Speakers

John Hawkins

John was an early adopter of WordPress. He moved his blog to the brand new platform a few short months after it was released and never looked back. After doing countless updates to his own site and those of a few dozen friends, John co-founded 9seeds.com to focus full time on WordPress development. In his spare time, John is the lead organizer of the Las Vegas WordPress meetup, blogs at vegasgeek.com and recently became addicted to CrossFit.

McCall Humes

McCall Humes makes her living as a Pinterest Influencer with over 30,000 followers. In 2012, she was named one of the top 20 most influential Pinterest users by Business Insider. In addition to creating and maintaining brand specific campaigns, McCall has had the opportunity to educate several marketing teams in effective Pinterest tactics. Her experience and expansive repin reach led her to a contract with HelloSociety, a top Pinterest marketing company. Through them, she has been given a chance to work on a wide variety of campaigns including: Zulily, JCrew, Nordstrom Rack and Paramount Pictures. In 2014, McCall started a blog about living an adventurous life through a series of First Time Experiences. Writing McCall of the Wild opened a new chapter on McCall’s Pinterest education. She is happy to be able to share her knowledge of Pinterest and how it can be utilized in promoting blogs and businesses.

Robert Gillmer

My name is Robert Gillmer, and I’m a WordPressaholic. Yup, that’s right, I’m addicted to WordPressahol. I’ve been building websites for three and a half years now, and have been using WordPress to do so for 3 years and 25 weeks. (Don’t hold that against me.) For those that know the release schedule, Thelonious introduced me to WordPress.

Kenny Eliason

As a native to Las Vegas, Kenny knows this town like the back of his hand. After attending a year of law school in sunny San Diego, Kenny quickly learned that a legal career was not going to be part of his professional path. From there he started NeONBRAND, where he fills his days helping medium to large businesses build their online presence through SEO and other website marketing techniques. He is also secretly fluent in Spanish and loves to speak it whenever he can.

John Lynn

I created and run 25 blogs across three niches: Healthcare IT, Reality TV, and Vegas Startup companies. I like to blog and now I’m starting to help others learn how to be a professional blogger at http://www.killerblogging.com. You can find me on twitter: @techguy.

Dre Armeda

Dre Armeda is an old-timer. He has been using WordPress since 2004. You may know Dre as one of the Co-Founders of Sucuri Inc. where he was CEO from 2010-2014. After helping build and grow Sucuri, Dre joined the team at WebDevStudios as VP of Operations, where today he helps lead the team through WordPress projects with companies like Microsoft, Discovery, and Move.com.

Dre presents at various WordCamps and other events every year on security and business topics. Dre is a proud WordPress contributor and was the lead organizer that brought WordCamp to San Diego.

On his off time you’ll find Dre on the mat practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with Carlson Gracie Team Menifee where he earned his blue belt, or on the softball fields with his girls!

Dre is also the Co-Host of the worlds best WordPress podcast, DradCast. Join us on Wednesday nights 8PM Eastern.

Konstantin Obenland

Konstantin is a WordPress developer, and Core contributor based in Southern California. After contributing to Twenty Twelve, he was the backup lead and main developer for Twenty Thirteen and Twenty Fourteen, the most recent default themes. At Automattic he’s is part of a team that contributes back to WordPress full time. He enjoys craft beers and good food — sometimes so much that he blogs about it.

Steve Zehngut

Steve founded Zeek Interactive in 1995 and he has been the creative technologist behind the Huntington Beach based company since its inception. Under his direction, Zeek has grown from an apartment bedroom to one of Southern California’s leading development and consulting shops.

Steve is the organizer of the OC WordPress Meetup and has helped build the community to over 850 members. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has taught interactive courses at UC Irvine, USC, the American Film Institute, and Cal State Long Beach. Steve has a BA in Film from Cal State Northridge.

Suzette Franck

Suzette Franck has been in web development for over twenty years; she started making hand-coded HTML websites on geocities with font tags and tables back in 1995. Since then, she has taught herself CSS, Sass, PHP, MySQL, as well as becoming a WordPress expert; evangelizing and presenting at over twenty-three WordCamps across the country and multiple WordPress meetups in Southern California where she resides, about all aspects of building and maintaining sites on WordPress.

Suzette is passionate about WordPress the application as well as the WordPress Open Source Community, and loves to code and teach others the wonders of WordPress. She is a purveyor of lowbrow art, and when she is not WordPressing, she is painting or visiting Los Angeles art galleries to add more work to her growing art collection.

Rebecca Gill

Rebecca is president and founder of Web Savvy Marketing. She has as a well-rounded business background within SMB and enterprise organizations, as well as over fifteen years of experience in sales and online marketing. She provides one-on-one coaching, teaches on-site boot camps, is a WordCamp organizer, and speaks at various universities, WordCamps, and MeetUps across the country.

Chris Lema

Chris Lema is the CTO and Chief Strategist at Crowd Favorite. He’s also a daily blogger, a public speaker, and product strategist. He helps companies leverage WordPress, and helps WordPress companies find leverage.

For twenty years Chris has developed and managed high performing engineers to build software products – particularly SaaS products in a variety of B2B vertical markets. He’s also spent the last ten years coaching startups on product development & marketing strategies.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer, recently relocated to Minneapolis from Chicago. She was formally schooled in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the WordPress community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and events around the country.

Steve Rypka

I love the combination of technology and creativity, so naturally I love WordPress! I have managed to combine it with my interest in living lighter on the planet, thus GreenDreamWeb was born.

My company provides green web design and managed hosting services. The green part comes from the solar energy that powers 100% of our operations. We work with a lot of non-profits and companies involved in sustainability. They seem to appreciate our approach.

The open source nature of WordPress is part of the magic too. It’s all about empowering others and the WordPress community is really good at that!

Kathi Minsky

Kathi Minsky has been a successful Online Marketer since 1999, when she was living in Fairbanks. Alaska and discovered she could connect and market to the world from her home office.

Beginning with Web 1.0 and currently adapting to Web 2.0, Kathi has generated in excess of $1,000,000 in online sales every year for the past 15 years.

She is a best-selling author as well as an expert trainer in the area of Network Marketing.

Kathi attributes much of her online success to working with the right support team. She will share what she has learned about how to select the right outsourcers locally, online and overseas.

Brandon Dove

Brandon’s breadth of knowledge spans many technical disciplines and is responsible for leading Pixel Jar’s development team through code architecture, development, and security audits.

With web development experience starting in 1999, Brandon was driven to start Pixel Jar in late 2004. Pixel Jar quickly gained a reputation of excellence in the WordPress community. Brandon is also the lead developer of the company’s commercial plugin, AdSanity, the de facto advertising management platform for WordPress. Over the years, billions of ads have been served on sites like the Official site of the Dallas Mavericks. Brandon helps to ensure a high quality end product through hands-on development and expert guidance.

Charlie Bass

Charlie Bass, an internet developer and entrepreneur since 1994 and one of the original ASP developers in the country, founded the ASP Developers Conference and the WEB Developers Conference in the late 1990s through 2002, when he moved to Las Vegas from Denver.

In 2002, he founded the Las Vegas Internet Chamber of Commerce and built it to the second largest Chamber of Commerce in the Las Vegas area.

Since 2004 he has run the very popular online entertainment oriented podcast “Vegas Talk Radio”.

Five years ago, Charlie moved all of his domains to WordPress and has never looked back!

Billie Hillier, User & Business Track Coordinator

Billie Hillier is a solutions consultant, event producer, and educator.

Looking back I think I have been using and recommending WordPress to clients for almost (or over) a decade. I love the flexibility WP offers users and control users have with owning their site.

Being passionate about all things related to online marketing and WordPress being a huge component of a successful online presence, I am always trying to help others make the most of the WordPress site for their business goals.

Russell Aaron, Developer & Designer Track Coordinator

Oh Hello, I didn’t see you there. I’m Russ. I run a small little thing called Geek Street WP. I am a Speaker, organizer and presenter at WordCamps and Las Vegas WordPress Meet Up Group. I am a Fan of WordPress, first and foremost. I also became the creative director for Valley West Mortgage

Carrie Dils

Carrie Dils is a WordPress Developer specializing in the Genesis Framework. Based out of Fort Worth, Texas, she splits her time between serving clients and creating custom WordPress themes. Outside of WordPress, she loves dogs, books, candy, running, Jesus, and her husband, Dave. She tweets somewhat excessively at @cdils.

Justin Tucker

Justin Tucker is a WordPress developer based in downtown Phoenix, AZ. For over a decade, he’s been involved in web development, working with agencies in Phoenix, Orange County and Seattle.

Currently, he runs Certain Strings where he specializes in building custom theme solutions for agencies and marketing firms. He actively attends and speaks at numerous local WordPress meetups each month.

Michael Cremean

Michael Cremean is the Founder and CEO of Quadshot Software, LLC. a WordPress and eCommerce development company based in Las Vegas, NV. Since 2009 Quadshot has helped customers ‘full stack’ creating WordPress websites including planning, design, development, launch and beyond.

Quadshot develops most sites using WooThemes Framework, Canvas and WooCommerce. Key people at Quadshot also have contributed to both WordPress and WooCommerce code.

Quadshot is also the creator of several products integrated with WooCommerce, including the open source OpenTickets ticket plaform used by Theaters, Venues, Festivals and Event Organizers. More information at quadshot.com.

Scott Roeben

Scott Roeben is an award-winning blogger and social media marketer. He created VitalVegas.com, named the best Las Vegas blog by the Las Vegas Internet Marketing Association and the Trippies Awards. He’s the Interactive Marketing Manager of Fremont Street Experience, one of the most-recognized travel destinations in the world. He oversees Fremont Street Experience’s social media channels, digital marketing strategy and Web site, including the organization’s first blog. Previously, he created the blog for Caesars Entertainment, named the best PR blog in the nation in the PR Daily Awards and the best Las Vegas blog by CBS Las Vegas, while generating more than $2 million a year in revenue. He has also served as the Content Manager at LasVegas.com, and before that he was in public relations and digital media at the Writers Guild of America, west. He created humor site Dribbleglass.com, is a published author and his photographs have appeared in national and international publications. He was going to add something profound to his bio, but figured nobody would read this far, so why waste the creative energy?

Rosario Grajales

Rosario was born in the Republic of Panama, and holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Columbus University in Panama. She moved to Las Vegas in 2008 where she has been involved with the Hispanic community, focusing on communications: commercials, hosting shows and events, journalism, and serving as a media and marketing adviser. She fell in love with journalism at age 13 and decided her goal would be to make it her profession.

Rosario was a news anchor in her country of Panama.

She runs two websites:

www.rosarioknows.com – which focuses on news and activities around Las Vegas
www.rosariograjales.com – where she offers Spanish communication services for people and companies

Rosario interviews artists, celebrities, and important national and international figures locally here in Las Vegas as well as from Panama and from all around the world.

Chris Cerrone

Chris Cerrone and Laci Urcioli are marketing and business consultants based in Las Vegas, NV. They also host The Cerrone Show, a top ranked business podcast for entrepreneurs and dreamers that has surpassed one million listeners in less than one year. On the show, Chris and Laci speak to business owners, inventors, entertainers, and awesome people throughout the world to hear their story and share it with their audience. In addition to the show, they work hand-in-hand with entrepreneurs and businesses to help them strategize, launch, and scale their ideas and efforts.

To listen to the show and learn more about Chris & Laci, visit: The Cerrone Show.

Laci Urcioli