Speakers

Aaron D. Campbell

Aaron is the WordPress Security Team lead, has been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than ten years, and is currently funded by GoDaddy to work full time on the WordPress open source project. He has over eighteen years of web development experience and worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but considers both to be compliments. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, riding his motorcycle, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.

Alonso Indacochea

Alonso Indacochea is the CEO of 11 Online, a full service digital agency in Albuquerque, NM. At 11 Online, Alonso lives and breathes WordPress, where he and the team build, fix and maintain websites for their clients.

Andrew Norcross

Look, we’ve all made poor choices in our lives. For me, it was realizing that I could make computers talk to each other.

[Andrew Norcross has a history of building extremely cool solutions with WordPress. He currently works within Liquid Web helping build custom solutions for their managed WordPress services.]

Benjamin Turner

I’ve been a WordPress developer since 2012 and recently was hired as a Happiness Engineer at Flywheel. I wear many hats on projects and can often be found doing things ranging from front and back-end development to content migrations and DevOps things like setting up and troubleshooting infrastructure.

Brian Richards

Brian Richards, the creator of WPSessions.com, has been developing with WordPress since 2007 and training and leading development teams since 2011. In addition to investing his time into training, Brian has had the opportunity to work with many amazing WordPress agencies and experts over these last several years. This has allowed him to help develop sites for Microsoft, Disney, TIME, YMCA, and numerous others. Brian has an affinity for self-directed learning and helping others to develop skills and workflows to better solve important and complicated problems. He can’t resist helping good people do great things!

Chris Lema

Chris Lema is known for blogging, storytelling, and building software teams that do awesome work. He’s been building eCommerce solutions since 1998.

Frederick Polk

I build websites using WordPress and other CMSes.

Learn more at OneBlackCrayon.com

Jeff Large

Jeff Large is a podcast strategist, producer, and host. He leads his team at Come Alive Creative in producing podcasts for businesses and is lead instructor at Come Alive Academy. His favorite things include family, board games, and learning something new every day.

Joe Casabona

Joe Casabona is a Front End Developer, Instructor, & Course Creator. When he’s not writing code, he’s teaching people how to build things with and for WordPress. He also hosts a weekly podcast called How I Built It, where he interviews product developers and business owners about how they create. You can find him at Casabona.org

John James Jacoby (JJJ)

WordPress. BuddyPress. bbPress. Sandhills. Co-host WordPress Weekly. East Troy, WI Village Trustee. Conquistador de la Web.

Kyle Maurer

Kyle works at Sandhills Development on Easy Digital Downloads which is a WordPress plugin that makes selling digital products ridiculously simple. He’s a native of Jackson, Michigan, co-hosts the Get Options podcast, and helps organize meetups and WordCamps in the region while brewing fine beer and playing guitar as often as possible.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer and front-end developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round out her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.

She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”

Mike Hale

Mike Hale is the Founder of Stompgear, a digital marketing and website development agency, a freelance WordPress developer, and co-organizer of the WordPress Naperville Meetup. He has helped clients grow their businesses using software for almost 20 years and started working with WordPress in 2010 building custom plugins and sites built on the Genesis Framework.

Peter DeHaan

With a dozen WordPress sites for his business and writing, blogger Peter DeHaan is sold on WordPress. Peter enjoys helping beginners get started and established sites with content creation.

RJ Mey

RJ Mey is the Web Developer for American Expedition Vehicles. He’s been working with WordPress for 5 years as both a user and a developer. RJ has worked for a number of Metro Detroit marketing agencies as both an employee and a freelancer. He’s been an instructor and teaching assistant for Girl Develop It Detroit.

Sara Dunn

Sara Dunn is a marketing geek and lover of all things WordPress, search engine optimization, and messaging. As founder and project lead at digital marketing agency 11Web, Sara has worked with over 125 clients on website design and marketing projects. In 2017, she also launched a niche services business offering SEO to the wedding industry at saradoesseo.com.

When Sara isn’t doing client work, vlogging, learning, or teaching, she is traveling with her husband or at home in Battle Creek spoiling her French Bulldog.

Sophia DeRosia

I’m a home schooled, sixteen year old girl, from Grand Rapids, MI who has been using WordPress off and on since 2014. Recently, I created a site using BuddyPress as a way to keep my friends who either aren’t allowed on Facebook or are too young to stay in contact with one another.

In my free time, I am an artist who loves learning languages and playing my ukulele.

Steve Grunwell

Steve Grunwell is a Senior Software Engineer at Liquid Web. Specializing in WordPress and application development he has worked with brands and organizations including Microsoft, TED, Xylem, Elmer’s, and Experience Columbus.

Steve has released numerous plugins in the WordPress.org repositories, including one from the grounds of The White House during the first annual National Day of Civic Hacking in 2013. When he’s not writing software he enjoys hiking, music, and writing about writing software on his blog.

Steve holds a B.A. in Telecommunications from Bowling Green State University where he graduated Cum Laude with minors in General Business and Recording Technologies.

More information, including portfolio work and his development blog, can be found at https://stevegrunwell.com.

Tim Nolte

I did my first website for a local business in 1996 while I was a high school student. I’ve done freelance work on the site on-and-off since then. I’ve done web & application development in ministry, education, telecommunications, and manufacturing. I currently work at Sprint as an Applications Developer including both backend and frontend development for the primary ticketing application.

WordCamp Grand Rapids 2018 is over. Check out the next edition!