We were over the moon with the quality and variety of the talk proposals we received for WordCamp Edinburgh 2017.
We will be announcing speakers over the next few days and hope to release our final schedule before the end of the week.
But without further ado, here is our first batch of speakers, who will be covering topics ranging from theme development to Facebook ads to blogging to filters to civic engagement to speed to security (phew!)
Leah Lockhart
Coordinator, collaborator, guide. Exploring social good enabled by digital things. Currently Digital Engagement Partner with Democratic Society, Scotland.
Kathir Sid Vel
Kathir is an eCommerce consultant who runs a digital agency in Edinburgh. He has been championing and building WordPress and Magento solutions since 2008. Focusing on marketing and coding disciplines, he advises and helps over 60 digital businesses – some of whom turnover millions of pounds through their websites.
Mark Wilkinson
Mark is a developer and Co-founder of Highrise Digital, a specialist WordPress agency focusing on custom development that is built to last. Mark has been using WordPress since late 2005, all the way back to version 2.0. He is also an active member of the UK WordPress community attending meet-ups and WordCamps in the UK, as well as getting involved in organising such events.
Franz Vitulli
Franz works as a Product Manager at Human Made, a top-tier WordPress agency that provides development and consultancy for large-scale sites and enterprise clients, creates awesome products online, and runs its own line of events—so far based on the WP REST API and remote working.
As an open source evangelist and social media enthusiast, Franz loves sharing his knowledge and helping other people in the greater tech community succeed.
When he’s not in front of his laptop, he’s either playing one of his bass guitars or hitting the gym. Chat with him on the Slack main WordPress team (@franz) and find him on Twitter (@franzvitulli).
Gavin Bell
Award-winning entrepreneur, Gavin Bell, helps businesses grow by harnessing the power of social media.
He launched his social media agency, Blue Cliff Media at just 21 years of age and now works with businesses around the world, helping them to transform the way the communicate online.
He takes an interesting view of marketing, by focusing on psychology first and tactics (ie, social media, search, advertising) second. Gavin is a speaker, writer and vlogger.
His vlog, despite being an early concept, has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. He’s passionate about creating content that inspires and educates entrepreneur and marketers. He’s been featured on the likes of Virgin.com, Huffington Post and Social Media Examiner.
Tim Nash
Tim is the platform lead at 34SP.com for their Managed WordPress product in addition to being the companies Developer Advocate. One day he will work out what either of those job titles means. Until he does he spends his day in a mix of Dev, security, ops and project management as well as speaking at user groups and conferences. He also helps run WordPress Leeds and writes for several publications including his own site timnash.co.uk.
Rachel Martin
Rachel is an Australian, cargo-bike-loving mum who lives in Scotland, and works for Automattic. She provides technical support for Jetpack, Akismet, VaultPress, Simplenote, Cloudup, Gravatar, WPJM, Sensei, and Polldaddy.
Mark Smallman
Mark is a former resident of Fife, having moved there in 2007 from his native Northern Ireland. In 2009, he set up his own graphic design business, this was soon followed by discovering WordPress having been asked by several clients to help them with setting up sites where they could easily manage their own content.
In 2010-2012 Mark attended a few of the WordPress Edinburgh Meetups. But, had to return to his home in Northern Ireland in 2013. In 2014 Mark started Northern Ireland’s first WordPress Meetup group, which is still going strong. He was also lead organiser for their inaugural WordCamp in 2016.
Sarah Semark
Sarah Semark is a designer, developer, and world-traveller. After running a business for eight years, she now works for Automattic designing and building WordPress themes. She has visited over fifty countries, and she has built things in most of them.
When she’s not busy making things, Sarah likes obsessing over typography, collecting impractical footwear, and exploring new places.
Get your ticket today
So what are you waiting for? Get your #wcedin ticket today. It covers both days of the conference – 22 and 23 July – and gets you access to all sessions, lunch, coffee breaks, swag, and the after party.