Who better to enhance the Las Vegas WordCamp experience than a guy who co-organizes WordCamp in Orange County? Jeffrey Zinn has been a web designer since 1996, and in 2004 he and Brandon Dove founded Pixel Jar, a WordPress development firm.

Zinn is also a lead developer of the AdSanity WordPress ad management plugin, but when he’s not working on WordPress, Zinn likes to surf, hike and travel. We got a chance to chat with the expert who is looking forward to playing KISS Monster Mini Golf during his visit to Vegas.

Jeffrey Zinn
Website: http://pixeljar.net

WCLV: What do you love most about WordPress?

JZ: The Community. I love how positive and supportive the WordPress community is to everyone from noobs to veterans.

WCLV: Who is YOUR WordPress hero and why?

JZ: Brandon Dove is my WordPress hero. I know that’s an easy answer as he is my development partner, but it’s still true. He’s already plenty smart and a great programmer, but his ability to so quickly learn and incorporate new knowledge into current projects amazes me. For him, it is never about what he is going to try on the next project. He is always pushing himself to improve his know-how and workflow on the this project.

WCLV: What are your favorite WordPress plugins?

JZ: My favorite plugin is Image Widget from Modern Tribe. It’s such a simple concept, but as a widget it is incredibly versatile. And I really like that the developers used the core image management tool, which many image based plugins fail to do.

WCLV: What do you love about Las Vegas?

JZ: The museums and attractions off The Strip. It is strange to me that few visitors ever leave the casinos and hotels. The whole city of Las Vegas is Vegas’ hidden gem. There are all kinds of brilliant museums from super swanky to super kitsch. One of my favorites is the National Atomic Testing Museum.

Editor’s Note: The Speaker Spotlight post you are about to read will inevitably be the most biased one, as it is written by the speaker’s wife.

Not only is Dan Birlew handsome, debonair, stylish and muscular, the man can also speak geek with a hypnotic and passionate fluency. You may not understand a thing he’s saying, but you’ll be inspired to learn.

Redefining what it means to be a nerd, Birlew authored over 70 video game strategy books before taking a turn in his career to become a web developer. He builds sites mainly on WordPress, PHP, Java and ASP.net and is currently working for Caesars Entertainment. His Las Vegas WordCamp presentation is titled “WordPress and Masonry: Brick by Brick” and will teach developers how to create a WordPress site designed with a column layout style much like Pinterest.

Dan Birlew
Websites: http://DanBirlew.com and http://LasVegasManBlog.com

WCLV: What do you love most about WordPress?

DB: Simplicity of functionality, documentation! And the abundant amount of tasty plugins.

WCLV: What are your favorite WordPress plugins?

DB: Regenerate Thumbnails, Jetpack, Google XML Sitemaps, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools, Infinite Scroll, LayerSlider WP, WP-Emoji, WP-PageNavi.

WCLV: What are some of your favorite WordPress-built websites?

DB: Mashable, PlayStation blog, The Sartorialist, css-tricks.com.

WCLV: Who is YOUR WordPress hero and why?

DB: John Hawkins! Man, that guy just won’t give up….

WCLV: What are your plans for surviving the zombie apocalypse?

DB: Feed John Hawkins to the hordes while I sprint to the exit!

As if vegan mommy blogger Desiree Peeples isn’t busy enough chasing after a five-year-old and a rat terrier, she manages to find the time and energy to also run the Las Vegas Bloggers Meetup Group, manage her blog MommyReporter.com, teach individuals and small businesses how to incorporate social media into their marketing strategies AND write a book titled The EVERYTHING Video Blogger’s Guide for Non-Video Bloggers.

Desiree Peeples
Website: http://www.mommyreporter.com
Twitter: @mommyreporter

WCLV: What do you love most about WordPress?

DP: What I love most about WordPress is that it is so versatile. You can create any type of website with it and it’s so easy to use.

WCLV: What do you love about Las Vegas?

DP: I love that Las Vegas is a 24-hour city. It’s the one place that nearly everyone wants to visit at least once in their lifetime. Plus, it’s so close to California which is where I am originally from.

If Mel Blanc was the man of a thousand voices, then John Lynn is the man of a thousand websites. Seriously. The guy owns and operates so many, that we can’t even list them all.

But when he’s not working on his website about the medical records industry or his website about “Dancing with the Stars” or his website about blogging (didn’t we say he runs a thousand websites?), then he’s playing Ultimate Frisbee and even organizes Las Vegas tournaments.

Lynn’s Las Vegas WordCamp 2013 presentation is called “To Do or Not to Do: Things Bloggers Should Do and Things Bloggers Shouldn’t Waste Time On,” and we had a chance to sit down and get to know him better. Here’s what he had to say.

John Lynn
Websites: http://www.killerblogging.com, http://www.crashutah.com/about
Twitter: @techguy

LVWC: What do you love most about WordPress?

JL: I love that WordPress makes it easy for anyone to publish anything.  It works across every niche and can make anyone into a publisher.  You can choose something you’re passionate about and grow a following for almost nothing. That’s powerful!

LVWC: What are your favorite WordPress plugins?

JL: Duplicate Post, Peter’s Collaboration E-mails, Role Manager, Tweet Old Post, and any plugin which has stats.

LVWC: Whether you live here or are a visitor, what do you love about Las Vegas?

JL: I love the great weather, the great business environment (no tax), and the people.

LVWC: Favorite TV show and why.

JL: This question is ironic since I run a network of reality TV blogs. My favorite TV show to watch is “Amazing Race.”  My favorite TV show to blog about is a tie between “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”  My favorite new show is “Nashville.”

LVWC: Are you smarter than a 4th Grader? Do you think you can dance?

JL: Yes, but you can see my 4th grader’s blog: http://www.curtislynn.com where you can see some cool minions.  I love to dance, but I’m not sure I think I can dance. That’s never stopped me before.

When he’s not mopping University hallways pretending to be Will Hunting, WordPress Developer and Designer Russell Aaron keeps busy speaking at the Las Vegas WordPress Meetup Group and running his startup GeekStreetWP.com where he offers website support for any company using any version of WordPress.

His presentation at Las Vegas WordCamp 2013 is titled “Your Theme Is Built for That,” and Aaron is a believer that, “…every industry should have at least one theme built on WordPress.” We took a moment to chat with Aaron, pick his brain (wait until you see his stellar plan for surviving a zombie apocalypse) and learned more about him and his devotion to WordPress.

Russell Aaron
Website: http://geekstreetwp.com

WCLV: What are some of your favorite WordPress-built websites?

RA: The Chive, CNN, WordPress.tv, Huffington Post, GeekStreetWP.

WCLV: Who is YOUR WordPress hero and why?

RA: I have a lot. Mostly because they have supported me, tweeted me or acknowledged me in some small way: John Hawkins, Dre Armeda, Tony Perez, Andrew Nacin, Pippin Williamson, Mark Jaquith and Grant Landrum.

WCLV: What are your favorite WordPress plugins?

RA: If Menu, Gravity Forms, Easy Content Types, Restricted Content Pro, Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types, The Events Calendar.

WCLV: What are three of your pet peeves?

RA: Walking slow, people that complain about something that was going to happen anyways, and juice boxes. You know why.

WCLV: What are your plans for surviving the zombie apocalypse?

RA: Putting treadmills all around my house, or cutting half pipe ramps in half and surrounding my house.

The last person a website hacker wants to encounter is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner riding a Harley. But if Dre Armeda has anything to do with the security of the targeted site, that’s exactly with whom the hacker will have to contend.

As the co-founder of Sucuri Inc., “the best website security company of today, and of the future,” Armeda is on a mission to make the Internet a safer place for all. And at Las Vegas WordCamp 2013, he’ll be teaching attendees what they can do to tighten up the security of their own WordPress websites.

We got a chance to talk to this taco-obsessed, tech startup enthusiast to learn more about him.

Dre Ameda
Website: http:dre.im
Twitter: @dremeda

WCLV: What do you love most about WordPress?

DA: As a platform for building applications, websites, blogs, and awesomeness, WordPress is beyond flexible. I love its extensibility! Beyond the software though is where my love starts though. The single thing I love most about WordPress is its beautiful community of users, developers, designers, and business folks. We live in the spirit of open source as WordPress community members, and there’s no better place to be!

WCLV: What are some of your favorite WordPress-built websites?

DA: One of my favorite uses for WordPress in recent history was that created by WebDevStudios for the YMCA. They created an application named Y-MVP that is a component of their successful Strong Kids Card program (http://www.ymcanyc.org/association/pages/y-mvp).

It is an all mobile application with a game-play component using BadeOS, a plugin also created by WedDevStudios: http://webdevstudios.com/wordpress/badgeos/.

There are many beautiful examples of WordPress-built websites, but what excites me are applications based on WordPress like Y-MVP.

WCLV: What are your favorite WordPress plugins?

DA: Sucuri Security – SiteCheck Malware Scanner:  http://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/ and Sucuri CloudProxy Web Firewall: http://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-cloudproxy-waf/.

WCLV: Favorite book and why.

DA: I recently read a book by Cal Newport named So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. Very cool book and I recommend it to anyone trying to figure out what direction to head in business and career.

You know what makes WordCamps so great? It’s the amazing presenters who give so much of their time to put together an awesome presentation, then show up to WordCamp and drop knowledge bombs on an unsuspecting audience.

If you would like to be a presenter at WordCamp Las Vegas, here’s what you’ve gotta do:

Read and respect the guidelines

Tell us what you want to talk about and why it’ll be awesome

That’s about it. We like to keep it simple.

The speaker submissions form will be open until October 4th. So get to it!

It’s official, WordCamp Vegas will be taking place on Saturday and Sunday, December 14th and 15th, 2013.

Now the real work can start.

Many, many more details to come.