Here are the speakers that you will be hearing from over the weekend.
Andrea Kirsch
Andrea Kirsch is an entrepreneur, strategist, producer, and technologist with a passion for great ideas and making them happen.
Andrea is Chief Executive Officer and founder of MAKE Digital Group. Her skills for building brands and driving sales with a digital-led approach is impeccable. She has worked on national brands in a variety of industries for the top agencies in Kansas City. Having managed more than 150 website builds, Andrea has the ability to grow clients’ businesses through her leadership and strategic planning.
From creating websites, blogs, social media campaigns to public speaking and training students on digital applications, Andrea can help with just about anything that takes advantage of digital technology.
Andrea has become an influential figure in media, marketing, and tech. For more than 10 years, Andrea has been creating opportunities within the evolving digital landscape, including providing strategic consulting to nonprofit and community organizations including KC Women in Technology, Live to Bloom, and FolioMatch.
Outside of work, Andrea enjoys traveling, practicing yoga, sipping on chai teas, reading and relaxing with her husband and two dogs.
Andrea Zoellner
I’m a freelance copywriter and a content consultant at Automattic. I’ve helped non-profits, startups, schools, and big corporations improve their websites through the power of good content. I love wordplay, coffee shop hopping, and blogging about style and design.
Andrew Taylor
Andrew currently works for Pantheon helping agencies and giving back to the WordPress community.
As a former web developer, Andrew spent his time on large scale projects for clients such as AMC Networks, Frito Lay, National Van Lines and more. With over 8 years of web development experience, specializing in WordPress, he is a seasoned veteran.
Beth McKeon
Beth is a serial entrepreneur, WordPress hacker, and product design nerd. Currently, she serves as the Program Director for NMotion Accelerator in Lincoln NE.
With her startup, Kids Calendar, Beth participated in the first cohort of the Iowa Startup Accelerator in Cedar Rapids in 2014. Recently, Kids Calendar was named 2016 Kansas Emerging Business of the Year by the Kansas Legislature.
Beth has been using WordPress to test, prototype, and build products for over seven years.
Breht Burri
I am the founder of InfoDeli.com and the Domain Licensing Corporation. I have 25 years experience as a lawyer, entrepreneur and consultant in the areas of software development, Internet law, Internet marketing, web development, database design, database publishing, database development and domain name investing.
Brian M. Hilliard
Brian Hilliard is a popular speaker and author of the best-selling book Networking Like a Pro!
As creator of the program “How to Ask for the Business & Get Paid What You’re Worth,” Brian works with designers, developers and other WordPress Professionals in showing them how to get more business while still being nice!
Some of Brian’s work has appeared nationally in Black Enterprise and the Martha Zoller Morning Show – where his interview was broadcast to over 2 million listeners.
When not traveling and speaking at his popular ClientBuilder Networking Events, Brian enjoys playing golf, basketball and spending time with his wife and their dog Barley.
For More Info: www.BrianHilliard.com
Brigid Greene
I have been providing online marketing solutions – WordPress websites, blogs, SEO, content marketing, website traffic reporting, and data visualizations – for about 8 years. The data visualizations are often related to website traffic, but not necessarily.
I create data visualization solutions for campaigns of any kind – communities (with surveys), politicians running for office and organizations – with ForwardMyCampaign.com.
I worked with data and data reporting for about 10 years before focusing on online marketing.
Chris Brown
Chris Brown is the Founder and President of b.Legal Marketing. A former corporate attorney, he understands lawyers, law firms, and the legal industry and he created b.Legal Marketing after struggling to find a marketing company to support his prior law firm. His goal is to help lawyers look great online. Chris also practices law on a limited basis to support Kansas City entrepreneurs, freelancers, and startups. You can learn about his legal practice at www.venturelegalkc.com.
Dave Navarro Jr.
I am a WordPress developer for a Radio Group of 250+ stations. I am based in Topeka, Kansas. I specialize in back-end coding, cross site communication and mobile design.
Erin Thompson
I work with our web team to assist with the initial creation and programming of websites, as well as performing database functionality tasks and executing crucial security updates. I currently have an Associates in Applied Sciences for Web Development. Discovering a natural aptitude early on, I won the Scholastic Gold award for one of my first digital designs. Though I do not have many years of experience under my belt, I have a large number of successful websites that I have worked on and maintained.
Ethan Clevenger
Ethan is a web designer and full-stack developer out of Des Moines, IA. His background is in building custom themes and functionality fueled by the tool most appropriate – often WordPress. By day he works for web agency Webspec Design, but by night he contributes to WordPress core and plugins as well as other open source libraries. He writes for the web blog Finding the Forest and operates beerPilgrimage.com.
Frankie Jarrett
Frankie Jarrett is a full-stack developer from St. Joseph, Missouri who has been building PHP web applications and WordPress products since 2007. He is Senior WordPress Product Engineer at GoDaddy and loves the fact that he gets to work with WordPress every single day.
From launching his own theme shop in 2011, to building large-scale enterprise websites, authoring dozens of plugins, and now creating amazing product experiences on GoDaddy’s hosting platform – WordPress has always been at the center of Frankie’s career, and he plans to keep it that way!
Outside of work, Frankie is the director of music and worship at his local church. He enjoys being a dad to his son, Rivers, traveling with his wife, Gracie, smoking his own BBQ and yelling at the TV during games.
Jamie Smith
Jamie Smith is the Jamie in Jamie’s Notebook, a professional writing services company. Her background is in journalism and she uses those skills for a wide variety or client projects including blogs and websites. She is active in her Toastmasters Club and is in the process of becoming certified as a Coach through Future Achievement International. Jamie lives in Elkins, AR with her husband and four pets.
Jason Yingling
Jason is the Director of Development at Red8 Interactive located in St. Charles, Missouri where he builds custom WordPress sites. He’s self taught in the ways of WordPress. He’s currently got 3 plugins on the WordPress.org repo and is working towards submitting a theme. Jason is also a first year organizer for WordCamp St. Louis
Jennifer Rosenblatt
Jennifer Rosenblatt is a native Floridian living out her entrepreneurial pioneer story in the Midwest. Jennifer (@jennrosenblatt) is the CEO & Cofounder of MusicSpoke (@hearMusicSpoke), based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her previous business, Argyle Octopus Press (@ArgyleOctopus), won SBA and Chamber awards, and was acquired in February of 2016.
Jennifer cofounded MusicSpoke with her husband, Dr. Kurt Knecht (@kurtknecht), in the summer of 2014. They were one of only seven teams chosen to participate in the NMotion Accelerator Program in Lincoln and received a prototyping grant from the State of Nebraska. MusicSpoke is building the world’s largest marketplace for artist owned sheet music.
Jennifer is heavily involved in the startup ecosystem in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is an organizer for 1 Million Cups LNK and Ladies Launch Lincoln, and a mentor for UNL entrepreneurship students and the NMotion Accelerator Program. She is a featured speaker on startups, marketing, and entrepreneurship.
Jeremy Green
I started Endo Creative in 2010, a small WordPress agency that builds custom themes and plugins for clients. I am also one of the founders at Zeen101 where we build plugins for traditional publishers. I organize the Fort Collins WordPress meetup and have spoken at multiple WordCamps around the country. When not building websites, I enjoy spending time with my wife and baby boy, mountain biking, and drinking really good coffee.
Jim Grant
Entrepreneur, owner of Simply Creative Media LLC and Jim Grant Media. Helping small businesses Get Found, Get Social and Get Beautiful on the Web.
Kevin Killingsworth
With a storied background in the software industry, Kevin Killingsworth has worked with technology all the way from base electronics and embedded systems all the way up to the User Interface. Now a Code Wrangler with Automattic, he uses WordPress every day as he works on the WooCommerce core development team.
Kristin Falkner
Kristin Falkner is a WordPress developer who specializes in PSD to WordPress & building completely custom themes. She works with agencies all across the country and has done work for major brands like TOMS, Sony, Urban Decay, United Talent Agency & more! Kristin genuinely loves working with WordPress and getting the opportunity to bring different designs to life using it.
Marc A. Benzakein
Marc Benzakein has been working online since the mid-90s, starting as a Network Administrator for a small, independent ISP in Southern California and has been involved in almost all aspects of technology and business throughout his adult life (and maybe just a bit before).
In 2009, he started developing in WordPress, first for his own purposes and then for clients.
In early 2013, he got involved with ServerPress, LLC, makers of DesktopServer, a local development tool created for WordPress designers and developers.
Marc lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife, Jessica and (at the time of this writing) six children currently ranging in age from a few months to 13 years old. From time to time likes to blog about the adventures of his family and foster care (as well as other random topics) at http://www.twotofive.us. Drop in and say ‘hi’!
Marianne Worthington
Described as brilliant, awesomesauce, hilarious, and so engaging you will forget to eat your snacks, Marianne delivers a client experience sure to exceed your expectations. She is the founder of Work Warrior LLC, a company that helps small business owners build wildly successful teams. Marianne teaches business owners how empower their employees to do more, so they can focus on what they love to do…build their businesses.
For over a decade she’s been fortunate enough to build teams that have exceeded benchmarks, saved client relationships, increased sales…doing things most thought were impossible. By focusing on the tangible aspect of team building Marianne has helped teams make the seemingly impossible…possible. In 2010 she received her Master’s in Organizational Development from Avila University. She loves super hero shirts, sequins, selfies, and exclamation points!
When she is not busy being a pseudo super hero team builder you can find Marianne running around in the Lincoln startup world working on her new project Revo, a one stop shop for social entrepreneurs with a vision to change the their communities using smart business models.
Mary White
The owner of MWforDesigns studio creating WordPress Websites for small business partners. Supporting WordPress Websites.
Mary has been a continuing education instructor at Johnson County Community College for 3 years. She teaches WordPress and Adobe creative cloud products.
Hobbies are being a Crazy artist and a volunteering at Wayside waifs walking and fostering Dogs/Puppies .
Meredith Lowry
Meredith Lowry of Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP has the scoop on legal issues that affect bloggers. Meredith Lowry is a patent attorney for Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, LLP in Rogers, Arkansas. Her legal practice principally involves intellectual property, including acquisition of patents, trademarks, and copyrights for retail companies and suppliers. As part of this, Meredith has advised companies engaging in online marketing to ensure these efforts are appropriate and follow the Federal Trade Commission rules and guidelines for online advertising.
Michael Black
Michael began his SEO career in 1997. At the time he owned a business providing networking services to small businesses. A couple of his clients asked “What’s this internet thing and how do I get my business on it?” to which Mike responded, “I don’t know… I’ll figure it out.” After creating websites for them, those clients said “Ok, I’ve spent the money on a website, how can it make me money?” Mike again responded, “I don’t know… I’ll figure it out.” That was 19 years ago, and he’s still figuring it out.
Since his initial foray into online marketing, Mike has optimized thousands of websites while working with over 500 clients providing SEO, PPC and Reputation Management services.
Michele Butcher
Michele is the Accounts Coordinator for Valet. She is also the Support Guru for GiveWP and a Support Engineer for Yoast. She is from Carbondale, Illinois (the other, prettier area of Illinois. Michele is also the Lead Organizer of The Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup and teaches beginners WordPress for John A Logan College.
Nicholas Liddeke
Nicholas Liddeke is an instructional designer at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he works with faculty to implement useful and accessible technology for learning and to improve the user experience for students. Nicholas’ marketing experience includes national television and radio commercial production, Google AdWords partnership for recruitment advertising, and new media campaigns in niche segments. He now manages the web presence and quality assurance systems for UMKC’s online offerings.
Nile Flores
Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at Blondish.net, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design.
She also loves contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. She loves helping people and supporting Open Source projects.
In other news, Nile is a proud support member at Team Yoast. She also runs a 8,000 member Facebook group dedicated to helping WordPressers, called All About WordPress. Nile is also the 2014 and 2015 Community Choice Winner at the Small Business Influencer Awards, hosted by Small Business Trends. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user.
Rebecca Haden
Rebecca Haden is owner and Creative Director of Haden Interactive, a content-focused web firm specializing in WordPress websites, SEO, and strategic content marketing.
Rebecca Has been writing for the web since the 20th century, working with clients on four continents.
Rob Walch
Rob Walch is the Vice President of Podcaster Relations for Libsyn. Prior to joining Libsyn in 2007, he was President and founder of podCast411, Inc. Rob is Co-Author of the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” – Que 2006, an editors pick as a Top 10 Reference book for 2006 by Amazon.com. Rob was listed as the 5th most influential person in podcasting according to the book “Podcasting for Dummies” – Wiley Press 2005. Rob was voted into the Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2016. He has consulted on podcasting for Jack Welch, Senator Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, Noah Shanok (Stitcher), Tim Ferriss, and the Sacramento Kings/Monarchs to name just a few. He is also a monthly columnist for Podertainment The Podcast Magazine. Rob was Chair of the Education and Outreach Committee for the Association of Downloadable Media.
Rob started podcasting in 2004, and is the host of the award winning podCast411 podcast, where he has interviewed such prominent podcasters as Quincy Jones, Walt Mossberg, Colin Ferguson (Eureka), Ronald Moore (Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica), Phil Gordon (World Series of Poker), Larry Kudlow (CNBC’s Kudlow and Company) and Leo Laporte (TechTV, G4 TV). Additionally Rob is host of Today in iOS (iPhone) Podcast – The first and largest podcast about the iPhone – www.todayinios.com and also the KC Startup 411 podcast which covers the Kansas City Start up scene – www.kcstartup411.com
Since 2004 Rob has presented at well over 100 events on the subject of podcasting and New Media including the Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference, the US Latino Film Festival, the Corporate Podcasting Summit, The Association for Women in Communications 2006 Annual Professional Conference, Social Media 2007, Ad-Tech, Podcast Movement, New Media Expo, and Blogworld Expo. He is also a regular guest Lecturer at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. Rob was the Track Leader for the Podcasting sessions at the 2009 Blog World Expo – where he recruited 25 top experts to speak on podcasting.
In 2004 Rob received his MBA from the University of Connecticut. He also has an Engineering degree from the University of Dayton.
Scott Schaper
Scott Schaper is the founder of Unravel (formerly Revisin Creative Agency). Scott started Unravel with a promise of service. “We ask every new client, why they chose not to use their previous service provider and we hear the same type of answer over and over: that their “last guy” does not return their calls, can not be available or will not make needed changes.”
Unravel promises to be available to our clients to design creative digital experiences, incredible branding, provide training and education and to simply respond to client requests.
Unravel has a strong foundation of talented people, rock-solid technology and friendly service. Over the years Revisin has morphed into a one of Kansas City’s leading full-service creative agencies offering web services, digital marketing, print and specialized branding.
Scott graduated in 1994 from Kansas University with dual under-graduate degrees in Psychology and Business Administration. Scott lives in Olathe, KS with his wife and 2 kids and enjoys traveling, cycling, hiking and grilling on the deck.
Tabytha Rourke
Tabytha leads the web team at Lee Media Group in the programming and database functionality required to build custom websites. She specializes in creating highly customized WordPress websites and web apps. She has been developing for WordPress since 2009.
Zack Pike
Zack Pike is the Director of Client Solutions for Alight Analytics, a Kansas City-based Marketing Analytics agency, where he partners with marketers across a multitude of verticals to bring clarity to marketing performance and confidence in strategic decisions. Before coming to Alight, Zack spent time on the client-side in both big data analysis and marketing execution with Freightquote.com, Hills Pet Nutrition, and ATI ProCharger.