A great cook who wishes he had the superpower of plating food well, speaker Jason Weisberger will be attending his first ever WordCamp this June when he speaks at WordCamp Orange County! When asked how he got started in WordPress, Jason explained, “We arrived like refugees, running from the flames of MoveableType.”

Weisberger’s job history may clue you in to his presentation. He owned a comedy club, performed in various ensembles and also worked as a really acerbic dinner magician. Also found in his repertoire is work as a private investigator and salesman of boutique men’s clothing in Santa Monica, CA. Probably more widely known for his role as COO of a publicly traded ad agency, his time spent in VP Ops, Engineering, and Product Management at a publicly traded telecom company, and as CTO at LA area datacenter/web hosting company, Jason Weisberger is currently publisher of Boing Boing, a website devoted to technology, entertainment, and culture.

He looks to Willie Nelson as his WordPress mentor and lists favorite superheroes as Lex Luthor and Ming the Merciless. Weisberger believes both are awesome as they try to make the world a better place and are bald. Weisberger seeks to make the world a better place himself by serving as top-side volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center where he feeds, restrains and medicates seals and sea lions on a regular basis. He also serves as a Board Member on West Coast Great Pyrenees and uses the words of Mr. T to describe his feelings on family and community, summing it up with, “Pity fools. Respect mothers.” Understanding the seriousness of WordCamp Orange County, Weisberger has words of advice for post readers, warning each: “Do not taunt happy fun ball.”

Don’t miss Jason’s talk, “How WordPress Helps Keep Boing Boing Weird,” in the Beach track at 9 AM on Saturday, June 10: “Boing Boing is one of the longest running independent publications on the Internet. From our start as ‘zine to our currently self-hosted WordPress site, we’ve had our ass kicked by every platform we’ve tried. WordPress doesn’t have me in a murderous rage, but that is largely because the guys at WP VIP are so good at sorting out the weird and often suicidal things we do to ourselves. Actually, some issues with 2FA, and our cookies expiring weirdly leave me kinda frustrated… but hey, at least Google can crawl the site this week!”

Our third batch of speakers will captivate you with their know-how and variety of expertise. These superhero speakers will inspire you to amp up your WordPress game and keep you entertained at the same time!

Russell Aaron

Russell Aaron is a back-end developer & support specialist at WebDevStudios.com Russell has created two WordPress.org plugins. One of which won second place in WCOC Plugin-a-Palooza. He is a fan of WordPress first and foremost. He is currently the lead organizer of the Las Vegas WordPress Meetup Group & WordCamp Las Vegas. He is an admin of the Advanced WordPress Facebook group.

Julka Grodel

Julka Grodel is a Senior Software Engineer at AddThis and has worked professionally with content management systems for over 10 years. She is passionate about writing easily maintainable and extendable code and is on a mission to make it simple to use AddThis’ social tools on single page apps and within a dynamic DOM.

Julka spends most of her time on open source projects integrating AddThis tools for various JavaScript frameworks & content management systems. She is the primary developer on AddThis’s WordPress plugins. When not working, she spends her time volunteering with the Junior League, in a pilates studio, or doting over her blind cat Batman and his BFF Robin.

Amber Hewitt

Amber Hewitt is a front-end web developer who has created websites for a wide variety of clients for over 15 years. With a strong background in design (graphic design degree from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design), she has developed a passion for good imagery and typography in print and on the web.

Carrie Forde

Front-end architect focused on improving processes, writing better code, and bringing dev teams together. Works @webdevstudios. ❤️ cats, coffee, WordPress.

Ethan Grey

A Senior Product Manager at Media Temple, a Los Angeles-based company providing premium web and cloud hosting solutions and services, Ethan leverages his experience in product management, business analysis, commerce and monetization to oversee the product and go-to-market strategy of Media Temple’s managed WordPress hosting solutions.

Jacob Arriola

Jacob Arriola is a front-end developer from Los Angeles who spends most of his time working with Sass, JavaScript and building custom WordPress themes. He works with Zeek Interactive and is always trying to learn new languages and frameworks to deliver rich and engaging UI experiences.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend 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 our 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?”

Tish Briseno

Happiness Engineer at Automattic working on WordPress.com. I love helping people get started with WordPress.

Wowza! Our second round of WordCamp Orange County speakers is sure to keep you captivated! Check out the names below and save the date to make sure you have a chance to watch them in action!

Zac Gordon

Zac Gordon is a professional educator, currently working with the JavaScript for WordPress Master Course. Previously, Zac taught WordPress for Treehouse. He has years of experience teaching WordPress and JavaScript at the college level and high school level. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, the world’s largest hosting company dedicated to students and teachers.

Chris Ford

Over the course of her 20 year career Chris has been a visual and UX designer, brand strategist, front end developer, professional scrapbooker, magazine art director, project manager, and support lead. She also loves to write, speak and teach other people about all of those things.

Alex Vasquez

I’m Alex Vasquez, a WordPress Developer and owner of DigiSavvy, a boutique digital studio providing digital marketing and custom web development services. My hair could qualify as a super power.

Jason Cosper

Jason Cosper is currently employed as the Developer Advocate for WP Engine. Honestly, that’s just a fancy way of saying “I get paid to chat with people about WordPress.” Nice work if you can get it.

Jason spends a ton of time with his wife Sarah and two chihuahuas, Rowdy & Gomez. They watch a lot of bad TV, scary movies and premium cable programming. He also enjoys hanging out in musty record stores, drinking whiskey, smoking meats, and sampling craft beers.

Andrew Bergeron

Andrew Bergeron is a designer, speaker, and proud new father. Currently, he is the UX Design Manager for Everyone Counts, a rapidly growing start-up leading the transformation of modern election systems. When he is not focused on improving lives through design you will likely find him surfing, walking in nature or finding a way to make his son giggle.

Verious B. Smith III

Verious Smith the Creative Director of Philoveracity Design, a firm that specializes in Brand Development with work that spans the scope of strategic planning to custom branded campaigns & clients that have included local & national start-ups to medium sized corporations.

He is a BFA VisCom Graduate and has a thorough command of Conceptual Communication with a myriad of mediums.

His current career focus is to build important new relationships while nurturing current connections by properly stewarding my God given time & talents.

Scott Buscemi

Scott Buscemi is the Co-Founder of Lumen Foundry, a next-generation marketing agency based in LA. Since version 2.9 of WordPress in 2010, Scott has been bringing clients into the cutting edge of website and marketing technology. He’s also co-organizer of the LA WordPress Meetup.

Rachel Cherry

Rachel Cherry is a Senior Software Engineer for The Walt Disney Company with over ten years experience in back and front-end web development and digital design. Before Disney, she spent over nine years working in higher education and is the Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in the world of higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the web, she enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage openness, collaboration, and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Pasadena, California but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.

WordCamp Orange County attracts the best speakers in WordPress, making speaker choice a very difficult task! We found ourselves exclaiming, “Holy WordPress!” when we realized we had nearly one hundred speaker applications from which to narrow. What’s more is that each proposed topic was amazing, providing insight into the trending topics of 2017!

Origin stories on our Awe-inspiring Superhero and Villain Speakers will follow in the coming weeks, however today we are announcing our first batch of speakers in no particular order.

Can we get a Shazaam! for:

Ben Cole

Ben Cole is a Coding Bootcamp Instructor at UCI and Senior Web Developer at SLR Lounge. He self-identifies on his website as: “I craft elegant solutions to complex problems.” He also enjoys tea and swing dancing. That’s a great combo in any super hero!

Yvonne Conway-Williams

Social Media Marketing, Cybersecurity & Web Development Consultant. Co-Founder/Partner of ParadoxPrime Information Assurance.
“Perhaps one of the best parts about getting so involved with WordPress are the friendships I’ve formed with some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.” Yvonne Conway-Williams

Jarrett Gucci

Jarrett Gucci comes from a retail background that started at Home Depot in Buffalo NY as cashier and 18 months later was asked to be a project manager based out of Carson California with a goal of opening 12 stores in 14 months.

This goal was accomplished. He has also been an area manager at Big Lots and Bed Bath and beyond. He left his very last retail career as a district manager at Linens & Things in 2007 to pursue a hobby of website development as hope he could make some money doing it.

After 4 years of building and managing WordPress sites, he founded a company called WP Fix It and since 2011 his company has serviced over 54,000 WordPress support tickets. Something you may not know about Jarrett besides all this, is that when he was 15 his neighbor gave him a 1962 dodge dart and he completely took it apart and rebuilt it.

Christina Hills

Christina Hills, the creator of the Website Creation Workshop , has been passionately teaching non-techie small business owners, entrepreneurs, authors, experts, coaches and consultants, how to easily create their websites in WordPress so that they can get their message out to the world.

She has been running this WordPress training program to an international audience since 2008. She loves to teach WordPress as a creative way to get clarity on your business, your marketing, and your message. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Christina Hills worked as a digital artist for the network promotions division of NBC-TV, and then as a senior technical director in the Feature Film Division at George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic with film credits such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and ET the re-release, and more.

Adam Silver

Adam Silver is a native of Southern California, and is a serial entrepreneur. Currently providing WordPress development and support services through ConciergeWP.com, produces two weekly podcasts at KitchenSinkWP.com and The GetOptionsPodcast.com and runs the SouthBay WordPress Meetup.

Additionally, he was the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles 2016, and in his free time, he speaks at industry events sharing his insights & expertise into all things digital. Has been married for 18 years to his amazing wife and has 3 wickedly cool kids.

Adam Warner

Adam W. Warner first discovered WordPress in 2005 and has since founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners. In 2016 he brought his passion for WordPress to join SiteLock as s Product Evangelist.

Adam has since delivered his zeal for WordPress to 20 different WordCamps all over the world and presented talks at 13. In addition to WordPress, Adam is passionate about his family, robots and, of course, life, the universe, and everything.

Brian Coords

Brian Coords – I’m an in-house manager at a non-profit and a freelancer. I used to be a teacher. My passions include writing, music, non-profits, and education.

Erik Mathy

My name is Erik Mathy, and I’ve been a web applications developer for over 20 years. By way of background I’ve worked on everything from small, informational static marketing sites to enterprise level, SAAS, event registration and management systems used by multi-billion dollar media conglomerates.

Prior to working at Pantheon, I was the Senior PHP Developer and Team Manager for the CMS Team at Techsoup Global, a multinational non-profit.