Speakers

Ben Usher Smith

Ben Usher Smith is an award winning designer and illustrator based in Edinburgh.

Graham Armfield

Graham Armfield is a Web Accessibility Consultant with Coolfields Consulting. He works with organisations to improve the accessibility of their websites – carrying out accessibility testing and recommending solutions to designers and developers. Graham is also a WordPress developer – building accessible websites for clients such as small businesses and charities. He has contributed accessibility fixes to WordPress core, and is an active member of the Make WordPress Accessible team.

When not bringing accessibility to the web, you might find him performing at open mic nights or dispatching a pint of real ale.

Heather Burns

Heather is a digital law specialist from Glasgow. A professional web designer since 2007, she recently pivoted from front-end web design for the third sector to writing, speaking, and consulting about laws which impact the web design and development professions. This year she completed a postgraduate certification in internet law and policy from the University of Strathclyde.

She is also an organiser of WordCamp Edinburgh and is probably running around the venue shouting about something just now.

Jason Agnew

Jason Agnew is the Technical Director at Big Bite Creative, a digital studio based out of Middlesbrough and a WordPress.com VIP partner. As a developer, he is also the author of a number of projects including Herbert (http://getherbert.com), Suzie (http://getsuzie.com) and Peggy (https://getpeggy.com).

John Johnston

John is a primary school teacher, turned staff development officer, currently nearing the end of a 23 month secondment to the Scottish Government working as a product owner for Glow. He’s been an enthusiastic proponent for blogging and podcasting in the classroom for over 10 years. Interested in Open Education. He blogs at John’s Word Wide Wall display.

Mark Wilkinson

Mark is a Freelance WordPress developer working from home in Lancashire and a former secondary school teacher of Computing. He builds both large and small WordPress sites for clients and agencies across the UK and blogs about WordPress at markwilkinson.me. Mark is particularly interested in using WordPress in different ways, getting away from a CMS or blog.

Samuel J Parsons

Sam is a digital craftsman who has been designing and building websites for more than 10 years. Recently, he was a member of the Digital communications team at the University of St Andrews before joining the Scottish Government to work on mygov.scot in September.

Sergio Estevao

Sérgio is a Mobile Wrangler at Automattic where he helps develop the WordPress mobile apps.

Currently he lives in Edinburgh where regularly writes about mobile development, contribute to open source projects, do presentations, train teams and develop his own apps.

When not coding he loves to travel by train and surf the ocean.

Steven Jones

Steve is a freelance web developer based in Newcastle upon Tyne with the web presence of Stomp. He has been using WordPress for 9 years and hates slow websites.

Tim Nash

Tim is a consultant and trainer, probably best known for his work with WordPress (though he has a eclectic background covering a broad range of subjects). When asked what he does for a living the usual reaction is “Stuff” so Tim is probably one of the few “Stuff” Consultants out there. A regular speaker at tech events and one of organisers of WPLeeds. He also blogs at timnash.co.uk

Valerie Adler

An ex-pat New Yorker and keen traveller living in the UK for the past 30 years, Valerie has had a WordPress business for the past four. In her past life she was a Project Manager in the public sector, where her emphasis was on business improvement, cultural change and systems integration. Her background is business rather than technical, yet she has always loved IT solutions. The accessibility of WordPress gave her a great start and as she developed her skills, the perfect segue to her current life. She wraps a good deal of business consultancy around the website building process, which seems to be generally pretty well received!