WordCamp Kent 2020

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We’re thrilled to announce our lineup of speakers for WordCamp Kent 2020! Our speakers have volunteered their time to share their knowledge and expertise with the WordPress community.

Learn more about them in our Meet the Speakers series and meet them in person by joining us at WordCamp Kent, May 30-31, 2020.

Please note: the speakers are listed in no particular order.

• Bill Rice

  

  Bill Rice is the Founder/CEO of Kaleidico, a digital agency focused on lead generation. He designs websites that generate leads using WordPress. His agency specializes in serving mortgage lenders, insurance agencies, and law firms. He loves speaking, writing, and teaching digital marketing.

• Brittney Oddo

  

  Brittney Oddo is an award-winning content writer, social media strategist, author, and speaker who helps entrepreneurs drive a higher level of impact and income through consistent lead-generating content! Her mission is to help women find their voice and speak confidently about their mission. She also runs According to Brittney, a blog that guides women through “adulting,” entrepreneurship and marketing.

  She has worked with brands such as Uber, U.S. News and World Report, Dollar Tree, and more! She helps women grow their brands daily through her Facebook Group, Content Marketing for women entrepreneurs, bloggers, and influencers. Outside of her business and blog, she resides in Cleveland, Ohio with her husband and cat/fur child, Luna. She enjoys being involved in the community, meeting new people, and traveling! Most of all, she loves whenever she gets the chance to play her favorite video game, the Sims! She gives everyone she meets a pink and sparkly perspective to content marketing!

• Eileen Violini

  

  I’m a Design Engineer creating user experiences and interfaces for WordPress websites and products. With over seven years experience building WordPress solutions, I currently put my skills to work as partner at Sidetrack.Studio and wpBlockShop.com specializing in engineering custom WordPress block solutions and site conversions for organizations upgrading to the new editor. I contribute on the #core-editor and #theme-review teams and you can follow me on @itsjusteileen on Github, WordPress.org, WordPress Slack and Twitter.

• Tim McReynolds

  

  Tim has been in the tech industry in one way or another since about 1998. While he understands that there are some who like Windows and some like Mac, he is a contrarian who works in Linux for his laptops and desktops.
  He has put together websites for some non-profits as well as for information, and he has completed his own e-commerce site. He is the founder and owner of Baldz Company and www.baldz.com.
  Tim has worked as a Linux systems admin and as a support engineer for multiple software as a service (SaaS) applications.

  He is a traditional film photographer who worked for many years doing custom photo lab work. When using film was the only way to capture a picture, Tim owned a commercial photo lab with the first digital restoration lab in his county in Texas. Running on a 586 AMD CPU with 128Mb of RAM and a 980Mb hard drive on Windows 95, with Photoshop 3.0.
  Now Tim does custom work for people using “GIMP” to open eyes, fix colors, and create special effects.

We’re thrilled to announce our lineup of speakers for WordCamp Kent 2020! Our speakers have volunteered their time to share their knowledge and expertise with the WordPress community.

Learn more about them in our Meet the Speakers series and meet them in person by joining us at WordCamp Kent, May 30-31, 2020.

Please note: the speakers are listed in no particular order.

• Allie Nimmons

  

  Allie Nimmons is a self-taught WordPress power-user since 2014. She spent 5 years maintaining, troubleshooting, designing, building, and breaking WordPress sites for small business owners. Currently, she is a Customer Success Buff with WP Buffs and a GoDaddy Pro Speaker Ambassador.

  She also provides one-on-one diversity consulting through her company, Actionable Ally. She is mildly obsessed with lists and wants to make the internet approachable and accessible to all. 

• Craig West

  

  Craig is freelance trainer and architect that focuses on bringing together the WP and non-WP worlds by advocating WP-HTML, ‘where there is HTML, there is WP’.

  He is based in Brighton and attends the local WordUp meetings. With a previous career in business and accounting, as well as having run his own non-IT business, Craig can speak both technical and business. He believes that technology serves the user, not the other way around, so the user experience is paramount.

  He has started to speak at WP events and is interested in Web Components, Progressive Web Apps, High Perfromance Web Sites and the WP REST API and has a developing interest in pages that are ‘instant’ and/or offline capable.

• Lee Drozak

  

  Lee Drozak is a WordPress Teacher, Doer, and Fixer at LeeDrozak Biz, founded with tenacity and grit. In 2008. She’s what some call a unicorn – designer, developer, and strategist who feels user-friendliness and planning are where design starts. When she’s not working on WordPress websites, you can find Lee in her RV touring the back roads and countrysides somewhere in the US.

• Rahul D Sarker

  

  Rahul D. Sarker is a WordPress Developer & Digital Marketing Consultant, based out of Kolkata. He has worked with WordPress for the past 7 years. Apart from that, he conducts training and workshops in Kolkata & other metro cities in India on Web Development and Digital Marketing. Currently, he is handling 2 startups and working with few communities very closely. He is a big foodie and self-proclaimed proud solo traveler.

We’re thrilled to announce our lineup of speakers for WordCamp Kent 2019! Our speakers have volunteered their time to share their knowledge and expertise to the WordPress community.

Learn more about them in our Meet the Speakers series and meet them at our online WordCamp Kent event, May 30-31!

View the full event schedule.

Please note: the speakers are listed in no particular order.

• Abby Buzon

  

  Abby Buzon helps small business owners improve their online presence and local visibility with marketing and web design services aimed at drawing new business and increasing customer retention.

  She started her own company in 2017, The Helpful Marketer, after seven years in marketing technology and website administration.

  Based in Medina County, Ohio, Abby is a Northeast Ohio native and a Baldwin-Wallace alum.

  “I never would have guessed that I’d end up being a web designer or an entrepreneur. I was raised by an artist and an electrician. I am a super odd balance of left and right brain, and I pay great (sometimes crippling) attention to detail. The mix has led me to web design, and it’s totally my video game – I gladly stay up until 2 am playing… I mean working.”

• Kori Ashton

  

  From freelancer to entrepreneur to c-suite, Kori Ashton has spent over twenty years in the digital marketing space. She built up a WordPress agency that sold in 2017 and spends most of her time now consulting with industry brands and agencies on improving your customer retention with persona-driven development.
   
  She hosts a weekly giveback to the WordPress community on her YouTube Channel. And you can network with her via PressTribe – an online slack channel that she started in 2019 for WordPress freelancers and agency owners.

• Nathan Ingram

  

  Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.

  As the founder of >ADVANCE Coaching, Nathan works with WordPress solopreneurs and business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.

  Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he has been an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham for several years.

  You can learn more about Nathan at nathaningram.com.

• Swaahili M

  

  A 21-year-old WordPress Enthusiast who believes that asking WHY enough number of times can decipher almost anything. Perpetually lost – either in a book or in yet another theory that attempts to unravel and explain how humans think.

We’re thrilled to announce our lineup of speakers for WordCamp Kent 2020! Our speakers have volunteered their time to share their knowledge and expertise with the WordPress community.

Learn more about them in our Meet the Speakers series and meet them at our online WordCamp Kent event, May 30-31!

View the event schedule.

Please note: the speakers are listed in no particular order.

• Jocelyn Mozak

  

  Jocelyn has over a decade of experience building, running, and wrangling a WordPress website design agency all while having two boys at home.

  While her education in engineering certainly refined her technical and analytical skills, it is her passion for what she does that makes her an outstanding WordPress web designer. She is an expert in thinking outside the box and filtering out the key points amidst all the noise.

  In addition to running her agency, Jocelyn is a mentor & business coach to other creative professionals helping them to build businesses that support the life they desire.

• Michelle Schulp

  

  Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.

  Now, she collaborates on projects with clients ranging from solopreneurs to enterprise. She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”

• Stephen Morrissey

  

  Stephen is a web professional who started dabbling with websites back in the fall of 1996 when animated GIFs and scrolling marquees were in fashion. He first played with WordPress in 2010 and has written over 300 articles aimed at helping non-profit groups with digital marketing. Topics included UX, project management, inspiration, social media, and website tools. He’s been a UX Designer for 8+ years, but he still loves to create content and share knowledge.

• Steve Schwartz

  

  I’ve been creating digital assets for small businesses for about 10 years including video, photography, and website design. I’m also a bit of an online security nut. I’m a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and I am currently pursuing the Offensive Security Certified Professional cert (OSCP) through Kali Linux. I’ve been teaching classes on social media, photography, video, WordPress, and online security for over 10 years.

  My teaching style has always been to try to take complex technical jargon and bring it down to a level where end users can understand it. I differentiate myself as an educator by not just telling students to do (or not do) something, but rather explain the importance of “Why” and through story-telling to get the point across and make it stick.

The WordCamp Kent organizers are proud to announce the schedule for our 2020 online event!

The event is May 30-31, and is free to attend but a ticket is required. We’ll be sharing more information for attendees in the coming weeks — subscribe for updates by providing your email on the right.

Please Note: Schedule is subject to change with or without notification.

Saturday, May 30th

Sunday, May 31st

As we navigate the new terrain of hosting a 100% online event for 2020, we are excited to announce our keynote, who is an experienced speaker and a familiar face to past WordCamp Kent attendees. This year’s keynote speaker is Steve Grunwell!

Steve is a Senior Software Engineer at Liquid Web, working primarily on the Managed WordPress and WooCommerce platforms. Specializing in WordPress and web application development, he has a passion for teaching and contributing back to the development community through speaking, blogging and open-source work. 

Get to know Steve in our Q & A below, in which he shares more about his background and what inspired his keynote session, “The World Beyond WordPress.” 

Q: How did you get your start with WordPress?

A: My first development job was at a small agency, and we took great pride in building custom content management systems for clients. While it was a great way to learn, there was an awful lot of code copied between projects, and this was an environment where package management was non-existent and version control was a foreign concept.

One client came to us and wanted a blog, and had heard about this tool called “WordPress.” We decided to give it a whirl, and though I absolutely butchered the site, I was a huge fan of not having to rewrite everything from scratch. When I moved to a larger agency a few months later, I quickly became the go-to on WordPress-related issues after I published my first plugin, which then snowballed into more plugins, blogging, and eventually speaking.

Q: What got you interested in speaking? 

A: I have a theatre background, so being on stage isn’t really a big deal. I had also wanted to be a teacher for some time during high school, so when I realized I could teach one session at a time and get to travel I was all over it.

Thanks to Steve for sharing more about himself and his background. We are looking forward to hearing from all of our speakers at our virtual conference, May 30-31! If you’re interested in being a speaker, you can apply by April 17th.

Tickets are available now – we hope you’ll join us for a weekend of learning and networking from afar. Be among the first 150 to register to be a part of our swag order!

General Admission Tickets

UPDATE 4/2/2020: WordCamp Kent 2020 is taking place May 30-31, 2020 and will be 100% online and 100% free to attend!

The WordCamp Kent organizers are still determining the schedule and working with WordCamp Central on the logistics of putting on a successful virtual event. Your free ticket includes both days of sessions plus networking and virtual opportunities to get to know your fellow WordCamp attendees!

We will still have multiple tracks each day for you to choose from. If you don’t want to decide between two sessions in the same time slot, no worries! The recordings from all sessions will be available to all attendees, so you don’t have to decide between one session or another. You can always watch one you missed later!

WordCamp Kent will feature speakers from a variety of backgrounds including bloggers/content writers, authors, web designers, developers, SEO experts, and entrepreneurs. We hope you’ll join us for two days of learning, sharing, and networking with other WordPress enthusiasts!

Tickets are available online until the day before the event, May 29th, 2020.

We hope to see you at our virtual WordCamp Kent!

In light of the increased concerns over large gatherings and the recommendations of the CDC regarding COVID-19 in the US, the WordCamp Kent organizers have decided to move to a 100% online event this year.

We considered other options, such as postponing or canceling, but we believe we can provide an exceptional experience for attendees.

The plan is to stick to our original date of May 30-31. We are still in the process of working out the logistics of the online event, however, we have full faith in our team’s ability to improvise and pull together to make this a fulfilling and fun conference for you.

We are in the early stages of changing the format and determining how exactly it is going to look for attendees. Over the next week, the organizers will be working with WordCamp Central to determine what we need to host a successful online event in coordination with our speakers, volunteers, and sponsors.

We will also be re-evaluating ticket pricing which at this time is still to be determined. Over the next week we’ll be posting more details so please subscribe for updates if you haven’t already. You can also keep in touch with us on Twitter and Facebook.

Your patience and understanding are much appreciated. The WordCamp Kent organizers are looking forward to hosting you for a great event in May!