Tag Archives: kansas city

Speaker Spotlight: Marianne Worthington

 Marianne WorthingtonWe welcome Marianne to WordCamp Kansas City to share tips on building your team. She has a lot of experience and she was kind enough to share with us a little more about her history here!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I spent 10 years building teams in corporate America. In 2012 I decided to leave it all behind and go out on my own…helping business owners build really great teams. For the past year and a half I have been helping businesses grow their business, and profit, by building high performing teams.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: My “ah ha” moment with WordPress was I needed Jim Grant to keep me up and running!!

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Do more customer development calls. From the get go business owners need to be on the phone asking about pain points and verifying the product that you offer actually matters and solves a problem.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: When you build your team you build your business. From day one you need to have laser focus on what your vision is and ruthlessly recruit people that buy into that vision. During the session we will focus on how you can make sure that you are building a fantastic tribe that will help you build your business.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A:People who are looking to build their business and want to learn how to build a powerhouse team.

Speaker Spotlight: Mary Baum

Mary BaumWe’re happy to introduce Mary Baum to our WordCamp Kansas City attendees. She got her start in print media and marketing, so we asked her to give a little more insight into how she got where she is.

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I’m trained as a print designer and worked as a combination art director and copywriter in advertising, in the 80s. In the 90s I worked with Maritz – still all in print, but growing my chops in digital design and production.I started doing sites in 1998, but did them in GoLive (wrong!) until 2007. That was when the Adobe Creative Suite switched to Dreamweaver, and I took that as a sign it was time to learn real html/CSS.

I was 47, and the first site I wrote that way was frontenactennis.com (Shocker!)

Once I had static sites down, I recognized I needed to offer more functionality – and flirted with Business Catalyst for a couple of years. Meanwhile, I was aware that I needed to start being able to design WP sites. I started my first few in summer 2010 (the year I turned 50, btw.) After a few CSS struggles and the realization I needed to learn php, I was done with Business Catalyst and committed to WP exclusively. 

In 2012, the last site I converted to WP was frontenactennis.com.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: There have been several:

  • The first was opening a second Genesis child theme and seeing its CSS was organized exactly as the first I’d opened was.
  • Another was answering a tweet with a joke that was a made-up php function about Keurigs.
  • Still others have happened every time I realize I just might have the hang of this hooks thing.
  • And then there have been all the times I’ve thought, “I’m a themer.”

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Skip BC. Learn php already.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Designing for conversion: The design decisions we make absolutely affect conversion. They tell a person this site is for them, or no, it’s not, with a million elements that combine to make one impression. But it’s copy that will seal the deal – especially such seemingly trivial copy as UI copy – the words on links, buttons and more.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A:Designing for conversion: intermediate designer, beginning developer, marketing junkie.
Mobile-first: intermediate designer, intermediate developer, advanced analytics junkie.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Brian Bookwalter

Brian BookwalterA long time supporter of WordPress Kansas City, Brian will be joining us to talk about bit about page builders. We know you’ve got questions, so we learned a little more about him below!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I worked as a print graphic designer as my first job in Manhattan, Kansas for an educational publishing company. Those seven years went very quickly and then I attended Graduate School at Kansas State. There, I started digging into code a little to learn more about the web. I set up my first WordPress site in 2005 (or so) and fell in love with it. Since then, I’ve been designing sites, some web-development, and using and reviewing premium products related to WordPress.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: My ah ha moment would have to be the first time I changed my theme but kept the database intact. After doing that, I just had a little resorting with the menu and post types order and the entire site was changed in a few hours.

At that time, “static” websites were all I knew, where your content was hard coded into each page… and changing a website design required starting over. WordPress changed the game.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Don’t be too overwhelmed by the immense selection of plug-ins and themes available, both paid and free. Start simple with the basics instead of jumping into really complex backend UI products. Most websites are designed to do two things: get data and display data. Knowing what problem you are solving with a website will help you design everything around that premise. And of course, making it look good is easier than ever with really great theme options. I could keep going and going about the topic of “I wish I knew then what I know now”!

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: We will review, compare, and contrast several different page builders and compare them with popular theme builders to help all attendees decide for themselves which option best suits their design needs.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Intermediate designer/ developers looking for ways to improve their front-end content development workflow.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Kim Beasley

Kim BeasleyOur own Kim Beasley will be joining the Kansas City WordCamp speaker list for the first time. She’ll be brining some knowledge for beginning to intermediate site creators, so we wanted to know a little more about her!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I’ve been developing websites since 1996 when I started developing intranet sites. Around 2003, I started developing and customizing WordPress websites for corporate and entrepreneurial clients. Around 2010, I started consulting with a company as a technical consultant who coached new entrepreneurs to create a WordPress website and monetize it in a 5-day workshop. In 2011, I started speaking about WordPress via webinars, stage and interviews.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: My ah ha moment came when one of my peers introduced WordPress to me in 2003. I had been developing websites from scratch using Dreamweaver. Once I was introduced to it, I saw the power behind WordPress and realized that developing website was much easier and smoother using WordPress.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: For newbies, I would say that learning the basics of HTML/CSS was something that helped me be able to customize on the fly.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Developing WordPress websites using Google App Engine is a great way to create in the cloud and have better control of your cloud environment. You will learn the basics of setting up the website and how to prepare for it. Also will share specific plugins that would be great to include with your installation.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: This workshop is good for different levels of developers: beginners, intermediate, content providers and many more.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Speaker Spotlight: Andy Brudtkuhl

Andy BrudtkuhlAndy is a web developer from Des Moines, Iowa who came to WordPress after a lot of other work. He gave us a little insight into his work so that you could get to know him better!

Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I started my career as a Software Engineer building web applications in ASP.Net for a few startups and then as an independent contractor for enterprises doing backend and front end development. I dabbled in WordPress for about 8 years before doing it full time as a freelancer and now as an employee managing dozens of sites.

Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: When I discovered plugins can do anything.

Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Plugins are where it’s at.

Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: Learn how to use tools and processes to improve your workflow to become a better and more efficient WordPress developer.

Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Beginning developers.

This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!

Jim Grant WordPress 101

What’s Keeping You From Speaking at WordCamp?

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve been sitting with that Call for Speakers form open in a tab for at least a day. You go back to it from time to time and think “I’ll leave that open so I remember to submit a talk”. But with the deadline fast approaching – April 20th is closer than you think – you might need a little help getting past some blockers.

Here are some of the reasons we’ve heard lately about why a talk hasn’t been submitted.

“What if you reject the talk I send in?”

It’s true that submitting a talk opens you up to the possibility of rejection. However, to trot out a bit of sports talk, you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Think of it as a way to figure out how to make your talk even better rather than an indication that your talk is all horrible.

“I don’t have anything I could talk about.”

Sure you do. Not all the talks at WordCamps are strictly instructional. Most conferences, and WordCamps especially, have a mix of many presentation types. Instructional, inspirational, test cases, and panel discussions. Submit what you have and see the diversity thrive!

“What if people ask questions that I don’t know the answers to?”

First, you’d be surprised by the amount of information you have in your brain. Second, so what if they do? The only way for us to learn and grow is to become exposed to things we didn’t know before. I’d like to direct you to this fabulous Sesame Street video about “The Power of Yet

But the bottom line is this…

WordCamps are filled with some of the most awesome speakers, yes, but they also have some of the most awesome attendees. People with all levels of experience and learning attend them to meet like-minded folks, continue their own education, or embark on their new journey to loving WordPress.

And I ask you this. If you don’t do it, then who will?