Michael Bastos will be talking about setting up WordPress using Amazon web services. You can follow Michael on twitter @bastosmichael. And for the record, Michael is the one on the right in the photo below.
Here’s a bit more about Michael in his own words.
What will you be speaking about?
How to setup your site on Amazon’s web services and get it up and running from start to finish. I’d been to a few conferences where people told others it was a good idea but I want to do something a kin to holding your hand through the process. I gave this talk at the end of WordCamp NYC and half the room stuck around a glad hour after they had stopped recording me just to keep asking their questions.
Who is your target audience?
No doubt about it, this is for advanced users, but I want novices to feel welcomed to attend and ask questions even if they themselves don’t plan on setting it up on their own. After all the only way we become experts at anything is if we are willing to go and learn things that we feel are intimidating.
What do you hope the WordCampers will get out of your session?
I try my best to give everyone some kind of take away from this no matter the level of expertise. My real hope is that developers especially will take the time to experiment with and learn the base line underline systems and structures that run their WordPress sites on the web so that they have a little bit more freedom of choice when putting together solutions or picking hosting providers for their employers or clients.
What is your favorite WordPress Plugin?
I have to say that my favorite plugin has to be the IWP Plugin for Infinite WP, the fact is I have it installed on everyone of my installations simply so that I can manage everything from my InfiniteWP installation and this way I know all of my sites and or my client’s sites are up to date and working properly. My only wish is that they had better support for WordPress Multisite.
Do you have a WP hero?
If I have to pick someone I admire the most in the WordPress community it would undoubtedly be Matt Mullenweg, ever since I first met him in 2011 at the first WordCamp San Diego and spent hours chatting it up with the guy who started it all, his ability as a founder to steer the ship in all the right directions as one would say and accomplish his true vision for the platform is what inspires me, and he’s unassuming and humble as all hell.
Do you have a “Stays in Vegas” story to tell?
Everyone always says they won’t share their Vegas stories but I have no shame, I was a Marine for 8 years and every so often we would have what’s called a Marine Corps ball (best party ever) in Vegas in our dress blue uniforms. After much drinking and ceremony all of us would leave the big fancy ball rooms drunk as a Marine (not a Sailor) and would go up and down the strip in uniform living it up. This was in the early days of the war and people were extremely generous, we never paid for any of our drinks and they pretty much let us go anywhere we wanted and do anything that Vegas had to offer, I’ll end the story there and let you guys picture the rest…
Tell your favorite WordCamp story!
I would tell my favorite after party story but I’ve said too much above, so if we are talking during the actual event, I’d have to say it was this year’s WordCamp LA, I was giving a presentation about using WordPress in the Command Line using wp-cli and they had scheduled me for 9am in the morning so I immediately thought I would get like 10 people attending considering the subject matter. To my surprise after the keynote finished downstairs people starting pouring in and the place was standing room only, I was not expecting that many people to want to geek out on what to some would be such a boring topic.
