Kristen Symonds
Kristen Symonds, aka kristarella, works as a Happiness Engineer for Automattic. She is a WordPress fanatic with a love for photography, craft, SciFi and Fantasy, board games, and more.
Kristen is married to Dave and has two pet rabbits named Monty and Zoë. She is also a Christian and plays flute and guitar.
Ben Ramsden
Ben Ramsden is a management consultant with a couple of WordPress businesses on the side. Regularly afflicted by “imposter syndrome” he hasn’t let that stop him venture into the world of WordPress plugins and now has paying customers in 40 countries. Join Ben for an engaging presentation about being an outsider on the inside of WordPress land.
Topher DeRosia
I’ve been a web developer since before there were pictures on the web. I’ve been a WordPress developer since 2010, and currently work as a WordPress Developer Advocate for BigCommerce. I’m married, with two kids, two little dogs, and a little house in Grand Rapids MI.
Chris Bryant
Chris Bryant is Director at OPMC Group. He founded OPMC in 2003 while at University in the cold and windy capital of New Zealand, Wellington. The business is now a 15 year old multi brand web services organisation, including OPMC and Web 105 Creative.
The OPMC brand focuses on the four areas of ecommerce, web hosting, plugin development and web security.
Chris lives in Sydney with his wife and 10 month old baby.
Robert Anderson
I’m a JavaScript Engineer at Automattic and contribute to Gutenberg full-time.
I love traveling, cycling, skateboarding, warm weather, strong coffee, cold beer, and wearing loud shirts.
Chris Ryan
Chris is a successful WordPress consultant, business entrepreneur and one of our WordCamp Sydney organisers.
Richard Clement
Richard Clement is Head of Digital Communications for the Aspen Pharma Group, managing online infrastructure and technical strategy for the Group and its many International affiliates.
Richard has spent much of his career in Pharmaceutical Sales, Marketing and Training – but since 1997 has had a keen interest in web development. He built his first commercial website using Frontpage and his first database driven website with Drumbeat 2000.
Since joint Aspen in 2005 his focus has been increasingly towards digital – and moving ever closer to WordPress. In 2014 the decision was made to move all of Aspen’s websites onto WordPress and in 2016 the company’s global corporate site was rebuilt using Beaver Builder to modularise development efforts and bring affiliate sites online faster.
Tim Butler
With over 20 years experience in IT, Tim has extensive experience with systems scaling to many thousands of simultaneous users. Currently managing the technology stacks within Conetix, Australian owned and operated hosting company.
Passionate about WordPress, Tim is actively involved with the WordPress community and currently co-organises the Ipswich Meetup. Tim is also a published author, with the release of the NGINX Cookbook via Packt last year.
Simon Foxe
Simon Foxe has worked in both infrastructure and development sides of the tech industry since the early 90’s.
He is the director of Codeflow, a WordPress specialised development business servicing clients in Australia, United States and Switzerland.
He has been running Codeflow from the road for the last 4 years, and recently completed the Remote Year program, living and working in a different country each month with 65 other digital nomads.
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Robey Lawrence
I worked in IT for 5 years, straight of High School. Then decided to pivot to web design when I discovered WordPress in 2013. I moved to the Gold Coast in 2014 where I started attending WP Meetups. That’s where my networking and learning exploded and I’ve been hooked (no pun intended) ever since.
The community around the WordPress platform has been such an encouragement for me over the last few years, I have grown and learnt so much from the generosity and time of others.
It is because of this that I am passionate about giving back, through organising the WordPress Port Macquarie Meetup and also co-creating and hosting the WP Bosses video hangout / podcast, where we interview Aussie WordPress Designers, Developers, Builders, Users, Hackers, Preachers etc.
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Justin Yoo
Justin is a senior consultant working at Mexia in Melbourne. He has been Microsoft MVP since 2015 and helping developers around web technologies. He has presented several conferences including DDD Sydney.
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Travis Balinas
I’m a Senior Product Marketing Manager at BigCommerce, leading the Commerce-as-a-Service initiative for our platform, focused on delivering headless commerce to WordPress.
Content and commerce are inextricably linked and I believe that the future of both will blend the best of open source + SaaS. I have nearly a decade of experience working at SaaS startups, serving small business, mid-market, and enterprise audiences across a multitude of industries.
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Ricky Blacker
Ricky is a self taught web professional who found and fell in love with WordPress, and the community behind it while looking for a CMS platform to build websites for clients.
He originally built his own web design business after being made redundant from a factory job in 2013, but now works for WP Engine as a Pre Sales Engineer, providing a Digital Experience Platform for WordPress.
He is a Co-Organizer for the Sunshine Coast & Brisbane WordPress Meetup Groups, as well as the Brisbane Web Design Meetup group, and was one of the amazing team who put together the Sunshine Coast WordCamp in 2016 and WordCamp Brisbane in 2017.
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Cath Hughes
Cath Hughes is a Sydney-based web designer, WordPress consultant and WordPress tutor, speaker, mentor and an active member of the WordPress community here in Australia, and online.
Cath is also a coach at WP Elevation, where she trains and mentors website designers and web development professionals in business.
Cath founded her first business, Phase Creative, back in 2013, and launched Live By 5 with the aim of bringing quality sites to the freelance, consultant and soloist market.
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Brendan Woods
Bio: Brendan works as a Team Lead with XWP, managing large scale WordPress solutions, though Brendan has also had substantial experience in the Product Owner role.
With a keen interest in data analysis (currently completing a Masters of Data Analytics), Brendan has quickly become one of XWP’s resident GDPR experts, working with companies to assess the impact the incoming legislation will have for how technology companies operate in the EU.
Outside of work, Brendan is (sadly) a Lakers fan and loves playing streetball at his local.
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Brian M Logan
Brian M Logan has been a constant in the web industry in one form or another since 1999/2000 when he produced and launched IndieFilmWeb.com, Australia’s first-ever streaming film and music website (launched 5 years before YouTube even existed).
Brian M is the founder of a successful Sydney SEO agency (SEO North Sydney Pty Ltd) and is a seasoned SEO corporate trainer and SEO keynote speaker able to converse in all manner of digital topics.
He’s also someone able to ‘walk the talk’ as well as ‘talk the talk’, so by all means type ‘SEO keynote speaker Sydney’ or ‘SEO Sydney’ into Google to see his digital kung fu in action…
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Chris Mundy
I’m a Digital Business Consultant and Trainer.
I have a long story in Technology that has taken me to many corners of the globe, and the Internet has allowed me to help others with their Technology story.
WordPress is my premier tool of choice and I have been using it since 2006 helping people get ahead online.
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Scott Commins
Scott has been working with WordPress and PHP since 2013 when he joined The Code Company.
In that time he has worked on individual and group bespoke projects for a board range of clients and application sizes. He often works directly with the client and is primarily a back end developer.
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James Rose
James Rose is a co-founder of Content Snare. He has a passion for helping web designers and digital agencies do less work, get better clients and reduce their stress levels. This developed after several years of stressing too much in his agency.
James’ favourite topics to write & speak about are systems, processes and automation. He believes these are the best ways to set a business up to grow and to work less at the same time.
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Kate Toon
Kate Toon is an award-winning SEO copywriter and SEO consultant with almost two decades of experience in all things advertising, digital and writing. Originally from the UK but now based just outside Sydney.
She has worked with big brands such as eHarmony, Curash and Kmart. And she’s helped countless small businesses produce great content and improve their copywriting and SEO.
Kate is also the founder of The Clever Copywriting School and The Recipe for SEO Success eCourse, the co-host on the Hot Copy Podcast and the host of The Recipe for SEO Success podcast.
Kate recently published her popular business book, The Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur – which also has it’s own podcast.
She presents the Write for Business show for the Dale Beaumont’s Brin.ai app and is the founder of The Copywriting Conference – Australia’s first dedicated Copywriting Conference.
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Nadia Kerr
Full stack LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Website Developer with 20 years in the technology industry. I have broad experience in all aspects of web development, various CMS platforms including WordPress, WordPress theme development, responsive web design, server management, global project management, database management, online marketing, search engine optimisation, extensive use of Adobe Creative Cloud tools such as Photoshop & Dreamweaver; and web programming. Proven experience in delivery and maintaining of SEO (search engine optimization) to organically improve website performance in search engines.
I get a truly great feeling of satisfaction once I’ve cleanly and precisely coded up a technically challenging website. I also love helping others in learning all things web, internet and WordPress having spent time in recent years training small business owners and colleagues on how to use WordPress better.
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Jane Tweedy
Jane Tweedy is founder and lead trainer of new business FAQ Business Training, with a mission to educate and empower small business owners to DIY or outsource with confidence through accurate, topical training. Jane is also a part-time Business Connect and BEC Australia Approved Business Advisor for Western Sydney Business Centre.
The NSW Government funded program has allowed Jane to meet over 750 small business owners for personalised meetings about an array of business topics. Jane has a passion for helping small business owners succeed with a background encompassing corporate, volunteering and small business experience.
Jane’s corporate background covered investment analytics, people leadership, training, business management, sales and client service. Volunteering includes Max Potential Community Coaching and being a Board Director of a local Bendigo Community Bank® company.
This vast experience is supported by an accumulation of theoretical knowledge with a Master of Applied Finance, Bachelor of Commerce and Administration, Certificate IV’s in Small Business Management and Training and Assessment, and Jane is a recent Graduate of Kate Toon’s Recipe for SEO Success. With Jane’s diverse background, she is capable of providing training and advice across many areas, and gains great satisfaction from helping small business owners succeed.
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Stephanie Campanella
I live and breathe digital marketing – Starting Summit Web Design in 2011, rebranding it recently to Summit Digital. I also built Tradies Get Online, a niche marketing company focused on marketing for Tradies. I also have my love project which is Stefania’s Cucina – Being of Italian heritage – I just love food and getting people together.
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Alex Bishop
Alex Bishop is a Senior Web developer at Frame Creative and has been involved with WordPress and open source for the past 6 years. He enjoys sharing what he knows and is happiest overlooking some vineyards.
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Andrew Duncan
Andrew Duncan is the CEO/Owner of Databuzz, a FileMaker Business Alliance partner based in Sydney, Australia. He has been developing FileMaker solutions since 1992 and has been working with APIs for over 15 years.
Andrew is the developer of fmEcommerce Link (WooCommerce Edition), a popular solution for integrating WooCommerce with the FileMaker platform (FileMaker is an Apple subsidiary that provides a unified platform to create and deploy custom apps for mobile, cloud, and on-premise environments.)
Andrew speaks regularly at the Sydney FileMaker Developers group which he convenes, with a particular focus on FileMaker integration. He has developed a number of award winning FileMaker integration solutions, including fmSMS, fmAccounting Link and fmEcommerce Link.
Andrew writes regularly on his Databuzz blog and is an active member of the FileMaker Community.
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Dee Teal
Dee has been using WordPress as a blogger since 2008, as a web developer since 2009 and has transitioned to being a Project Manager for large scale WordPress projects as a ‘Human’ with Human Made where she also leads their team of PMs.
Dee is a huge fan of the WordPress community, organises WordPress events in Australia, and speaks at them where she gets the opportunity, both at home and around the world.
Dee is carries both NZ and Australian passports, drives an (adorable) English Classic Car, owns a Burmese cat with a huge personality, drinks black coffee and after nearly 20 years in Australia still can’t shake her mostly Kiwi accent.
Connect with Dee: @thewebprincess, https://thewebprincess.com
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Luke Carbis
Luke is a trained teacher who decided to trade moody teenagers for programming. Today, he works to foster diversity, community, and possibility at XWP.
Connect with Luke: https://carb.is/