Author Archives: Ana Aires

Speakers: Kirsten Schelper & Elisabeth Hölzl

kirsten-schelperKirsten Schelper is a web designer and passionate about all things WordPress.
In the beginning of 2011 she started the German speaking blog http://die-netzialisten.de where she writes about web design, WordPress and all things related to it.

In her talk she will be assisted by Elisabeth Hölzl web developer, Certified TYPO3 Integrator and slowly but surely feeling at home in the WordPress universe. Together they have built a number of web projects over the past few years.
elisabeth-hoelzl They both consider that the combination of a designer and a developer with all the different ways to approach a project has been very beneficial and productive.

Their talk will be about “Developing WordPress Themes with Git”


Implementing Git as our choice of version control was one of the most challenging tasks for us as a team. Making the developer understand what the designer (and developer of custom WordPress themes) really needs was pretty tough. Explaining the functionality of Git to the designer was comparably difficult.

Instead of throwing basic commands at you we want to invite you to explore the “Git Universe” with us in a kind of fireside chat between Kirsten, representing the web design world, and Elisabeth, who gained her first computer experience with Basic many years ago.

Our focus will be on how Git works, what those strange commands really mean and how you can benefit from integrating it into your theme development work flow.

Speaker: David Coveney

davidcoveney David Coveney is what’s called a dinosaur. He started his IT career in the 80s working on mainframe computers and he’s seen the cycles of software technology as we continue to try and make things better through code. After years as an enterprise systems consultant he decided to drop out and get involved in the web. David runs interconnect/it, a WP development firm in Liverpool, UK which is notable for developing The Spectator’s new site, Nottingham University’s many and prolific blogs, building CGIAR’s website as well as lots of other websites that have helped clients cut costs and get on with their work.

In David owns words “I accidentally wrote a useful but dangerous little search/replace script that became crazy popular even though it was one of the smallest bits of work in my career!” That turned out to be a bit of a hit and is downloaded about 200 times a day, every day.

In his spare time he used to race cars, go travelling and ride motorbikes, combining these interests when possible. But now he has two toddlers in his life, so mostly he just goes home and laughs with them whilst otherwise concentrating on building a business.

David talk will be about “Unlocking Enterprise with WordPress”.

WordPress is used by lots of businesses, and it certainly has a space in the enterprise space. In this talk I explore how WordPress is used by business, in particular those in Europe, and show how the services and culture around large scale WordPress have worked beautifully for the US market but have limited the potential of the platform in other marketplaces. I also find the platform’s weaknesses, and illustrate what we could do as a community to make our favourite CMS a better fit for those large, risky projects that seem to end up going to Drupal or, worse, high cost supposedly enterprise grade content management systems.

Speaker: Miriam Schwab

Miriam-webfriendly Miriam started illuminea seven years ago with a computer shoved into the corner of her bedroom. As a completely bootstrapped business, Miriam and illuminea have seen it all: great successes, horrible failures, smooth delivery and projects that choked all along the way. All that while raising four, five, six and now seven kids.

Today, illuminea is one of the leading agencies in Israel focusing on WordPress development. Since running a small business in this field poses endless challenges and opportunities, Miriam will “open source” the lessons learned at illuminea headquarters, with the goal of helping you learn from her mistakes so you don’t have to make them!

We will discuss common issues that can face WordPress service providers, ranging from how to get more clients, pricing, contracts, project management, staying up-to-date, finding other people to hire or work with, marketing, sales, etc.

Speaker: Ptah Dunbar

gravatar-pirate-mugshot Ptah also know as Cap’n Pirate Dunbar is a WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress core contributor and PHP 5.3 Zend Certified Engineer. The Cap’n works with an amazing team at LiveNinja.com, a WebRTC based video PaaS (also powered by WordPress and BuddyPress) for experts to get paid for their know-how. Depending on the season, the Cap’n resides in sunny Miami Beach, FL or in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Europe. He is actively involved in the PHP community supporting local meetup groups and helps co-organize WordCamp Miami annually. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

At WordCamp Europe he will be talking about “Unit Testing like a Pirate.”

What are unit tests? Why put the effort into writing unit tests? You might say, “Heck, I know my code works because I wrote it, sniff”… Besides, what do sustainable unit tests look like so I don’t have to spend all of my time on them? If this sounds familiar, this talk is for you. You will be introduced to the world of testing, with a focus on testing at the unit level, along with demonstrating practical examples for WordPress plugin development.

Speaker: Scott Basgaard

scott-basgaard Scott Basgaard lives somewhere in the mountains of beautiful Southern Norway. Born and raised in New Jersey, he moved there to live with his wife Renate. He loves all things WordPress and organized the first WordCamp Norway in 2012. Scott makes a living under his alter ego, Scotty B, who is a Support Ninja over at WooThemes specializing in WooCommerce. He’s passionate about helping others and recently organized a 24-hour-long WordPress event, which was free for community, called WordSesh.

Scott will talk about “the importance of delivering happiness to your customers and users”.

In this presentation, I’ll discuss growing and building business through customer service and discuss some tools to use along the way.

I’ll also touch on the importance of helping in the WordPress community as well, as a way of giving back and its value to both you as an individual and whatever team you are a part of.

Speaker: Frederick Townes

Frederick Townes Frederick Townes was the Founding Chief Technical Officer of Mashable, one of the top independent media sites worldwide and is currently the Senior Technical Advisor.

As a search / social media marketer and WordPress consultant, Frederick’s projects typically include WordPress as a core element. One of his largest contributions to the WordPress community was his web performance optimization framework W3 Total Cache.

Since 2003 his agency W3 EDGE has assisted startups and well-known brands like: ASOS, Adorama, AIGA, AT&T, Brian Solis, Center for Disease Control, Constant Contact, CVS Pharmacy, Envato, Hyatt, Jonathan Snook, Kodak, Hubspot, Lord & Taylor, Mashable, Microsoft, Neil Patel, Pearsonified, R.E.I., Sanyo, Sherwin Williams, Smashing Magazine, Southwest Airlines, Staples, Sony, Weight Watchers, Yahoo, Yoast and others.

He is also a serial web entrepreneur and technologist. One of his recent projects, W3 MARKUP, launched in 2007, was acquired after only 11 short months prior to his moving to Florence, Italy in 2008. Frederick currently splits time in Boston still where he focuses on his latest project Placester as a co-founder.

Frederick will be talking about business particularly “Business Optimization”

If you’ve ever wanted to make your WordPress passions a full time job you’re not alone. It’s a long journey to go from idea, to a documented, commented, socially mentioned, commonly installed and productive project. In this talk, Frederick reviews many of the tough lessons learned in trying to both build a team, community and movement around a WordPress plugin. He will share tips, best practices and pitfalls and most importantly how to address them once identified. Expect the talk to be highly interactive, the more questions and interruptions you provide the more valuable it will be.

Speaker: Brad Williams

brad_williamsWe’d like to welcome Brad Williams as our next WordCamp Europe speaker. Brad is the co-founder of WebDev Studios, a co-host on the DradCast podcast and a published author of Professional WordPress and Professional WordPress Plugin Development. He lives in Philadelphia where he organizes both the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Philly. He is a leading WordPress developer and security expert; he’ll be talking about “Writing Secure WordPress Code.”

…you’ll learn the proper way to write the most secure code in WordPress. Whether you’re a plugin developer or build themes, it’s extremely important to understand how to secure your code from hacks and exploits. Overlooking some very easy to follow techniques can expose your website to the hackers everywhere. WordPress features a number of built-in methods to help make sure your code is safe and secure, and we’ll cover each and everyone in detail.