2 days, 34+ speakers, one heck of an after party and our unique networking brunch – you definitely don’t want to miss WordCamp Orlando 2014!

Adam Soucie

Needs a bio 😉

Chrissie Scelsi

Chrissie Scelsi is the principal of Scelsi Entertainment and New Media Law with offices in Orlando and Port Charlotte, Florida, where she focuses her practice on entertainment, intellectual property, internet, technology, and business law. Ms. Scelsi has served as in house counsel for an international game based-simulations company, where she was responsible for advising on software licensing matters, trademarks, copyright, and corporate issues. She served as an editor of the book Computer Games and Virtual Worlds: A New Frontier in Intellectual Property Law, which was published by the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law, and is a chapter contributor to The American Bar Association’s Legal Guide to Video Game Development. Ms. Scelsi has written and spoken extensively about matters at the intersection of law and new technology, and is the author of the PunkLawyer blog. Ms. Scelsi received her B.B.A. in marketing from Loyola University New Orleans, a J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law, and a LL.M. in entertainment and media law from Southwestern School of Law.

Hristo Pandjarov

Hristo’s done it all: supported WordPress clients, built websites, designed WordPress themes, wrote tutorials, dug deeper into SEO and developed his own WordPress SEO plugin. He’s been fortunate to have his passion for all things WordPress and his job overlap at SiteGround, where he develops and implements various in-house performance boost solutions to help make WordPress websites faster and more secure.

David Parsons

Currently a Computer Science Major at the University of Central Florida, David has had a passion for web development for the past several years. He made is first website in his Junior year of high school and soon after found out about the power of WordPress. Due to the endless amount of possibilities to create and share on the web, creating websites has always been fun for David. As time went on, he grew his passions into outer branches of web development including responsive design, web apps, and SEO. When he’s not deep in code, you can usually find David playing his Tenor Sax, spending time with his family, playing League of Legends, or reading a good blog post.

Jessica Stewart

Jessica was born and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida before moving to Orlando to attend the University of Central Florida where she graduated in May 2013 with her degree in Digital Media, with a concentration on Computer Science. At Brand Co, she can be found putting together your custom WordPress themes, making sure they are ready to roll, and on occasion eating M&M’s from the BrandCo candy dispenser. When not at Brand Co, Jessica spends her leisure time watching old and/or bad movies, playing video games, listening to her roommates imitating one-liners from Futurama, contemplating who was the better Captain of the Starship U.S.S. Enterprise out of Kirk or Picard, and looking at cat gifs on the internet. It’s all really very exciting.

Max Lutz

Max Lutz is from Winter Park Florida. He graduated from the University of Central Florida in Marketing. Upon graduating, he spent his time freelancing as a web designer and graphic artist for a wide range of local business in the Orlando area. He joined forces with the Brand Co team in the beginning of 2014. When he is not at BrandCo, he can be found at an Orlando Magic game or at home watching some awesome television series like the Wire or Game of Thrones.

Syed Balkhi

Syed needs a bio 😉

Andrew Norcross

Norcross needs a bio 😉

Mark Jaquith

Mark needs a bio 😉

You don’t want to miss any of these fantastic speakers – make sure you get your tickets ASAP!

Thank you to all who are contributing to make WordCamp Orlando 2014 the best year yet! Here is our next round of amazing speakers! Do you have your ticket yet? You don’t want to miss all the great talks and panels!

Topher DeRosia

I’m a full time WordPress developer at http://XWP.co ( formerly X-Team WP ), and have been working with WordPress full time since 2010. I started with PHP in 1999, HTML in 1995, and Gopher in 1994. I’m from Grand Rapids MI, but get work work from wherever I wish.

Eric Binnion

Eric Binnion is a core contributor to the open source WordPress project and a Code Wrangler at Automattic where he primarily works on O2, a backbone based communication tool built for WordPress. When not busy at work, Eric is also finishing a Bachelors in Computer Science at Midwestern State University and spending time with this family. You can find him over at http://manofhustle.com or on Twitter at @ebinnion.

David Rogers

David Rogers is a community organizer and nerd wrangler, instructional speaker, application developer, professional freelancer, and dad.

Karena Kreger

With a unique combination of technical skills and a strong design eye, Karena has over a decade of experience in building her clients’ compelling, professional web presence. Karena runs Open Sky Web Studio in Jacksonville, FL, specializing in WordPress websites for small businesses and organizations since 2009. A member of the WPJax Meetup, Karena is a teacher at heart, striving to provide a creative and educational experience, without the scary tech talk.

Joseph Herbrandson

Project to project, I taught myself to build websites as a kid and never stopped tinkering. Always fascinated by security concepts and practices, I’ve have grown to love the journey of trying to understand every technology out there, and fitting it in to the grand secure plan. I am a researcher and account manager with Sucuri, and I work with malware and WordPress security issues on a daily basis. I’ve cleaned thousands of infected websites, and my passion is helping people up their security.

Liz Murphy Thomas

Liz Murphy Thomas is a Professor of Digital Media – Web Design at Florida State College at Jacksonville. She holds a BFA in Creative Photography from the University of Florida and an MFA in Photography and Digital Imaging from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She works in the mediums of photography, video, digital media and alternative materials including fiber arts. Liz has taught digital media and photography at several institutions in Florida, Illinois and Tennessee. She has served as the faculty advisor for the student newspaper, The Campus Voice, since fall 2014.

Nile Flores

Nile Flores is a sassy Southern Illinois mom who has been a long time WordPress designer, developer, and blogger. Her website is Blondish.net. She focuses on building websites that convert. Nile’s biggest passion is helping people rock out their websites. Her website assists in helping over site owners by talking about blogging, WordPress, social media, SEO, and web design. Nile also dedicates time to running a large and rapidly growing WordPress community on Facebook called All About WordPress. When Nile isn’t online, she’s reading, writing poetry, practicing kempo karate, and having fun raising her son.

Josh Pollock

Josh is a WordPress developer and blogger, core contributor and the community manager for the Pods Framework. In addition, he is a contributor to Tuts+, Torque, Smashing Magazine, Elegant Themes Blog and WPBeginner. Josh taught himself PHP and WordPress development while he was working on his masters thesis on open source solutions for sustainable design.

Stay tuned for another speaker announcement on Friday!

We had an amazing response to our call for speakers and while we wish everyone could have a time slot to share their knowledge, there are only so many hours in WordCamp that allow us to do so. That being said, we are pleased to announce, in no particular order, our first round of speakers!

Zac Gordon

Zac Gordon is currently the WordPress teacher at Treehouse and an experienced professor of web design and development. He enjoys teaching people how to use WordPress in order build cool things, improve their jobs, and better their lives. When not working with the web he likes traveling, yoga and off grid living.

Mason James

Mason is the Co-Founder and CEO of WP Valet where he’s made an art of making people happy with their WordPress experience. He has a passion for creating solutions and truly loves it when a plan comes together. When not connected to a computer he’s probably playing music, video games, or with his puppy, Penny (photos available on request).

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer, recently relocated to Minneapolis from Chicago. She was formally schooled in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the WP community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and events around the country.

Josh Shashaty

I’m a backend WordPress developer. I’m the lead dev of custom development at WP Valet and have used the methods/tips in my talk successfully with this team and other agencies we’ve worked with.

Rich Robinkoff

While working towards a career transition into technology (where his real passion lies), Rich stumbled upon WordPress, and let’s just say it was love at first site! Since then, he has submerged himself in all things WordPress; developing WordPress sites and attending WordCamps and meetups while discovering his own WordPress voice. When he’s not knee-deep in achieving Career 2.0, Rich works full time in Supply Chain and teaches Web Development at a local Community College, evenings and online.

Tom Townsend

Tom Townsend is the President and Founder of SMBsocial an Inbound marketing SW company that provides Digital Presence Solutions to SMB’s (Small Medium Business). His team helps solve real business problems with creative applications and platforms built on WordPress. He has been working with WordPress since 2007. As a co-organizer of WordCamp Tampa and Tampa Bay WordPress Meetups he continues to learn and share his passion for all things WordPress.

Erik Lindgren

With master’s degrees in English, Computer Science, and International Business, I’ve decided to marry the three by creating an online store of my writing using WordPress. Rather than give part of my profits to Amazon, a publisher, or an agent, I will build up a body of writing on my own site, and then start a social media campaign to promote it. I’m currently in the writing and building phase. I’d love to share my experience so far, and get feedback on the direction I’m heading. During the day, you can find me at Motorola Solutions in Plantation, Florida, where I work on our latest software products.

Darcy Sullivan

Hi my name is Darcy! In 2011, after a decade in corporate America, I jumped ship to start my own company, Propel Marketing & Design, with the simple vision to help small businesses and entrepreneurs propel their companies forward. Among Propel’s many services we offer, we focus on training small businesses to take ownership in their own marketing. This training includes web marketing, social media, WordPress, SEO, and much more. I have attended WordCamp two times and loved it. I would be honored to get the chance to help educate others in the WordPress community.

Stay tuned for another speaker announcement on Monday!