Author: Topher

I first met Ross and Lyndsay Johnson when they were a part of WordCamp Ann Arbor. I was immediately impressed that they had managed to build such a solid company together. Having a spouse as a business partner is HARD. They pull it off with style.

On top of that, they also craft beautiful things. A simple look at their homepage or the work they publish shows their flair for making things people like to look at as well as use consistently.

It’s an honor to now have them sponsoring WordCamp Grand Rapids.

I’ve only met Justin Ferriman twice; once at WordCamp Ann Arbor last year, and again just a few weeks ago at Post Status Publish. The first time was at a party and it was noisy and we merely got acquainted. Most recently however, we went out to dinner together and talked long about life, the universe, and everything.

I was impressed by the passion he holds for what he does. Being a founder, building a company around a piece of software is hard hard work. LearnDash is an impressive tool for creating online courses and I’m proud to say I know Justin.

Not only is LearnDash sponsoring our WordCamp, Justin will be on-site Saturday. If you see him, shake his hand and thank him .

I remember the first time my friend Nate came to our meetup. He surprised me with the news that there was a WordPress agency right in my own city and he worked there. After all my years of working with the web in Grand Rapids, I was stunned such a thing existed and I’d never heard of it.

Nate leveled up pretty fast. He’s crazy smart. It wasn’t long before he bought a share in the company and helped mold it into what it is today: a top notch WordPress agency doing quality work.

Mindutopia doesn’t do a lot of marketing; they don’t really need to. They keep their head down and do great work. Because of this they’re not as well known as some other agencies. Take the time Saturday to meet their hardworking crew and I hope you’ll join me in thanking them personally for sponsoring WordCamp.

One indicator of how committed a company is to their customer base is the level of management that gets out amongst that customer base. If the highest you ever see is a middle manager of a department, perhaps there’s not a lot of commitment there.

One of the first people I ever met from Pantheon was Josh Koenig, a Co-Founder of the company. He quite regularly goes to WordCamps, and he meets and knows people in the WordPress community. He doesn’t go alone either. Pantheon regularly sends several people to a given conference.

This year when I approached Pantheon about WordCamp sponsorship it was pretty late in the season, and they weren’t sure if they could get someone to come. As it turns out, Steve Persch from Pantheon will be here and speaking to boot! Pantheon put a fair amount of time into figuring out how to get someone to our WordCamp, in addition to Sponsoring, and that kind of commitment is much appreciated.

A couple years ago I was at a WordCamp wandering the sponsor tables like I tend to do when I saw a new guy behind a table that said “Liquid Web” with about 200 little foam muscle men on his table.

I wandered over, said, “Hi.”, and started learning about AJ’s Big Adventure. He told me that Liquid Web has been a web host for a long time, but had decided to get into hosting specifically tailored to WordPress. AJ had been tasked with getting to the know the WordPress community and building a product that fit it’s current needs.

He’s been at it for a couple years now and I have to say the results are impressive. Liquid Web has gone all in, hiring serious people to do amazing things, taking the right steps at the right time to build a powerhouse product.

They continue to monitor the communities needs, AJ still goes to a huge number of WordCamps, and Liquid Web still sponsors WordCamps like ours. Keeping it about the community while building a solid product at the same time is a winning combination and we appreciate their support.

I first met the folks from A2 Hosting at WordCamp Ann Arbor a few years ago. They were handing out pint glasses, mine’s still in my kitchen cabinet. I didn’t have time at that WordCamp to get to know them well, but I began to hear more and more about them from places I didn’t expect. Ann Arbor is quite close to me so it felt surprising to see my friend Jeff from far away post this:

Switching to @a2hosting alone will put jet engines on your site. Lightspeed + their own performance tuning rocks my socks.

— Jeff Matson 👾 (@TheJeffMatson) December 18, 2016

That piqued my interest. So at the next WordCamp Ann Arbor I tracked down some of the engineers and had a nice long talk with them over a few beers.

I’ve been a web developer for a long time and, while I’m not a systems engineer, I do have a handle on how the web works. The folks at A2 told me some things they built for speed that blew my mind. Things that had never occurred to me as possible.

This year A2 Hosting is sponsoring WordCamp Grand Rapids and it’s an honor to have them.

Hey folks, this is Topher writing. I’ll be doing the Sponsor Spotlights for WCGR and I’m going to try to help you get to know our Sponsors in a different light.

First up in our Sponsor Spotlight series is Agathon Group. I’ve known the people at Agathon group for nearly twenty years now. We all worked together during the dot com boom at one of the largest web sites in the world. It was an exciting time, and it began some pretty serious education for all of us.

The folks at Agathon have been hand crafting web hosting solutions for a couple decades now. And just like any great artisan at their trade, it’s fascinating to watch. They don’t simply host websites, they solve hosting problems.  They listen, and think, and then carefully build.

I value Agathon because they’re wise, intelligent, and compassionate. I thank them for sponsoring our WordCamp and taking part in our community.