Category Archives: Speakers

WCEU 2014 Speakers: Joost de Valk

Give a warm welcome to our next WordCamp Europe 2014 speaker – WordPress developer, SEO & and an Open Source expert Joost de Valk.

Working with WordPress since 2006, Joost has a 10 year background in online marketing, more specifically SEO, and has always combined his knowledge of the two. Yoast, which he founded, has grown from a one-man-band to a 16 people agency over the last 3 years, focussing on both reviewing and improving websites as well as building free & premium plugins. His WordPress SEO and Google Analytics plugins are consistently among the highest rated and most downloaded plugins available for WordPress.

Joost was one of our most popular speakers at WordCamp Europe 2013. Watch his talk The Victory of the Commons and stay tuned for details on his talk in Sofia.

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WCEU 2014 Speakers: Siobhan McKeown

After being an invaluable member of WCEU 2013 organization team, we’re really happy to announce that Siobhan McKeown will also be a part of WordCamp Europe 2014 as a speaker.

Siobhan McKeown works at Audrey Capital where she writes about WordPress, deals with documentation, and has nightmares about the Codex. She’s currently working on an open source book about the history of WordPress. (Cool, right? Check out the project on Github.)

She spends her days delving into the brains of its early developers and community members. When she’s not worrying about the finer details of forking and the GPL, she’s helping out with the project’s future by wrangling WordPress’ documentation.

If you haven’t already, check out her talk “WordPress And The Ten Year Itch” from WordCamp San Francisco 2013.

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WCEU 2014 Speakers: Mark Jaquith

Hey folks!

We’re adding another lead #WordPress developer to the list of WordCamp Europe 2014 speakers.

Mark Jaquith has been working with and contributing to WordPress since 2004. He is one of the lead developers of the WordPress core and offers freelance WordPress consulting services through Covered Web Services with a focus on scaling, security, and custom functionality. Mark likes patches that have more red than green, and his favorite WordPress features are the ones that you’re not even aware of. He eagerly looks forward to shooting down your feature suggestions with, “No, but it would make a great plugin!”

Check out his talk Confident Commits, Delightful Deploys at WordCamp San Francisco.

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WCEU 2014 Speakers: Adrian Zumbrunnen

Happy Monday and say hello to WordCamp Europe 2014 next speaker – Adrian Zumbrunnen from Switzerland.

Adrian is a User Experience Designer, Writer, Speaker and Coffee Enthusiast working in the beautiful city of Zurich. He creates memorable product and communication experiences by consequently putting the user in the center of all creative efforts.

His talk at WordCamp Europe 2014 will be about creating distraction-free web publishing experiences that let people express themselves in richer ways. It targets everyone working with content management software, from developers to designers and end users.

Distractions have always been a natural constituent of our lives. But with the rise of technology and all the digital noise, it has become harder than ever to keep focussing on a specific task. It’s our job as designers to bring back clarity to the digital canvas by providing reading experiences that put readers first.

Read more from Adrian on design, user experience and perception fallacies in his blog. And to make sure we don’t just have Swiss and US speakers at this year’s WordCamp Europe, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google + for more announcements this week.

WCEU 2014 Speakers: Andrew Nacin

We are happy to welcome one of the lead developers of WordPress Andrew Nacin to WordCamp Europe 2014.

Andrew Nacin works for WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg at Audrey Capital, where he is primarily tasked with working on WordPress core and keeping the lights on at WordPress.org.

He is a lead developer of WordPress, wrangling contributions, spearheading initiatives, advising new development, and squashing bugs. He led some of the last major WordPress releases and is also a member of the core security team.

Just as many PHP core developers have with PHP, he and WordPress have a love-hate relationship. If he thought it was perfect, he would find another job. He feels strongly about the core philosophies of WordPress, among them “decisions, not options” — software should be opinionated in lieu of burdening the user with too many options.

He resides in downtown Washington, D.C., with his wife. You can follow him on Twitter at @nacin.

If you haven’t already, read this piece on The qualities of a great WordPress contributor he wrote. Check it out, get excited and join us for WCEU ’14 Contributor Day in Sofia.

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WCEU 2014 Speakers: Karin Christen

We’re happy to welcome swiss interaction designer Karin Christen to the speakers group for WordCamp Europe 2014.

Karin is a co-founder at required+, a swiss based web company with focus on Interaction Design, Mobile Web and WordPress. As an Interaction Designer she is setting her focus on the user’s perspective. Clients hire her to either work on applications with usability issues or to integrate in teams where they start a project from scratch. In here free time she loves to be in the Swiss Alps with her downhill mountain bike.

Karin’s talk in Sofia will target designers and front-end developers alike. The focus will be on rapid prototyping, user experience and interaction design. You’ll get introduced to Karin’s workflow and prototyping setup and learn about her on site work with clients and their UX and front-end teams.

Follow Karin on Twitter @karinchristen.

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WCEU 2014 Speakers: Helen Hou-Sandí

We’re delighted to announce that WordPress core committer Helen Hou-Sandí will join us at WordCamp Europe 2014.

Helen is the Director of Platform Experience at 10up. She also leads the upcoming WordPress 4.0 release (downloaded the WordPress 4.0 beta 2 yet?) so you’ll be able to corner her and hold her accountable for everything you’ll love about the new release.

Helen believes in WordPress as an amazing publishing platform, and loves working on all aspects of WordPress and cool things with WordPress. She is coming to Sofia to share her thoughts on common tasks and pitfalls in developing with WordPress and how we can get them done more easily.

Follow her on twitter @helenhousandi and check out her WordCamp talks on WordCamp.tv.

And on a non WordPress related note, if you’re into classical music, make sure you take a couple of minutes for this from Helen. Smuggling a grand piano into Hall 6 of the National Palace of Culture is now on the #wceu team TODO list.

For more speaker announcements and important updates, stay tuned with WordCamp Europe on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

WCEU 2014 Speakers: Matt Mullenweg

Hey everyone! We are starting the WCEU 2014 speaker announcements with great news.

The Co-Founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg will be joining us in Sofia for a Q&A Session.

Apart from co-creating WordPress, the most popular publishing platform on the web, Matt is also the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. Additionally, Matt is a principal and founder of Audrey Capital, an investment and research company, supporting innovative ideas, products and services and helping the WordPress.org project.

The one hour session with Matt will be a great chance for you to bring all of your big Qs about the WordPress of things, the decisions that are being made, the stats, and whatever else comes to mind. Go get your (ridiculously cheap) ticket now if you haven’t already and come to Sofia to hang out with Matt.

Also – feel free to shoot your questions for Matt in the comments below, we’ll keep them safe for you till September.

Cheers!

More exciting speaker announcements coming tomorrow, so make sure to follow WordCamp Europe on Twitter (and look for the #wceu hashtag, too), Facebook, and Google +, to get the news first.

Speaker Applications Are Now Closed

Speaker applications for WordCamp Europe 2014 are now closed. We’ve received over 80 applications from 19 countries all over the world. In the next few weeks we will be going through everyone’s applications, and decide on the speakers for WordCamp Europe 2014. Much like last year, there are certain things we’ll be looking for in your applications, in order to put our final schedule together:

Diversity of subject — since WordCamp Europe will attract people from different areas, we need to make sure that we’re providing content that’s useful for developers, designers, bloggers, business owners, and everyone else in between.
Diversity of geographical location and gender — the final schedule will represent the WordPress community worldwide, while particularly showcasing WordPressers in Europe.
Novelty — is the presentation saying something new? Or saying something old in a new way?
Relevance — is the content relevant to WordPress and WordPress users today?

We will look at the applicants’ past presentations, and previous content on the web, to make sure that the program for WordCamp Europe 2014 is top notch.

Thank you to everyone who applied! You’ll be hearing from us soon, as we will contact everyone who applied no matter what our answer is. To everyone else – stay tuned for our first speaker announcements!

Don’t forget to follow WordCamp Europe on Twitter (and look for the #wceu hashtag, too), Facebook, and Google +, to keep up with the latest developments.

Apply to speak at WordCamp Europe 2014

Photo credit: Patrick Andriessen, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

We’re delighted to announce the call for speakers for WordCamp Europe 2014.

If you would like to share your experience, know-how, and wisdom with the European WordPress community, you’ll hardly find a better (or bigger) stage. So think big, be bold, and impress us with your application; we will give you the opportunity to spread your word to hundreds of people. The deadline for applications is the 5th of July, 2014.

Think hard about what you want to share, why you want to share it, and how you’re going to do it. We’re already impatient to hear your ideas.

Good luck and see you in Sofia?