The WordCamp Milwaukee Speaker application deadline has now come and gone. The organizing committee are hard at work shuffling through all of the amazing applications. We are overwhelmed with the quality of talks we have this year! I guarantee there is something for everyone and we have great talks from both local talent and nationally known speakers on WordPress, Web Design, Development, and more.

We will be announcing the full speaker list and our schedule within days, but we’ll just leave you with a little teaser today. Here are five more speakers to add to the WordCamp Milwaukee Lineup:

Chris Coyier

Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) is a front-end developer and is dedicated to helping people build better websites. He is the founder of the amazing site CSS-Tricks, where you can find info on pretty much anything to do with CSS and front-end development. He also hosts the popular ShopTalk Show podcast on front-end development and design, co-wrote the book “Digging into WordPress,” and co-founded the amazing front-end playground CodePen. Chris has spoke at events around the world and has written many articles on front-end design and development including for Smashing Magazine.

John James Jacoby

John James Jacoby (@jjj) is the Director of Web Engineering for 10up and a lead developer on BuddyPress and bbPress. John formerly was a member of Automattic’s VIP, Dotorg, and Social teams and has been developing with WordPress for years. John speaks around the country at WordCamps and other events and loves teaching and volunteering his time to the community.

Rachel Baker

Rachel Baker (@rachelbaker) is a Senior Strategic Engineer with 10up and an active member of the WordPress community. Rachel has lead development on WordPress projects of all sizes including high-traffic communities and for Fortune 500 Companies. She created the popular BootstrapWP Theme and has been instrumental in developing the new WordPress JSON REST API.

Ryan McCue

Ryan McCue (@rmccue) is a Web Developer with HumanMade and a regular WordPress Core Contributor. Ryan lead the new WordPress JSON REST API project as part of the Google Summer of Code. Ryan is also in charge of the SimplePie RSS library included in WordPress core and used in many other PHP Applications on the web.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle Schulp (@marktimemedia) is a graphic designer, web designer, and WordPress specialist. Michelle has talked at WordCamps around the country imparting her knowledge to help others create better, more effective designs. Michelle is the lead organizer of WordCamp Chicago 2014 and does does web design for Modern Tribe and freelance projects.

This year for WordCamp Milwaukee, we are going to roll out the announcement of our speakers starting today! We are excited about all the great submissions we’ve received this year from both local and national speakers. We are staring with a group of five great speakers that we’ve accepted. Don’t worry though, our speaker applications are still open for one more week if you are still interested in submitting a talk.

Amongst our first round of speakers we have one of the top WordPress authors, a security expert and podcast celebrity, a local PHP expert and organizer of the Milwaukee PHP Users Group, the founder of one of the top WordPress help sites, and even a Joomla! Core Developer! Yes, I said Joomla! We’re excited for this group of speakers and those we will be announcing in the coming days.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Lisa Sabin-Wilson (@lisasabinwilson) is a partner at WebDevStudios, one of the top WordPress agencies working with clients such as Microsoft, MSNBC, and Time. Lisa has multiple top-selling books on WordPress including the popular WordPress for Dummies. She is a very active member in the WordPress community contributing to the education of users, both new and advanced, about the platform through her travels and appearances at various WordCamps around the country.

Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi (@syedbalkhi) is the founder of WPBeginner. He is known for his aggressive marketing skills, creative designs, and expertise in SEO. Syed has been in the industry for over eight years, and he has worked with some of the top brands in the industry. He is known as “the WordPress Ninja” because he is a total WordPress Geek.

Dre Armeda

Dre Armeda (@dremeda) is the CEO of the top security and monitoring company Sucuri, a web security expert, and half of the popular WordPress Podcast, the Dradcast. He is infatuated with WordPress, web design, and web security, is a Harley enthusiast, and loves tacos.

Michael Babker

Michael Babker (@mbabker) is an active member of the Joomla! community, participating in the Bug Squad, contributing code to the CMS and Framework, and is a member of the Production Leadership Team. He specializes in optimizing performance in existing code, developing libraries and extensions to enhance Joomla’s code base, maintenance of Joomla’s CMS and Framework unit testing suites, and development of custom solutions for the Joomla CMS and Framework.

Joel Clermont

Joel Clermont (@jclermont) is a PHP developer in the Milwaukee area, accomplished speaker, and organizer of the Milwaukee PHP User Group. Joel has spoke at TrueNorthPHP, ThatConference, and keynoted MidwestPHP in 2013 and has spoke at many other conferences and meetups.

Time is running out on submitting speaker applications to WordCamp Milwaukee! We know that many of you are procrastinating on submitting talks, so we decided we would give you one more week to get your talks submitted. Our new deadline for submitting to become a speaker at WordCamp Milwaukee is May 23!

We are thoroughly impressed by the quality of talks we have had submitted so far and it’s going to be a very difficult time putting together this year’s schedule. It’s shaping up to be the best WCMKE schedule yet. But, we want you to make it even more difficult by submitting some more of those awesome talks!

The extension doesn’t mean you have to procrastinate any more. Get your talk in today!
We are no longer seeking submissions.

Also, stay tuned because later today we will be announcing a first round of speakers from our deep pool of submissions!

Photo Credit: Moonrhino cc

The WordCamp Milwaukee organizing committee has been thoroughly impressed with the speaker submissions we have been getting so far! We have some great talks submitted by some great speakers both local and from around the country. Our current plans are to keep Speaker Submissions Open Until Friday, May 15.

I know it’s going to be a hard time choosing from the great crew, but we want you to make it even harder. We would love to have just a few more speaker applications submitted. If you’ve been thinking about speaking at a tech conference, this is a great opportunity! We are looking for all types of speakers and especially love showing off our local talent. Remember, talks don’t need to be specifically on WordPress, just so they are of interest to WordPress users, developers, designers, or business owners.

Stay tuned, the exciting news is that later this week we will be announcing our first round of speakers! We have some pretty amazing ones to announce and are excited to be sharing this with everyone.

Photo Credit: teamstickergiant cc