Speakers

Introducing the speakers that will be at WordCamp NOLA 2016!

Burke Ingraffia

Burke has been working with WordPress since version 1.5, starting in 2005. He is the owner of Point Clear Media, LLC, a consultancy that specializes in WordPress, multimedia, user experience, and, eLearning. He has been a full-time professor at Loyola University New Orleans where he taught WordPress development to students in the Department of Music Industry Studies. He is currently a UX/UI software engineer for General Dynamics Information Technology as well as a semi-professional singer/songwriter.

Shercole King

Shercole King serves as the Homeless Management Information Systems Administrator for VIA LINK. As Administrator, Shercole works with homeless programs on data quality and human services software user experiences for the Greater New Orleans region. Today in addition to her work with the homeless community, she has devoted her time to bringing technological resources to the youth in underserved communities in the area. She serves as founder of The Creative Impulse, which plans to focus on bridging the gap between technology and the arts. She is also Co-Founder of Teens for Tech, which is a program solely focused on bringing technology to youth. The program most notable is Teen Tech Day, a one-day conference, in its sixth year, which has gone from serving 15 to over 60 students each year.

Shercole has also previously run successful websites called Good Nola and Minority Weirdos, which spotlighted all positive things and experiences in the Greater New Orleans area. She has also written for online publications such as Go Nola, Humid Beings, New Orleans and Me, in which she stayed active in the online community building resources for locals and tourist alike.

Shercole serves on the board of New Orleans Women in Technology and as the co-chairperson of the Impact Committee. In addition, Shercole serves on the Loyola University Alumni Board and sits on the Scholarship Committee. Shercole has previously served on the board of NOLA Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals, a successful Post-Katrina initiative to engage and retain young professionals in New Orleans. Shercole was previously appointed to the the Steering Committee for Fountain of Youth Foundations, among others.

Shercole was recognized in 2013 and 2014 through Silicon Bayou 100. In 2011, Shercole won The Circle of Excellence of Award from Delgado Community College for her work in the community surrounding youth and technology. She was also recognized as a nominee for the Millennials Award and Ada Lovelace “Woman of the Year in NolaTech”. In 2016, Shercole King was invited to attend the White House’s “Expanding Opportunity with Open Data.”

Alex Geriner

Born out of a love for design and New Orleans’ soulful architecture, Doorman Designs was founded by Alex Geriner in 2011. The mission was clear – design and craft unique furnishings that evoke a sense of place and tell a story, while giving centuries old materials a new life. Alex and his small team of trained craftsmen have developed a line of furnishings that are designed, built and sourced from materials throughout the Gulf South. Alex handpicks cypress, poplar, fir, ash, pine, and wrought iron from contractors and demolition crews who no longer have a use for them.

Jeremy Dolan

Jeremy Dolan was born and raised in Sussex, England. He discovered his love of engineering at a young age, and often took things apart just to put them back together again. Later, he delved deeper into the subject as he pursued Design Technology in A-levels. He graduated from Birmingham University with a degree in Geology. Soon after leaving school, he was selected for the cast of STOMP, and spent almost a decade drumming for the show in London, Paris, and Boston.

Jeremy began teaching himself programming during his years as a performer. When he left the stage in 2007, he began a successful second career as a freelance web developer, and continued his education with programming classes at UCLA.

Prior to joining Faudo/Get Online NOLA full time in Fall 2014, Jeremy worked as a programmer for Peter Mayer Advertising, where he specialized in email marketing and WordPress development.
In his spare time, Jeremy enjoys playing rugby for Crescent City Blues, cycling, gardening, and going camping with his family.

Anthony D Paul

Anthony helps build great digital experiences and software through usability research, IA concepts, and prototypes. Outside the office, you’ll find him spread across regional meetups and conferences—evangelizing IA/UX, accessibility, and a variety of open source dev projects. When he’s not doing responsible adult things, he grows the world’s hottest chili peppers and bottles his own hot sauce. He’d divulge something funny from him past, but these days the Internet does a better job of surfacing our embarrassing moments; find him anywhere by Googling “anthonydpaul”.

Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey is a copyright and plagiarism consultant and owner of CopyByte who spends his time tracking content on the Web, dealing with plagiarism/infringement and helping clients devise productive strategies regarding their work. He is also the blogger at Plagiarism Today and blogs there about copyright and plagiarism matters. Jonathan is a non-lawyer copyright and plagiarism expert and approaches this from the perspective someone who works with various organizations that represent content creators. He approaches this as someone who has seen the aftermath of widespread content misuse and understands the need for greater protection of original work.

Nathan Allotey

Nathan is a web designer and digital marketing consultant based in Houston, TX. He first started working with WordPress in 2009 after taking a position at one of the leading web hosting companies in Houston. Since that time he founded inPhocus Media, a web design studio that uses WordPress as a part of their digital marketing strategy.

He is the author of Freelance Jumpstart, an online resource to help freelancers and creative entrepreneurs reach success in their business and avoid common pitfalls.

You can find Nathan teaching on business and digital marketing on his weekly podcast at nathanallotey.com.

Adam W. Warner

Adam W. Warner discovered the world of WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since. To feed his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners. He is a true product evangelist for WordPress in spirit and personality, and that also happens to be his job title at SiteLock. In addition to WordPress, Adam is passionate about his family, robots and of course, life, the universe and everything.

Wendy Dolan

Wendy Dolan is the founder of Get Online NOLA, a community minded company that provides affordable websites, e-commerce, branding and marketing to small businesses and nonprofits.

Before starting Get Online NOLA, Wendy worked with top brands such as Nike, Dannon, and Dr Pepper, but she feels most at home helping small to medium sized businesses develop their brands and establish a strong online presence.

Wendy has been building WordPress websites since 2008, and teaches regular workshops to help business owners make the most of the internet. She is on the board of New Orleans Women in Technology (WIT), an active member of the American Business Women’s Association (ABWA), and was named one of Silicon Bayou’s 100 Top People in Tech and Entrepreneurship in 2014 and 2015.

Mallory Whitfield

Mallory Whitfield has been blogging since 2006 at MissMalaprop.com and using WordPress since 2004. Throughout her journey as a creative entrepreneur, Mallory has worn many hats, including blogger, visual artist, upcycled clothing creator, performance artist, jewelry designer, craft show vendor, creative strategist, speaker, teacher and consultant to other small business owners. By day, she specializes in SEO and content marketing as Content Analyst at FSC Interactive, a leading digital marketing agency in New Orleans.

Carolyn Sonnek

Carolyn has been an avid user of WordPress since 2005. She also makes a mean tater tot hotdish. These two things are not related, but both impressive. She currently lives in the Minneapolis, MN area and loves all sorts of outdoor activities. She works as a Happiness Rocketeer for Automattic, the company that makes WordPress.com and plugins such as Jetpack, Akismet, and VaultPress.

Christopher Harris

Born a geek, Christopher Harris coded his first website in 1997. In 2005 he launched Faith Growth, a Dallas-based consulting company that builds custom Genesis WordPress sites for domestic and international faith-based clients. Faith Growth also provides white label development service to agencies. Christopher particularly enjoys helping churches develop a digital-first mindset, to effectively engage and grow their communities online. Christopher is an active contributor to the local WordPress community.

Sonja Leix

Sonja is a location-independent WordPress designer and Digital Strategist. She’s an active member of the WordPress community, contributes to the Polyglots team, and helps out with community events such as WordCamp New York and Europe. She loves working with passionate people and sharing her experiences with the community.

Eli Silverman

Eli Silverman is the founder of Caliper, a branding, web design, and development shop that opened in 2008 when Eli moved from New York to New Orleans. Caliper works with businesses to establish strong brands and fluid workflows – Eli builds websites, designs for both screen and print, creates web-based software and business tools, and offers creative direction for digital and physical design projects. Caliper often works with top restaurants in New Orleans but serves clients in other industries and cities, as well.

Luca Sartoni

Luca is a Growth Engineer at Automattic / WordPress.com. He is active in the international WordPress Community, co-organizer of WordCamp Europe 2016, co-editor on http://it.wordpress.org/.

Douglas Thomas

Douglas Thomas is the Interactive Manager at The Marketing Center for Disability Law Practices, a niche legal marketing firm. Over the past five years, he’s designed and implemented code, strategy, creative, and post-project analysis of multi-threaded lead-generating search and social campaigns across niches. Managing a team of online marketers, Doug takes his team and clients to the next level with full stack strategy and real-world development experience.

Gregory Schultz

Member of NOLA WordPress meetup, writes for openbayou.com, podcasts at controldaily.com. 9 years of WordPress experience.

Frederick Meyer

With my partner David Hayes, I’m co-executive editor of WPShout, which offers weekly WordPress technical tutorials. We recently released an online learning package, Up and Running (upandrunningwp.com), that aims to make learning WordPress development clear, logical, and quick.

We also operate a boutique agency, Press Up (pressupinc.com) that services all kinds of web development needs, and specializes in WordPress projects.

Blake Bertuccelli

Blake Bertuccelli is an independent web designer, developer, and strategist who has created websites and media outreach campaigns for a var arrayOfClients = {‘organizations’ : [‘NOTMC’, ‘GoNOLA’, ‘Tulane’, ‘Ragusa Consulting’, ‘NolaVie’], ‘individuals’ : [’La. State Senator J.P. Morrell’, ‘Ruby Bridges’, ‘Terry Gilliam’], ‘events’ : [‘New Orleans Navy Week’, ‘New Orleans Book Fest’], ‘government_groups’ : [Third Coast Leadership PAC, Keep Louisiana Beautiful]}.

A graduate of Tulane University, Blake is also an avid filmmaker (“A Journey West”, “El Sud”), playwright (“Waiting for the Sun”), a co-founder of Cinema Reset, founder of Open Screen New Orleans, a board member of Shotgun Cinema, and Managing Director of Lowling Company, LLC.

Michele Butcher

Michele hails from the beautiful Southern Illinois and is the SLA Lead ensuring a five star support experience at Valet.io. Michele is also the Support Guru for Give, the donation platform exculisivly for WordPress. During the evenings she is a WordPress instructor for John A Logan College. In Her free time she is the Lead Organizer for the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup, loves traveling with her family, enjoys reading, and a lover of fine food and drink.

Myndee Corkern

I am a 36 year old writer and Social Media Manager. I have been married for 11 years and am a mother to three young children. I started blogging in 2008 as a way to connect with others and chronicle my journey into motherhood. In 2013, I joined the New Orleans Moms Blog as a contributor and quickly began working as their Social Media Strategist. I have worked with local and national brands on social media and blog campaigns, with both on and offline components.

Jess Planck

Jess has been creatively building websites for over 20 years using open source and whatever works. His background is graphic design and fine arts with a large dose of trial by fire training experiences.