Speakers

Our Speakers

 

steveSteve Mortiboy

Steve is the COO and Service Delivery Manager for Semper Fi Web Design. He leads the team that develops plugins such as All in One SEO Pack. He has been working with WordPress for over 6 years and devotes much of his time to helping people get the most from WordPress. He is also one of the organizers of WordCamp Raleigh and the Raleigh WordPress Meetup Group. When not hard at work he’s working on DIY projects at home or off traveling.

laurenLauren Jeffcoat

Lauren has been building WordPress websites for almost a decade and is currently part of the OnTheGoSystems WPML Customer Support team. She enjoys creating WordPress websites and has worn many hats in the world of web development including Project Manager, Customer Service Representative, Account Strategist, and Web Designer. Originally from New England, she now lives in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. Lauren enjoys sharing her knowledge along with tips and tricks that she has learned either through furthering her education or personal experience. Lauren is the organizer of WordPress Meetup Myrtle Beach, a co-organizer of WordCamp Wilmington, a WordCamp Speaker and a lover of all things WordPress.

coreyCorey Freeman

Corey Freeman has been building websites for clients since she was 14 years old. Her passion for small businesses began with helping her mother with her company’s website. Now, Corey is dedicated to helping professionals and businesses build an incredible online presence.

tiffanyTiffany Kuchta

Tiffany is lead developer at Quandarymat, a web development shop. She doesn’t like the term full stack developer, but thinks she might be one. She has been building web applications since they were called “web pages” (1999). These days the bulk of her work is eCommerce applications and project stabilization. A woman who codes, Tiffany is passionate about inclusion in tech, solving problems with code, building things out of other things, empathy always, and sassy tee shirts usually.

derekDerek Schmidt

Born and raised right here in Southeastern North Carolina, Derek has worked with Adobe software for over 10 years. What started as a hobby and a ‘Do It Yourself’ attitude eventually became a career passion. Derek has worked with International multi-million dollar companies to help market their business and increase their digital presence. While Derek knows all the ins and outs of programming and post-launch marketing, he also understands that these individual tools are only as useful as the marketing strategy that guides them.

Peter LaFond headshot medium

Peter La Fond

Peter La Fond is the Founder and CEO of My Internet Scout, LLC, a digital marketing firm serving businesses of all sizes in locations across the country.
Peter graduated from California State University, Sacramento in 1994. Peter’s high technology career has spanned across two decades in Silicon Valley. He’s worked for various sized high technology firms, ranging from start-up to Fortune 500. Peter has employed the WordPress engine as the exclusive platform for the websites his firm develops. In addition, Peter is the Founder of the San Jose WordPress Meetup.
In 2015, Peter moved to Wilmington from Silicon Valley. Although his Silicon Valley roots run deep, he loves Wilmington. Peter, his wife, and two dogs are happy to call Wilmington home.

More Speakers

Kyle Laverty, Brian Reed, Andrew Gray, Jason Narciso, Sharon Dawson, Stephen Jones, Peter Baylies, Aaron Alexander, Shelly Peacock, Rich Owings, Elizabeth Pampalone, Adam Sewell, Helen Rittersporn and Ashley Thorpe.

 

Deadline for speaker submissions was October 7th 2016

Some Ideas To Help You Get Started:

First off, if you haven’t yet go watch some videos of past talks on WordPress.tv. Notice how the talks are given by knowledge people without self-promotion.

Recent feedback and polls have allowed us to share some possible topics that might help you guide your consideration. Here are some suggestions for topics:

– Content Creation (Writing, Strategy)
– Journalism / Podcasting Topics
– Security
– Building Themes
– Freelancing / Business Topics (Dealing w/ Clients, Best Practices, Hiring Developers, etc.)
– Web Design / Theme Design / UI / UX
– Learning About PHP Not Directly Related To WordPress (PHP 7, etc.)
– Advanced WordPress Development Topics (Coding Themes, Plugins)
– Case Studies (“What We Did Wrong”)
– E-Commerce Topics (Building E-Commerce w/ WordPress)

A few things to keep in mind about presenting at WordCamp Wilmington:

  • We look for speakers that are experienced BUT we also look for young or new speakers as well.
  • Being a professional speaker is NOT required HOWEVER you must know what you are talking about. In your speaker submission, let us know how your talk can relate to WordPress or the WordCamp Wilmington audience.
  • Your session is not primarily to promote your own theme, plugin or business. If your session is to detail how you used WordPress code to build some really great aspect of your theme, plugin or business, and you’d like to present that as a sort of case study, go ahead and submit your session, but know that we’re not going to allow for a sales pitch at any point.
  • You have to know how to spell WordPress. And respect the WordPress logo/trademarks.
  • You can submit multiple speaker submissions for different talks.
  • Please be prepared to submit speaker slides or review your presentation with a WCILM organizer PRIOR to the event if asked.

Talk Lengths:

The length of talks and sessions will be released soon.  You should anticipate on at least 25 minutes and at most 1 hour.  Once chosen this will be the TOTAL time for your talk including your presentation and Q & A time.  Upon acceptance you will be notified of the tracks and lengths of each individual session.  We may also incorporate “lightning talks” in between sessions which are short, fast-paced talks on a topic.

Selection Process:

All selections and submissions are collectively reviewed by our committee. We cannot accept all submissions, and in fact the majority are NOT selected. Factors we look for in presentations are the degree of uniqueness and popularity of the topic, the speaker qualifications and experience (past speaking experience is NOT required though), hometown of speaker (we try to keep a certain percentage of speakers local), and other factors. If your submission is not accepted we will notify you although we might not be able to personally respond to each submission or applicant.

Finally, there’s been a lot of talk about variety of speakers at technology conferences. Our general policy is that we don’t consider the race, sex, religion, or any other factor of the speaker to play a part in our selection process. That being said we encourage women and people of color to submit session proposals. EVERYONE has a story and you can reach out to us privately at [email protected] if you have any questions – please consider submitting a proposal!