Speakers

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.

Stef Mattana

Stef works at Automattic as a Happiness Engineer. She helps users who need support for products mainly on the wp.org area such as VaultPress, Akismet, Jetpack and Polldaddy. WordPress evangelist, Stef is active in the International and Italian communities.

When she’s not working online or lifting heavy weights, Stef either stalks dogs or ends up people on fiction.

Stef has led the sponsorship and finance team of WordCamp London in 2016 and 2017.

You can find Stef on Twitter @stefmattana and on Instagram as eraniapinnera

Tom Nowell

Tom works his days as a VIP Wrangler at WordPress.com VIP for Automattic. He reviews and deploys millions of lines of code each year for large sites at scale.

He’s also a community moderator at WordPress Stack Exchange, project lead for the WordPress The Right Way ebook, open source developer, and conference speaker.

Bridget Hamilton

Bridget Hamilton founded Verbal Remedy, a taboo-tackling blog and multimedia company which was nominated for a National Diversity Award in 2015. She holds an MA in Radio Production and Management and has created content for platforms such as the Independent and the BBC.

CJ Andrew

CJ Andrew is an independent web consultant & contractor, specializing in ecommerce and custom CMS solutions. CJ has helped individuals, businesses and agencies achieve their goals using WordPress and WooCommerce. The unique insight he brings to each WordPress project is guided by a background in traditional IT support, change management, and web administration.

When not delivering WordPress or WooCommerce solutions, CJ enjoys jazz music alongside a long walk.

Kayleigh Thorpe

Kayleigh is a WordPress Support Specialist at 34SP.com . She works supporting customers with their WordPress related issues and enjoys using WordPress in her personal as well as professional life, and also enjoys contributing to the community.

Andrés Cifuentes

Andres is a Colombian front-end developer currently living in Sevilla after working in Paris for five years. He is a WordPress enthusiast working at OnTheGoSystems in support, training and lately as a Community Events leader.
He is a Colombian coffee addict, a traveler and an eternal languages student.

Daniel Casserly

Daniel is a self-employed software developer working in Edinburgh. He has been working in PHP and WordPress for 9 years and has done everything from plugin and theme development to setting up brand new sites for customers.

Claire Brotherton

Claire is a freelance web developer and accessibility advocate based in Edinburgh. Claire’s ideal clients are businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs who are passionate about access and inclusion. She loves learning and blogs regularly on her site A Bright Clear Web.

Graham Armfield

Graham is a Web Accessibility Consultant for his own company Coolfields Consulting. He works with organisations to help them improve the accessibility of their websites – testing the websites for accessibility, and advising the designers and developers on how to fix issues found. He has also written detailed training courses on accessibility for developers which he presents on a regular basis.

He is also a WordPress developer, and has built many accessible WordPress websites for clients – both large and small. He has contributed the Make WordPress Accessible Team and has spoken on accessibility to many WordCamps and other WordPress meetups.

Outside of work you’re likely to find him playing his guitar, recording his next album or performing at local open mic evenings.

Luminus Olumide Alabi

Luminus Olumide Alabi is a Happiness Engineer in the WooCommerce team at Automattic.

 

Kat Christofer

Kat is a California native and former journalist working for Automattic, writing and editing documentation for 400+ WooCommerce products. Her journey began in 2007 at WordPress.com, then moved to self-hosted and building e-commerce stores for private clients. A digital nomad for two years, she travels full time and is in love with the sea but surfs badly.

Ben Usher Smith

Ben is a designer specialising in WordPress, illustration and branding. He runs a small design shop in Edinburgh called BU-S.

Ben loves his clients even if they think he’s difficult and tell him so to his face.

Ben has been helping people solve design problems on the web since 1998 on projects both BIG and small. He’s still learning from clients and colleagues everyday.

Lightning talk speakers

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