WordCamp San Diego 2016 Plugin Track Speakers
This year we’ve added a plugin track with some awesome speakers who will be presenting on topics that are for everyone. From how to pick a plugin to how to make the best use of the most popular ones. We have a great overview on WooCommerce and Custom Fields. If you’re a developer, we have a talk on best plugin practices. Don’t see a topic that is to your liking? No worries, we’ve go that cover, too with an open discussion on anything and everything about plugins. Take a look at our speaker line up and come see them present.
Andrew Behla
Andrew’s degree in Philosophy and Business from Trinity University has given him the know-how both to run a successful Los Angeles graphic design business and to cultivate meaningful relationships with his customers. His experiences as a teacher come out in everything he does as Andrew is always thrilled to pass along his expertise to both clients and his team.
The team at Behla Design, Graphic Design & Web Development, is dedicated to creating visual experiences that effectively tell our clients’ stories while engaging, exciting, and enticing their customers. Our firm consists of top web design, web development, WordPress, search engine optimization (SEO), and copywriting professionals and our founder, Andrew Behla, who has worked in the graphic, print and web design industry for over twenty years.
At Behla Design, we are committed to cultivating long-lasting and meaningful relationships with our clients. From providing continual support throughout every aspect of clients’ projects, to ensuring clients’ visions are brought to life with meaningful, user-intuitive design, our team will do all that we can to ensure our clients’ satisfaction.
Brian Bourn
Brian Bourn is the managing partner at Bourn Creative, a full service design & web development agency in Sacramento, CA which recently celebrated 10 years in business. As a front-end developer, he has been working with WordPress since 2009 and has created over 100 custom WordPress sites.
Bourn Creative is a big believer in giving back and supporting the WordPress project and community. As such, Brian is one of the lead organizers for WordCamp Sacramento and the lead organizer for the monthly Sacramento WordPress Meetup.
Sam Hotchkiss
Sam has been developing sites with WordPress for over years. He built and ran an agency, then built a plugin business around BruteProtect, a security plugin which was acquired by Automattic in August of 2014. Sam now leads the Jetpack development team, working on the Jetpack plugin in use on millions of WordPress sites across the internet. In his spare time Sam travels all over the world taking photos with his wife, Becky. Sometimes they do it in style in their 1989 VW van, bringing their 3 dogs along for the adventure. He tries to post photos regularly on swh.me, but sometimes he forgets because he’s too busy writing about himself in the third person.
Kyle Maurer
Kyle is the co-founder of a Jackson, Michigan based firm called Real Big Marketing which specializes in using WordPress to solve complicated problems for businesses. He is also the author of and a contributor to dozens of WordPress plugins, is the co-organizer of the Jackson WP meetup, is a co-organizer of WordCamp Ann Arbor, plays in a band and is an aspiring beer snob.
Carolyn Sonnek
Carolyn has been an avid user of WordPress since 2005. She also makes a mean tater tot hotdish. These two things are not related. Originally from Minneapolis, MN, she now lives in the Portland, OR area. She works as a Happiness Rocketeer for Automattic, the company that makes WordPress.com and plugins such as Jetpack, Akismet, and VaultPress.
Verious B. Smith III
Verious Smith the Creative Director of Philoveracity Design, a firm that specializes in Brand Development with work that spans the scope of strategic planning to custom branded campaigns & clients that have included local & national start-ups to medium sized corporations.
He is a BFA VisCom Graduate and has a thorough command of Conceptual Communication with a myriad of mediums.
His current career focus is to build important new relationships while nurturing current connections by properly stewarding my God given time & talents.
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart is a WordPress developer. He has developed websites for small businesses, writers, artists, and corporations using WordPress. In the process of building those websites, he has pushed forms and form plugins to the limits. He has built two digital clinical trials from scratch, utilizing the power of Gravity Forms.
When he’s not building websites, Scott is probably writing and reading and sipping some coffee in his and his wife’s small casita near downtown San Diego. He is writing a children’s book about an Exclamation Point. They have a dachshund named Parker after Dorothy Parker, the literary wit of the 1930s.
Scott hails from a small town in Oregon. He went to college at the University of Oregon. He has explored Eastern Europe in the Peace Corps and finally settled down in San Diego after a very cold stint in Massachusetts. San Diego intrigues him because there are so many transplanted people here from all over the world. Also, sun is a great and glorious thing.
Random facts about Scott: His favorite animal is the ring-tailed lemur. He played guitar on the streets of Istanbul one spring. He enjoys playing Scrabble, like a lot.
Pippin Williamson
Pippin Williamson is a WordPress plugin developer from Hutchinson, KS. He runs PippinsPlugins.com and is the founder and lead developer of Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP and many more WordPress plugins. Beyond WordPress, Pippin has a love for sour beer, home brewing, and is an avid cyclist.
Living in the mountains of North Carolina for 16 years, Sarah Benoit is Director of Training at JB Media Group, LLC and the Founder and Lead Instructor of the JB Media Institute, an Internet marketing school based in Asheville. She is owner of a small business web design firm – Creative Original, Inc. and she teaches continuing education classes at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. Since 2006 Sarah has been teaching classes, leading workshops, and speaking at conferences about SEO, social media marketing, public relations, online advertising, WordPress, personal branding, usability, Internet marketing strategy, website tracking, and more. In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Sarah’s passions include latin dancing, astrology, film, history, and environmentalism.
Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at 
Kevin is a Community Guardian for Automattic. He helps defend WordPress.com bloggers from bogus legal threats, and works to make the web safer, freer, and open for all. In past lives, he could be found at the Sunlight Foundation or as one cofounder of CoPress. He currently resides in Washington, DC, and would like to hear your best BBQ recipe.
Adam teaches a WP101 course at the local adult school, presents a monthly WordPress seminar at SBDC, runs the SouthBay WordPress Meetup and produces a weekly podcast over at kitchensinkwp.com. In spare time he hangs out with his wickedly cool 3 kids & wife, and makes some really bad puns, since someone has to.
Mark works at Automattic as a designer on core and