Speaker Mugshots

Samer Sultan

Brad Parbs

Brad Parbs is a core contributor, plugin author, theme designer, open source fanatic, and startup lover. Brad has created open source WordPress tools, themes, and plugins. Brad currently runs Snow Day Group, a Milwaukee-based web development, and web application development agency.

Drew Hart

Drew Hart is a serial Entreprenuer. He has expertise in taking business from idea to market. Drew spent 10 years working at Fortune 100 companies, afterwards Drew moved to San Francisco where he worked at a number of startups. Drew has an expertise in sales, product development, ecommerce user experience, online marketing, and online analytics. Drew recently moved back to Milwaukee, where he is now a partner at Snow Day Group, a web development agency.

James Barrett

James Barrett is a Senior UX Consultant at Magenic, a custom application development company in Minnesota. An avid user and evangelist for WordPress, he’s developed custom sites using the platform since 2008. He lives with his wife Alison and his three cats in Minneapolis. He thinks John James Jacoby is neat.

Scott Offord

Scott is a managing partner of Orion Group. He creates and manages search engine optimization and pay per click campaigns for our clients. He is certified in Google Analytics and in Google Adwords. Scott focuses on improving the visibility of websites in the search engines. Scott has a background in designing and developing websites using various content management systems.

In 2012, Scott was the lead organizer of WordCamp Milwaukee.

When he’s not optimizing websites, Scott enjoys walking his Great Dane, Squiggles.

Rose Fields

Social Web Dzine is the realization of my dream to be a work at home, single mom. Since 2004 I’ve been refining my business niche and raising four children.

Today I focus on creating customized websites for local businesses and non-profit organizations. I speak regularly at my Appleton WordPress meetup group and in the summer I drive to Milwaukee to visit the WordPress group there as well.

When I’m not at my desk, you’ll find me vegging out to an NCIS marathon with my kids – we own all the DVDs and can’t wait till the new season is out in stores.

Rob Martin

At 13, Rob Martin was paid $30 for his first professional program. That program saved his customer $3 million in the next year. Rob suspects he underbid that project.

30+ years later, Rob is still programming. He had a thing for programming stuff that moves, industrial equipment and once a race car. Then the Web happened, and Rob was hooked.

Today Rob programs in Python, Ruby, and Javascript, runs a bunch of servers, and presents on programming, systems/network/cloud engineering, and a limited set of business topics. He’s @version2beta nearly everywhere online, but his kids call him Rad Dad Dude.

Phil Gerbyshak

After 10 years in corporate IT, Phil Gerbyshak realized social media was the future of the world. 5 years later, he made the leap into his business full-time, and he hasn’t looked back since. Phil is the author of many books, most recently The Naked Truth of Social Media, and he’s written over 2500 blog posts on a variety of sites and topics.

Pete Prodoehl

Pete has been building the web for nearly 20 years, blogging at RasterWeb! since 1997, and making things his entire life. He’s a strong believer in the sharing of knowledge and has dabbled in the creative arts for the past few decades. Pete is also partially responsible for Web414, BarCampMilwaukee, Bucketworks, and Milwaukee Makerspace.

Paul Sanchez

Paul specializes in web engineering, covering anything from application development, web development, systems analysis and design, project management, and software architecture. He has delved into Java, C#, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, and Python, as well as being a self-taught agilist.

Paul is an MCS graduate from UW-Whitewater and has nine years of web development experience. He is active in the Milwaukee technology community doing freelance work, getting involved in the startup scene, and volunteering time to help make the Milwaukee technology community even stronger.

Patrick Rauland

Patrick spends most of the work day slicing and dicing code to create the latest & greatest WordPress plugins & themes at burnham richards advertising. He also organizes the Appleton WordPress Meetup and regularly speaks at the Web920 Meetup. Patrick loves to be outside, to run, and to practice yoga. His ultimate goal is to figure out a way to code websites while in a headstand or running.

Mike Zielonka

Mike manages day-to-day operations, and acts as a Web Strategy consultant with clients of Tuna Traffic. He spends a significant portion of his time coaching Tuna Traffic customers on web strategy and building custom client web presences. Mike’s expertise is concentrated in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, and WordPress Development. In addition, he is well versed in the development of PageLines, a leading edge WordPress Theme Framework. Mike is known as a detailed troubleshooter and problem solver. His enthusiasm and attention to detail allows him to quickly build strong relationships with his clients.

Mike is actively engaged in the Milwaukee WordPress MeetUp group as a speaker and as a learner. He has given keynotes on topics such as “Using PageLines as a WordPress Theme Framework” and “Ecwid for Easy AJAX eCommerce for WordPress & Facebook”. He is also a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM).

Mike lives in Racine, WI with his 3 dogs and fiancé. When not working you can find Mike enjoying a pizza with extra cheese, sausage, and mushrooms.

Michelle Schulp

I am a graphic designer and co-founder of Marktime Media, a multimedia design and video production company based in Chicagoland that helps small-to-mid sized businesses effectively utilize digital media. I was formally schooled in many aspects of design including print, branding, packaging, etc. Lately I have been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for my clients. I am a lover of WordCamps and the WordPress community, a WordCamp Chicago organizer, and love to travel around the country meeting people who feel the same way.

Michael McCallister

Michael McCallister has been blogging with WordPress for an ungodly long time. He is the co-author of WordPress in Depth (with Bud Smith) and the forthcoming Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules of Building Your Audience in 14 Steps (this time with Carole Jelen). He is the Document Architect at PKWARE and has spent most of his life in the greater Milwaukee area.

Mert Sahinoglu

Mert is a Chicago based Integrated Marketing veteran of 10 years. He has worked with over 100 well known global Fortune 500 brands, universities and hospitals. He is also a small business owner at Falcon Living Realty in Chicago Illinois. Mert has an MBA in International business.

Luke Summers

Graphic Designer – Front-end Developer

Luke is the head graphic designer and creative director at Sultan Solutions. With over five years of design experience, Luke is entering his senior year at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, earning a BFA in Visual Arts and Graphic Design. Luke is an expert with the Adobe Creative Suite, and is well versed in the languages of HTML5 and CSS3.

Luke Summerfield

Luke Summerfield is the Inbound Marketing Specialist at Savvy Panda, jInbound and Master Inbound. Luke is great at finding creative and unique ways to build brands and connect people both off- and online.

In addition to his B.S. in Marketing, Luke is also Hubspot Inbound Marketing VAR Certified, Google Analytics & Adwords certified and Hootsuite Certified. He is an active part of both the Joomla Marketing team and the Joomla Community Magazine.

Luke lives in Milwaukee, WI. and loves the Green Bay Packers. When he’s not working, he’s training and coaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Judo and Crossfit.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is the co-owner of WebDevStudios, a design and development company specializing in customized WordPress themes and plugins, and the author of WordPress For Dummies. As the “For Dummies” brand franchise author on all things WordPress she’s also written several other WordPress-related books. She’s worked with WordPress since 2003, and is also a regular public speaker on topics such as WordPress, blogging, design, and social media.

Lisa Ghisolf

Lisa Ghisolf is Gizmo Design, Inc., with 16+ years in print, web & email design. She created websites for Kraft, Allstate & many corporations & organizations. Lisa helped develop blogging software in 2005, & was interviewed by The Chicago Tribune as a blogging expert.

In 2008 she discovered the power of WordPress as a CMS & developed a custom themed site, leading to licensed templates & more custom sites.

Kimanzi Constable

Kimanzi Constable is an author who self-published two ebooks and sold over 80,000 copies, his first published book comes out in May. He is a life coach who helps people figure out what their dreams are and how to make them a reality.

He is a consultant who works with companies worldwide on how to effectively find their target audience and truly connect with them through social media. He is an international speaker who last year spoke at events in 10 states and 5 countries. His mission is to help people live the full and abundant life they deserve.

Joshua Alexander

I’ve spoken at Wordcamp Chicago in 2012 on WPMU and Plugins. I’m heavily involved in the Internet Marketing Community mainly for tech how-to’s for WordPress. On the planning committee for Wordcamp Chicago in 2012 and this year in 2013. Looking to help bring a different twist from the general tech talks this year I think sales funnels are necessary to every business and the presentation will be helpful for all attending.

Josh Leuze

Josh Leuze is a WordPress developer from Minnesota who loves making themes. He is the author of the popular Meteor Slides plugin.

When not building themes and plugins in his garage, Josh can be found doodling with his kids at the kitchen table, digging in the garden, or pedaling his bike around town.

Josh Betz

After graduating from UW – Madison — where I studied Computer Science — in May, I’ll start as a Code Wrangler at Automattic for the WordPress.com VIP service where I also interned last summer.

Jon Olsen

Jon Olsen has been a user of WordPress since 2008 when he launched Milwaukee Consumer, a website offering residents of southeastern Wisconsin tips on saving money. The success of Milwaukee Consumer spurred the launch of the Wisconsin Consumer Network which includes WordPress sites in Madison, Green Bay, and Eau Claire.

John James Jacoby

Automattic, BuddyPress, bbPress, WordPress, Thinks you’re neat.

Jessica Dunbar

Jessica Dunbar is the Marketing Director at Anything Digital an interactive development agency in Milwaukee. Jess is truly marketing hacker. She can code in a pinch, understands science and creative aspects of marketing. Best of all, she can read and interpret data that produces opportunity for profitable websites. Jessica is also an active contributing leader of open source communities such as Joomla!, Concrete5. Credentials?

Jess has a B.S. in Computer Science and has been working in the marketing industry since back in the wild wild west days, 13 years ago, when stuffing 30 keywords in a meta tag to achieve page 1 position, 1 rank was a successful…and ethical…tactic.

Jamie Schmid

Jamie is an Interface Developer for Ascedia, a web development agency in downtown Milwaukee. She currently works in Small Accounts development, taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning and an efficient workflow to produce a superior website build. Her background ranges from Information Architecture planning to design and Content Management System site builds.

Experience in user-centered graphic design has led to a concentration in developing for the user experience in administrative backends, creating a system that is efficient, easy and intuitive for the client to use.

Heather Acton

Heather Acton is the founder of Helio Interactive, a WordPress development firm based in Chicago, IL. She’s been known to lurk around the WordPress community, organizing WordCamps and WordPress meetups, and preaching the Word in random venues around Chicagoland. When she’s not doing something related to WordPress, she’s hanging with her family and friends drinking a craft beer.

Gloria Antonelli

Gloria Antonelli is a WordPress consultant, instructor and developer since 2006. Gloria has been learning, teaching and presenting about the web since 1996. She rolls 17 years of experience as an technology educator and consultant into a holistic approach of web development. Her expertise spans many disciplines including WordPress, User Experience, Information Architecture, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Standard Development, CSS, and Content Strategies. Gloria’s clients include advertising agencies, major university, national corporations and startups. She has been presenting for over 10 years at local/national conferences and workshops including WordCamp Chicago and WordCamp Detroit.

Happiness for Gloria includes stacks of the latest technology books, online research and 3 day tech conferences.

Gabe Wahhab

Hi, I’m Gabe, an entrepreneur and president of Master Inbound a premium online Inbound Marketing course. I have worked with everything from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies and I am passionate about helping them grow using the internet. I am Hubspot Certified Consultant with over 19 years of collective experience in Web Development and Information Technology.

In my free time I like to compete in combat sports, spoil my dachshunds and travel the globe.

Faison Zutavern

Faison, Web Developer at Orion Group, spent many years making a hobby out of programming before finally getting his Associate’s in Web & Software Development. Though not an expert, he knows enough to be dangerous with PHP, JavaScript, Python, MySQL, and many other technologies. Faison enjoys scouring other people’s code, listening to developer podcasts, and learning fun interesting things in various languages. He enjoys doing the aforementioned the most while putting off cleaning the cages for his 8 Chinchillas.

Evan Solomon

I used to be an engineer on WordPress.com. After a failed coup d’état to rewrite WordPress in Node.js, I was forced out of the company and began aimlessly wandering the netherlands of midwestern WordCamps. Only one of the first two sentences is true.

David Kryzaniak

My name is David Kryzaniak. I’m a Programming Ninja at Blue Door Consulting in Oshkosh. I primarily programming in PHP (sometime I get crazy and mess around in .NET). In addition, I do a lot of front end development too. I enjoy playing with electronics, hacking stuff, and (of course) WordPress Development.

Dan Pastori

I love web and mobile development. For hobbies I enjoy working out and creating things. I co-founded 521 Dimensions, a software development company specializing in web and mobile development with a focus for custom applications and custom plugins.

Dan Nisbet

Dan is a graphic designer from Milwaukee, WI that helps small businesses to corporations bring their brand to the next level. Complimenting other elements of marketing strategies, he helps design their brands, advertisements and websites to stand out and compel potential clients and customers to take action.

Cynthia Thomas

Cindi has worked in all facets of the digital space throughout her career. Starting with designing and front-end developing websites, she channeled her interest in usability and user research into the UX field. Cindi has led multiple UX and XD teams at a variety of agencies in the Milwaukee area, setting up processes and best practices utilized throughout client projects.

Cindi is co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Translator, a brand experience design agency in Milwaukee.

Christina Zila

Christina Zila is the Director of Communications for Textbroker International, where she manages all external communications for the content creation company, including blogs, newsletters, trade shows, speaking engagements and public relations. She has been with Textbroker since 2009, was the first US employee of the company, and grew the Las Vegas office to 19 people before focusing exclusively on communications.

A Marquette University graduate, Christina has done extensive public speaking, interviews and conferences related to online marketing, including PubCon, SMX and the International Search Summit.

Bridget Wessel

Bridget Wessel has over 10 years experience programming websites in various languages. In 2011, Bridget started Unbox Interactive and focused her client offering to WordPress websites. When she’s not typing away on her keyboard, she’s almost certainly doing something canine-related such as agility training with one of her dogs, or fostering Italian Greyhounds.

Becky Davis

Becky is a custom WordPress theme developer and designer from Chicago. She is very active in her local WordPress community and runs the Northside Chicago WordPress meetup.

Andy Nathan

Andy Nathan is the founder of Smart at the Start, a social networking consulting company that helps small businesses grow through bite-sized social networking services. He successfully worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs in over 75 different industries in the past three years.

As a former mortgage broker for 5 years, he used Facebook to find and close real estate deals. Now, he uses the same methods that worked successfully for him to help his clients with their social networking needs. Andy graduated from National Louis University with a Masters Degree in Education.

Allie Kelly

Allie Kelly is a Senior Search Marketing at Zeon Solutions, a web development and online marketing company headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In this role, Allie manages online marketing programs and projects such as PPC, SEO and social media advertising while delivering analytic based on results. Clients include: ASQ, Johnson Controls, Dirty Girl Mud Run, Wheaton Franciscan and Monthly Clubs.

Allie has been in the search marketing industry for four years having the opportunity to participate in relevant communications such as Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, MIMA, BMA and BizTimes.

Aaron Saray

In our industry, 20 years is a long time. But I can’t help but think I’m just scratching the surface.

Aaron Saray has been absolutely enthralled with programming for more than 2 decades. He’s programmed and scripted in many languages along the way, but gravitates towards Open Source technology like WordPress. Aaron has given more than 15 PHP-centric conference talks (he’s a MKE Wordcamp Alumn!), co-founded the Milwaukee PHP Users Group, and authored the WROX book Professional PHP Design Patterns. His true passion is mentoring programmers and encouraging team development, which just happens to be a great fit for his current role as Development Manager of a team specializing in PHP, Javascript and HTML5.

Aaron Holbrook

Aaron is a Chicago WordPress web developer/designer, gamer and father. He builds amazing WordPress themes and applications with his company A7 Web Design and has been working with WordPress since 2005.

With clients across the globe, he has had the opportunity to work on many different types of WordPress sites and has discovered his passion for challenging the boundaries with custom functionality and

When Aaron’s not coding, he’s probably on the floor playing cars with his two boys, or coming up with something new to blog about at http://aaronjholbrook.com

WordPress Kung-Fu Level: High

Dustin Filippini

Dustin is a Web Developer for the Orion Group, creating sites mainly with WordPress and working his magic with HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. He is a co-organizer of the Web414 Meetup, Milwaukee WordPress Meetup, and Milwaukee JavaScript User Group. Most of his time away from the web is spent with his 1-year old daughter, his wife, and his two dogs, Riley & Hugo.