Category Archives: Speaker Interviews

Jesse Friedman Interview

Jesse Friedman is a team member of Jetpack at Automattic, and he has written several books, taught 100’s of students as a professor, and organized dozens of local meetups along with a few WordCamps. Jesse is speaking on Getting them from A to B at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

In a world where good content management systems were hard to find a friend said 2 simple words “Try WordPress”.
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Trevan Hetzel Interview

Trevan HetzelTrevan Hetzel is a front-end developer at Flywheel with a background in design and adaptive layouts. Trevan is speaking on Super fast WordPress themes at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

In my freelancing early days, I had a few clients wanting to be able to update their table-based websites themselves (I know, right?). I was pretty much a Dreamweaver visual editor kind of “developer” back then, but found WordPress and read a few tutorials on how to build custom themes and have been hooked ever since!
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Mendel Kurland Interview

Mendel KurlandMendel Kurland is a GoDaddy Evangelist who spends his time hanging out with developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and web pros around the world and making sure their opinions and suggestions are heard. Mendel is speaking on Give away the farm to get the ranch, why you should teach your clients how to do your job at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I started building websites by hand with Perl and PHP many years ago. When WordPress made its debut, it was such a time saver, helping me make all the things I used to program manually, automatically.
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David Skarjune Interview

David SkarjuneDavid Skarjune is lead consultant for Word & Image providing content publishing for authors, artists, publishers, and orgs with WordPress, and he’s a WordPress instructor at Takoda Institute. Skarjune is speaking on Content Production for Bloggers, Writers, and Editors at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I’ve used Open Source CMS for 15 years starting with the Zope framework. Used Mambo and then Joomla when it forked. Used Drupal. Wrote PHP web apps. Started with WordPress Version 2 for blogs. Saw Toby Cryns present on WordPress as a CMS at Minnebar 2008 and took notice. Since Version 3 in 2010 my web work centers on WordPress. Continue reading

Blake Iverson Interview

Blake IversonBlake Iverson is is a founding partner of Friedman Iverson, PLLC, a law firm for consumers and creatives, and he’s an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s University and McNally Smith College of Music. Blake is speaking on IP for Creatives at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I wanted an easy platform for my law firm’s blog and I’d heard good things.
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Barbara Schendel Interview

Barbara SchendelBarbara Schendel is the owner and senior designer/developer for Wizzy Wig Web Design and her specialty is fully custom WordPress websites for small to medium-sized businesses. Barbara is speaking on Create Your Own WordPress Theme at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I used to do static HTML development but clients wanted a way to edit their site content. I used a few tools to accomplish this, but then a colleague dragged me to WordCamp 2010 and I discovered custom themes — from then on everything changed!
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Alec Rippberger Interview

Alec RippbergerAlec Rippberger works at digital agency Westwerk to plan and build web solutions that solve complex business problems, bridging the gap between business goals and end-user experiences. Alec is speaking on OOCSS, SMACSS & BEM for Modular, Scalable CSS at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I started working with WordPress 2.8 during a college web-maintenance internship, and haven’t looked back since.
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Heather Acton Interview

Heather ActonHeather Acton is the founder of Helio Interactive, a WordPress-centric digital agency in Chicago, IL. Heather is speaking on Financial Business Planning for Freelancers at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

In 2009 as I was building my first website, a collection of photos and stories about my young kids, I stumbled on WordPress as a website framework. Within a couple of weeks I had a nice looking and very functional website running and was hooked on doing more with the platform. That little family site led to a few projects for friends, and from there the referrals poured in. Fast forward 6 years and WordPress is the basis of my custom development agency.
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Michael Cain Interview

Michael CainMichael Cain is is a Portland, Maine-based Theme Generator for Automattic‘s Theme Team. He spends his days creating, converting, and improving the theme experience on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Michael is part of Cain & Obenland in the Morning! at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

Blogging and then later, employment. I had played around with WordPress a few times previously, but when my wife and I moved to Maine from North Carolina after college, I wanted to start a blog to keep our friends and family updated about our new travels. I spent time exploring both WordPress.com and Blogspot, and sadly (and now ironically) settled on the latter because of their better theme selection at the time. Then as I grew my freelance web development business in Maine, I started exploring content management solutions to offer my clients, and had a hard time justifying any other solution – WordPress was easy for clients to grasp, cheap for me to implement, incredibly flexible, and community supported and developed.
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Matt Johnson Interview

Matt JohnsonMatt Johnson is is co-founder and managing partner of Alley Interactive, a full-service web agency that works with large media companies and nonprofit organization. Matt is speaking on Content Migration: Beyond WXR at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I co-founded a firm called Alley Interactive that works on web projects for large media companies and other content producers. When we started Alley, Drupal was one of the only games in town for this kind of work. As WordPress began increasing in popularity with individual journalists for their own personal sites, we began to see increased demand to use it for actual newsroom operations, and eventually began building major client sites with it. It’s been a major positive feedback loop since then.
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