been using WordPress since late 2005, all the way back to version 2.0. He now focuses on building bespoke plugins and backend solutions for medium to large businesses.
He loves contributing to the WordPress community, particularly in the UK and you may have seen him speaking about development at your local MeetUp or WordCamp. He is a plugin developer contributor to Make WordPress.
Meg Fenn
She works as a web and graphic designer, designing primarily in WordPress for SME clients based in and around Sussex and the UK. She also loves helping business owners with their websites at regular, free drop-in #ShakeItHUB help sessions.
Meg’s company, Shake It Up Creative, specialises in rebranding and repositioning. She said she enjoys working with companies that are ready to take their business to the next level, value design and marketing and need some professional help to turn their ambitions and their passions into reality. She wants to help organisations find and communicate their purpose through design and marketing.
Michael Burridge
A freelance WordPress theme and plugin developer based in Bristol, Michael was the Lead Organiser of the first do_action day in Europe.
A WordPress Evangelist, who enjoys reading all things about it. He is a WordCamp Europe 2019 organiser and contributes to the Make WordPress plugins team.
Mike Killen
Author of ‘From Single To Scale’ and sales coach for marketing funnel builders, Mike helps funnel businesses attract and close five figure deals. He also wants to get sales training into the hands of every child and school on the planet as he believes confident businesses start with confident children.
Miriam Schwab
Twelve years ago Miriam stumbled across WordPress and it was love at first sight. Since then, she has gone on to found one of Israel’s leading WordPress development agencies, illuminea. More recently Miriam founded Strattic, the ‘unhosting’ platform that publishes Open Source CMSs as static and serverless, making them virtually unhackable, and exponentially faster. Five-time organizer of WordCamp Israel, regular speaker at WordPress meetups and events including three-time speaker at WordCamp Europe, and mom of seven.
She is an advocate for women in tech. She contributes to the Make WordPress plugins team, and has been a WordCamp and MeetUp organiser.
Pascal Birchler
A software engineer and WordPress core developer based in Zurich, Switzerland, Pascal’s been working with WordPress for half of his life. He is an avid member of the community.
Most recently, Pascal joined Google as a Developer Programs Engineer to help advance WordPress and the open web even further.
Living in a multilingual country, he is passionate about internationalisation and improving this area in WordPress to make the software for accessible for everyone.
Pascal is a contributor to the Make WordPress core, documentation, meta, plugins, WP-CLI and translation teams. He has also been a WordCamp and MeetUp organiser.
Piccia Neri
With a background in art theory, she has been a practising designer for more than two decades, working with cultural institutions and London agencies on global brands. Piccia led the creative direction of the design department at the British Film Institute, London. She was Vice President of the Chartered Society of Designers (UK) 2013 to 2016.
Piccia runs her own web and design consultancy agency out of Valencia, Spain. She educates ‘geeks’ on design and speaks at conferences on design topics.
Radost Dacheva
The Key Partnership Manager at SiteGround, Radost enjoys working on establishing long-lasting relations among businesses. She is a firm believer that people are the key factor in the success of any venture. Before working in the web industry, she built a career in international business consultancy and finance. She has been a part of the team of the largest program for Entrepreneurial Excellence in Bulgaria, providing startups with an early-stage funding.
Outside of work, Radost loves going to music festivals with friends, as well as building rocket models and discussing the latest trends in dinosaur-like costumes with her two sons.
Raffaella Isidori
With a career spanning more than 25 years in integrated communication design, Raffaella works with clients on all aspects from strategy to implementation. Her motto is ‘design is problem solving’.
Born in New York City, she now lives and works in the Italian countryside, surrounded by flora and fauna. Her online identity is Zetaraffix. She is a contributor to the Make WordPress design, marketing and polyglots teams, and an organiser for the WordPress Translation Days.
Remkus de Vries
From the Netherlands, Remkus is the Manager of Partnerships at Yoast and has responsibility for translations. He has been active in the WordPress Community since 2006. He co-founded WordCamp Netherlands in 2009 and WordCamp Europe in 2013 and has been part of both organising teams ever since.
He has also been a team rep for the Make WordPress Polyglots and informally assisted other WordCamp organising teams.
Rian Rietveld
A WordPress engineer who has enthusiastically worked with WordPress since 2009, Rian has a strong interest in web standards and making the web usable for everybody.
She works as a senior accessibility consultant and teacher for the digital agency Level Level. In her free time you can find her working in her garden.
Ronald Gijsel
A full time WordPress user managing his company, Webbees, Ronald also provides consultancy services to a variety of designers and copywriters. He mainly specialises in eCommerce, SEO and Adwords within the world of WordPress.
He co-hosts the Cheltenham WordPress Meetup and is the Volunteers Manager for WordCamp Bristol 2019. He also contributes on Make WordPress translations. Before getting involved with WordPress, he used to own an Italian Restaurant for nine years.
Ross Wintle
A freelance software developer, Ross helps organisations use technology to make the world better. He has a computer science degree, and a background in formal software specification and engineering. He previously worked in aerospace where he developed and tested safety critical software for flying machines – “float: left;” is a bit less scary!
He is a dad and a cyclist and he loves working with both people and code. He is a contributor to the Make WordPress core and plugins teams.
Ruth Raventós
She is one of the co-founders and CEO of Nelio Software, a startup focused on delivering WordPress-based services.
Before founding Nelio, she had worked in both the business world and at the University. She has been a University Lecturer at Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Vice-Dean for Corporate Relations of the Barcelona School of Informatics, and Associate Lecturer at ESADE.
Sabrina Zeidan
A fan of WordPress since 2010, Sabrina is fond of scaling the networks of websites with WordPress Multisite and performance optimization. She focuses on making WordPress websites faster as a part of WP Media team.
She is a WordCamp volunteer and a contributor to Make WordPress polyglots and plugins teams.
Sami Keijonen
Front-end engineer at @10up. Sami builds web and digital products with accessibility in mind.
He is a member of the Make WordPress Accessibility Team, a contributor to core, meta, theme and plugins teams. He is a translation editor and contributor to polyglots. He has been both a WordCamp and MeetUp organiser.
Sarah Semark
A designer, developer and world-traveller, Sarah ran a freelance design work business for eight years. She now works for Automattic, where she works on new products using emerging technologies.
She lives in Scotland in a small flat with very tall ceilings, but she can often be found in other parts of the world, tapping away anywhere there’s a power outlet – from ramshackle Soviet sleeper trains to a hut in the Amazon. When she’s not busy making things, Sarah likes obsessing on typography, collecting impractical footwear and exploring new places.
Sarah contributes to Make WordPress core, plugins, theme review and WordPress.TV teams.
Sean Gilroy
He co-created the BBC’s Neurodiversity initiative, CAPE (Creating a Positive Environment) in 2014 to improve awareness of hidden conditions such as Autism Spectrum Condition, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and ADHD. The initiative has since produced interactive films, VR experiences, workshops, and accessible environment guidelines aimed toward improving employment opportunities for neurodivergent people.
Currently part of the BBC’s R&D team, Sean now leads the team bringing this experience to developing ideas around Cognitive Design, a new framework for design with Neurodiversity at its heart.
Simona Simionato
She works as a digital consultant, digital mentor, trainer and coach. Practical and versatile, Simona’s degree in statistics fuels her curiosity in the future, having taught her that there are always certain probabilities.
Simona is an active member of the WordPress community. She has been an organiser of WordCamp Milan for three years, is a speaker and a member of the ‘Diversity Outreach Speakers’ programme.
She also contributes to the Make WordPress polyglots team.
Tammie Lister
Working for Automattic as an experience producer, Tammie’s role is donated to the WordPress.org project full time.
Her background is varied and includes psychology, design, development and user experience. She is passionate about open source and community.
She has organised WordCamps and is a contributor on many Make WordPress Teams, including core, design, meta, theme review and plugins.
Tess Coughlan-Allen
A writer who is passionate about communicating ideas in creative ways, Tess works as Marketing Manager for Mind Doodle. The company helps people globally use creative thinking and visual task management.
She is active in the WordPress community and is leading the Communication Team for WordCamp Europe 2019. Tess co-organised the first do_action hackathon to take place in Europe, was a previous co-organiser of the monthly Bristol WordPress People MeetUps and supported the inaugural WordCamp Bristol. Tess was winner of the GoDaddy Pro scholarship for Women in Tech in 2017, in partnership with Campaign.
During her free time, you will find Tess writing, making music, staying active (in any way, from yoga to flipping tyres!), attending music festivals with friends, kayaking with her partner or exploring the countryside with their two dogs.
Tim Nash
As the 34SP.com WordPress Platform Lead and Developer advocate, Tim is responsible for the management of the WordPress platform and keeping thousands of sites running fast and staying secure.
He is also known to give the odd talk here and there and when he can blog and appear randomly on YouTube. Tim’s own site is timnash.co.uk and he writes about everything from security to home automation with a healthy dose of WordPress and humour.
Tim contributes to Make WordPress core, support and plugins teams, and is a MeetUp organiser.
Tom Chute
It’s all about people – this is Tom’s outlook. His role at WordPress agency Pragmatic is about finding top talent to join the team, working with educational partners to inspire the next generation, keeping team mates engaged, and providing learning and development opportunities for the team. His time working on environmental campaigns, marketing and communications, and previous roles at Pragmatic including Account Management, has shown Tom the importance of working in partnership to achieve great things.
He is a previous WordCamp Brighton organiser and part of the city’s WordPress MeetUp organising team.
Tom Greenwood
Committed to sustainability, Tom is a designer and co-founder of the WordPress agency Wholegrain Digital.
He believes that design, technology and business can and should be used to create a better world that is truly sustainable. He is critically aware of the need to seek out the sweet spot between idealism and cold hard reality in order to drive forward progress.
Tom is a contributor to the Make WordPress plugins and has been supporting WordCamp London on sustainability.
When he needs to switch off, he will be found swimming in the sea or running around the woods with no shoes on.
Tom J Nowell
His day job is as a VIP Launch Engineer at WordPress VIP for Automattic. Tom reviews and deploy millions of lines of code each year for large sites at scale. He is also a lead dev for VVV.
Tom contributes to the Make WordPress Core, Documentation, Meta and Plugins Teams, and has been a WordCamp organiser.
Tomaž Zaman
When his first two kids were born, Tomaž moved to a remote part of what is already considered a remote country, Slovenia. As a developer, he naturally started looking for freelance projects online. He quickly discovered issues with some talent-matching marketplaces. After working on one for several years and struggling to land projects, he decided to would build his own, one that emphasizes quality above all else.
He invited his business partner Per to join his endeavour and six years later, they run a WordPress freelancer platform which connects thousands of customers – from freelancers and business owners to big agencies – with the WordPress freelance developers to work on projects of any size. He also contributes to the Make WordPress Translation team.
Topher DeRosia
He is a WordPress developer from Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, where he lives with his wife, two daughters and two little dogs.
Topher works as a WordPress Developer Evangelist for BigCommerce.
He contributes to Make WordPress core, plugin and Polyglots teams and has been both a WordCamp and MeetUp organiser.
Yvette Sonneveld
An all-round marketing professional, Yvette has helped dozens of business owners attract leads, clients and fans. She created her first hand-coded website in 1999 and her first WordPress site in 2008. During office hours, Yvette is in charge of the marketing for Level Level, a full service WordPress agency based in Rotterdam.
She discovered the WordPress community in 2014, when to extend her comfort zone, she travelled on her own to volunteer at WordCamp Miami. This one volunteer-type tourism experience encouraged her to continue to try new things. It has led to many exciting opportunities including speaking internationally, becoming a Make WordPress Marketing team representative and a WordCamp organiser.
Zac Gordon
A professional educator, with a current focus on JavaScript development with and alongside WordPress at javascriptforwp.com. Zac has many years of experience teaching at high schools, colleges, bootcamps and online learning sites like Treehouse, Udemy and Frontend Masters.
In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, one of the world’s largest hosting companies dedicated to students and teachers. You can also catch his free Office Yoga sessions on OfficeYoga.tv.
He contributes to Make WordPress training and plugins teams.