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.