Speaker Spotlight: Julie Harrison

As a communications strategist and freelance writer, Julie first pressed “publish” on her blog Coffee with Julie in 2009. Since then, her blog has been cited by Canadian Family magazine as one of “18 Mom Blogs We Love,” Savvy Moms’s “35 Top Mom Bloggers List,” Capital Parent Newspaper’s “Ottawa Parenting Blogs We Love,” and has been a Canadian Weblog Nominee for Parenting and Travel categories for the past three years. She is a huge fan of strong coffee and social media and you can find her on Twitter @coffeewithjulie and at www.coffeewithjulie.ca.

Julie is participating in the panel Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? When I decided to start a blog, I decided to hire a graphic design agency. I knew I wanted a great-looking blog and I knew darn well that I wouldn’t be able to create one because I have no technical skills to speak of. Really, I had no idea what WordPress was or why the agency chose it. But hey, five years later, and I’m still happy! WP has proven to be user-friendly, offer fantastic plug-ins, and most developers are happy to work with it.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? The thing I love most about blogging is the community, so when I was asked to join this panel, I said yes.
What is your talk going to be about? Each person on the panel will share their experience with WordPress through their own particular filter — whether that’s to promote a company, their own writing, or a particular social cause that they are passionate about. For me, I will be sharing my perspective as a freelance writer and communications consultant.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? I’ve had great results with LinkWithin and I always click on other bloggers’ LinkWithin features as well.
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T-shirt order deadline this Friday: register before it’s too late!

Only 11 days left until WordCamp! We hope you’re as excited as we are for what will undoubtedly be a great event.

Our order for T-shirts needs to be placed this Friday the 19th. In order to reserve your very own WordCamp Ottawa tee, you must buy your ticket to WordCamp by this Friday at 3pm.

We’ll order a few extra shirts, but there’s no guarantee you’ll get one if you don’t grab your ticket by Friday. So register now and claim your WordCamp duds without delay!

If you’ve already bought your ticket, that’s awesome! You’ll be sporting WordCamp swag in just over a week. While you’re waiting, why not grab a badge to show your support for WordCamp Ottawa.

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Speaker Spotlight: Christopher Ross

I am a Canadian WordPress designer, developer, speaker, teacher, and consultant who enjoys long walks with shortcodes, functional arguments, and playing with other people’s APIs.

Christopher is presenting: How to make a living with WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I love the flexible nature of WordPress, it’s so much more than a blogging platform or a CMS. WordPress allows me to create dynamic applications, and powerful API environments.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? Ottawa’s one of my favourite cities in Canada, my first experience with CMS based websites was in Ottawa and I take every opportunity possible to return to such a concentrated group of IT talent.
What is your talk going to be about? My talk this year is about using WordPress to make a living. It’s about finding the perfect blend of community, security, enjoyment, and knowledge while working with a free platform.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? JetPack, maybe EditFlow. Both add so much power to WordPress that it’s hard to imagine running a website without them.
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Speaker Spotlight: Richard Archambault

Richard loves the web and really loves WordPress. After attending his first WordCamp Montreal in 2010, he was hooked! Now a Happiness Engineer with Automattic, Richard wants to help spread the WordPress goodness to anyone else who’s interested in the web. When he’s not tinkering with his sites, he loves going to Mexico to eat spicy tacos and ride around on the metro! You can find online as @richardmtl.

Richard is presenting: Multisite for the Masses

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I love using WordPress because it is alive: constantly being updated and improved upon, new plugins and themes being released by the community, lively discussions on ways to make it even more awesome!
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? This will be my first time speaking; I wanted to do my part and give back to the community. I am where I am today because I went to a WordCamp almost 4 years ago; maybe someone will be similarly inspired by my talk or someone else’s talk to go out there and do something great with WordPress!
What is your talk going to be about? I’ll talk about the basics of setting up a multisite installation, and all the neat things that can be done with it. I’ll also go into administering the site after it’s been set up: what to do with users, plugins, themes, and so on.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? I’m more of a plugin guy. There quite a few that I depend on, but one of the most flexible plugins out there is Gravity Forms. For setting up surveys, contact forms, and any other type of form for your site’s visitors, Gravity Forms can’t be beat.
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Session Highlights – Theme Selection and Customization

WordPress themes are a major topic at this year’s Ottawa WordCamp. Each track (Content, Site and Code Creators) has sessions dedicated to exploring this important topic is detail. Attend any of the sessions and you will walk away with a better understanding of themes.

The morning sessions in the Code Creators track is dedicated to themes. Experienced designers and coders will learn how to code a theme from scratch, how to build a multilingual theme, and how to use a responsive WordPress theme.

If you are new to WordPress or have been using it for some time (either as a user or developer) you might be interested in attending two back-to-back sessions on themes.

My presentation at 9:45 AM in the Content Creators track, WordPress Themes and Frameworks Explained, will focus on how you should evaluate a new theme before you commit. I will discuss some important design issues you should consider before choosing your theme and provide guidelines for evaluating theme candidates. During my presentation, I will spend time on two major theme providers: WooThemes and Genesis (from StudioPress).

I will not demonstrate how to modify or customize your theme. Fortunately, right after my presentation ends, Jordan Quintal on the Site Creators track will cover Simple Theme Customization. Jordan’s presentation starts at 10:45 AM.

Jordan will spend a part of his presentation on theme selection, but the majority of his time will be spent on how to customize your theme. His presentation will include quite a bit of demonstration—for example, he will show you how to do basic CSS customization, image management, and other important details.

Want to learn more about choosing the theme for you and how to customize it once you have installed it? Consider attending “WordPress Themes and Frameworks Explained” by Richard Martin and “Simple Theme Customization” by Jordan Quintal.

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Speaker Spotlight: Richard Martin

Richard Martin is an online entrepreneur. He created and manages a site that provides health services to clients and continuing education training for health professionals. Before going online he did product marketing in Silicon Valley with several companies including Apple, Cisco and Broadcom. Richard now lives in Ottawa.

Richard is presenting: WordPress Themes and Frameworks Explained and is hosting the panel Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I use WordPress for my own projects. I tried several different software and blogging platforms before I settled on WordPress. I am happy to say that all my projects going forward will be WordPress-based.Over the last two years, I have noticed a significant improvement in the quality and functionality of the themes and plugins available for WordPress. It appears to me that third party development will continue to contribute to the success of the platform.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I am one of the organizers of WordCamp Ottawa so a speaking engagement is a natural step for me. I decided to get involved in organizing the event after attending and presenting at the Toronto WordCamp. I felt it was time we build a community here.
What is your talk going to be about? I have two sessions during the day. In the morning, I will be speaking about themes and frameworks-specifically, how to select a theme. In the afternoon, I am hosting a panel discussion on how you can use WordPress to build your business, your cause, or your brand.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? One of my sites uses video extensively. I like the Video SEO for WordPress by Yoast. It creates a video sitemap and a thumbnail of the video that gets presented in the search results. The thumbnail leads to higher clicks for us.
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Speaker Spotlight: Jordan Quintal

Jordan Quintal is a seasoned web developer with 15 years of experience. His ever-growing web development company thegenius.ca specializes in WordPress-based websites, plugins, and a variety online/offline services.

Jordan is presenting: Simple Theme Customization

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? WordPress is by far the most powerful and flexible Content Management System available. I have over 6 years of experience using WordPress and there are no limitations to what you can do with it.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I have attended several WordCamps and spoke in Toronto 2012, overall I find the conference to be informative and a perfect place to network. I truly enjoy sharing my knowledge and expertise to those interesting in learning.
What is your talk going to be about? My talk is going to be a demonstration on how to make simple theme customizations to premium or free WordPress themes. Any beginner user should be able to personalize their themes with the tips and techniques I supply.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? I have many favorite WordPress themes and plugins.Personally, I found that the most efficient and easy to use WordPress plugin is WP-CRM – it makes customizing the WordPress Admin area for clients super easy. It has saved me hours of work – that’s for sure.
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