Category Archives: spotlight

Speaker Spotlight: Melissa Roberts

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Melissa RobertsMelissa is a new and enthusiastic WordPress user who used the CMS as a tool to rebrand and rebuild a complex site. She’s a fixture of the startup community in Kansas City, so we wanted to get a little bit of her background for you!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: After starting off in politics, I fell into the non-profit world. Something that’s always been important to me–whether I’m working on a political campaign or in a non-profit role–is feeling like I’m working toward a goal that’s bigger than just completing daily tasks. These days, helping connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to grow is what gets me up in the morning.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: To be honest, I’m still learning a lot about WordPress. I’ve managed many WordPress websites over the years, but I hadn’t built one until recently. My “ah ha” moment–the point where I felt I could really control the structure of a website–was when I first figured out how to make the landing page I had created actually display as the landing page for my domain. I’d been struggling to find out how to replace that “Hello World” blog page with the shiny landing page I has created. When I made that change and my first real landing page popped up–that’s when I felt like I could learn to build anything.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Ask people for help before you ask the Internet. I can spend all day digging through help forums and sometimes I find what I’m looking for, sometimes I don’t. I think the typical developer ethic is to try to find information on your own or try, try again until you fix a problem. But I’m not cut from that cloth and I learn differently. I found a handful of people who were always willing to give great advice and help me tackle problems. I think the lesson there is, don’t feel like because you’re learning to code or build websites, that you have to learn the way other people have learned or have the same mindset. Blaze a trail and find a system that works for you.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Enterprise Center in Johnson County is one of the oldest entrepreneurial support organizations in KC, and our website looked like it. I managed a rebrand and website rebuild process that changed our most public-facing asset to reflect a modern look. WordPress was the tool that made the process possible and affordable.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Those who should attend my talk are beginners or people who are looking to build an attractive website on the cheap. Or those interested in hearing a design and UX based discussion. Or people who are willing to to make jokes during the Q&A session. I appreciate a good pun.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Eric Huber

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Eric HuberEric Huber is a teacher at heart and a regular presenter for tech conferences in Northwest Arkansas. We talked to Eric about his background in design and how he started working with WordPress.

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: In 1997, I attended a design conference in Little Rock, Arkansas where I wanted to enhance my skills in the old program, Quark XPress. Within a short time, I realized I knew more than the instructor. During a break, I found a class titled “World Wide Web.” After a decade of print design work, I discovered I could avoid reprinting ten thousand brochures when a typo occurred and found I could simply edit something called “HTML” and the error would be gone. The company I worked for began selling websites but couldn’t make it fit their printing strategy and dropped it. That year, I launched my first business with my sister that ran for six years. I went corporate for a few years at Tyson Foods and gained some organizational skills and left to launch Blue Zoo Creative with my business partner, Collin Condray.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: In my first business, the biggest desire of clients was access to update and control their own site. This was expensive and time consuming. When we launched Blue Zoo Creative, we were actually working on a product to automatically generate websites much like SquareSpace and other services. During the process, my wife introduced me to WordPress and the concept of Open Source. With a little research, we completely revamped the system and we never looked back.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: I think the biggest thing I’ve learned over time and would share with myself would be to accept the help of others even if you don’t know how to repay them. They are offering for their own reasons. Be grateful, thankful, and if you can’t pay them back, pay it forward.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: My talk: How to Stop the Robot Apocalypse: Put Your Site to Work! will be a combination of information, history, practical application and, hopefully, some humor. By marrying my experience in graphic design, research, advertising, marketing and WordPress, we’ll cover methods and reasons that drive people to engage. The end goal is to give folks information on how to keep their sites busy generating leads with words, images and plugins.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Beginning to intermediate designers and site managers.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Brian Goldstein

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Brian Goldstein

Brian Goldstein hails from St Louis on the other side of our humble state. He works in a shop of three, loves all the work he does there, and is something of a sports fan. Keep reading to find out more about his work and the presentation he’s giving in June!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: A railcar wheel nearly crushed me! I still work with my dad on railcar parts and scrap metal brokerage through my company, Gateway Railroad Dismantling (www.gatewayrailroad.com), but after that experiment I began looking for other ways to make a living. I discovered Team Treehouse and spent a few months just learning WordPress and other front end technology before landing an agency job. After about 5 months there I moved on to freelancing and have been doing so ever since.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: On my first job, when I had to handle a few legacy projects in other CMS. They got the job done but were so much more difficult to adapt, maintain, or train clients to use for themselves. The number one reason I continue to use WordPress as my platform of choice is that it is bar none the simplest CMS to empower clients to take on a site for themselves.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Be Patient and remain coachable. I largely succeeded at the second, but becoming great at anything takes time and repetition. Oh! and go to WordCamps sooner!

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: We have to remember that, as designers, we’re not really making products for clients – we’re making products that the client’s customers will use. The fact that the device landscape is changing and how pervasive WordPress is puts a special burden on us as WordPress designers, devs, and users to make sure what we make serves those people well. In my talk I’ll share approaches and techniques that make that easier.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Broadly – anyone can attend. I think beginner developers can level up, more advanced developers can learn different approaches to these problems, and designers can gain an appreciation of how their designs impact what we make.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Rebecca Haden

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Rebecca HadenRebecca Haden will be joining us again this year to talk about SEO, content, and collaborating in a distributed company using WordPress. We asked her a few questions about her work and her presentation so that you could get to know her better!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I started writing for the web in the 20th century, worked as an in-house SEO, went freelance, and now own Haden Interactive, where we build, optimize, and write for WordPress websites.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: We used to be platform agnostic, but we began to see that WordPress was better for our clients. It also allows us to provide the bells and whistles they want in a cost-effective manner.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Relax. It’s not as hard as you think.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A:  For Saturday, Get Out of Your SEO Time Machine: practical, ethical SEO for WordPress, with data, not just tips. For Sunday, World Domination — ahem, remote worker collaboration with WP, including the most useful plugins.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Site owners, publishers, and entrepreneurs who use WordPress.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Shane Purnell

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Shane Purnell

Shane Purnell is joining us for the second time as a speaker at WordCamp Kansas City. The first time around, he taught us how to write better About pages. This time? Podcasting. We asked him a few questions about his work and his presentation, so you can get to know him a little better!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I went to college as a business major, but switched to communication after falling in love with public speaking in my first speech class. A degree in communication is a tough way to build a career so I took my love for this “new thing” called the Internet and channeled it into a building a career in IT. After 18 years of 1s and 0s, it seemed to me that we were losing the art and joy of interpersonal communication.

I looked for a way to merge my love for the internet with my love for communication and decided the best way I could help others was to help them connect to the power of their message and then help them connect the power of their message to the world. I created Platform Giant as a side gig to train and inspire people to use technology and face to face communication to connect their message with the world.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: I’ve never liked doing the popular thing or doing something because someone else said it was the best way. I like to find out for myself. I intentionally avoided WordPress at first, choosing Joomla as my first blogging platform.

My aha moment was in 2009 when I realized I didn’t have time to blaze a new trail. WordPress was the platform many podcasters were using and talking about. WordPress had the best plugins and themes. WordPress was easier.

I realized my goal was to create content, not tinker with code. Moving to WordPress seemed like a logical choice if I wanted:
– A great looking site with
– The best plugins and
– The best support community

My contrarian nature still makes me want to see what Drupal is all about but I’ve come to know and rely on WordPress so much, it would be hard to start over.

…oh yeah and Kansas City has a great WordPress community 🙂

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Pick a direction and pursue it with reckless abandon. If it doesn’t work out, you can always pick a new direction.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Podcasting is a great way to build a content channel, improve SEO, and network with thought leaders, but it’s not for everyone. This talk provides an overview of podcasting, reasons to have a podcast (or not) and different ways you can quickly and easily incorporate podcasting into your content production.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: This talk is aimed at content providers who have just started podcasting or those who have been considering podcasting.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!