We are currently receiving and reviewing applications for speakers. Stay tuned for the full list of speakers coming very soon! If you would like to speak at the event, please fill out the call for speakers application form.
Carrie Dils
Carrie has been working with web technologies since the late 1990’s, but met and fell in love with WordPress in 2012. She works independently as a front-end developer and has a passion for educating others. She hosts OfficeHours.fm, a podcast about running a WordPress business, and teaches WordPress courses at Lynda.com. When she’s not working or attending a WordCamp, she’s hanging out with her husband and loving on her two rescue labs. She can be bribed with craft beer and candy.
Alex Zuniga
Alex Zuniga is a premium support specialist for the Austin-based, managed WordPress host, WP Engine. He is somewhat new to the tech scene having attended CodeUp’s 2nd cohort in 2014. Immediately upon graduation, he began developing front-end WordPress sites for a local marketing agency, Düable. His tech journey later allowed him to become one of the first eight employees of WP Engine’s San Antonio office in December of 2015. Alex loves finding local libations and hidden eats around town with his wife. Any suggestions are always welcome!
Bill Gadless
Bill Gadless is the President and Co-Founder of emagine, a 50+-person WordPress-based Digital Agency.
As a non-developer and a quasi-designer at best, Bill has always focused on being on the forefront of the business side of the web industry. Observing a lack of content and thought leadership for web entrepreneurs, Bill has dedicated a significant portion of his time to speaking on issues of entrepreneurship, sales, marketing and business strategy for freelancers and small web agency owners. Obsessed with everything sales and marketing, Bill’s insights have appeared on various occasions in MarketingSherpa, dozens of industry sites and publications and on the national speaking circuit. Prior to emagine, he developed his marketing expertise while building a highly successful direct marketing venture at 20 years old.
With a focus on emagine’s core industries and national expansion, Bill has focused obsessively on building emagine’s brand within the B2B, High-Tech and Healthcare sectors. Starting in the Boston region, Bill has successfully taken emagine from a regional player to a national leader in emagine’s target industries.
Bill is laser-focused on evangelizing WordPress as more than a “blogging tool” or “mom-and-pop website platform”. He and emagine have been instrumental in the adoption of WordPress by companies that previously would have resisted, from large hospitals to pharmaceutical companies to multi-billion dollar B2B enterprises.
Bill tours the WordCamp circuit nationally speaking on issues related to growth strategy for WordPress entrepreneurs. He resides in Boca Raton, Florida with his wife Krystal and regularly travels back and forth between emagine’s Florida and Massachusetts offices.
Aaron Watters
Aaron Watters is the Vice President of Leadhub. He joined the company in February of 2012. Before that, he spent six years working for a website development and hosting company. Aaron is a graduate of Texas State University.
Lauren Jeffcoat
I have been building WordPress websites for over seven years and currently am part of the OnTheGoSystems WPML Customer Support team. I love building WordPress websites and have worn many hats in the world of web development including Project Manager, Customer Service Representative, Account Strategist, and Web Designer.
Originally from New England, I now live in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. I enjoy sharing my knowledge along with tips and tricks that I have learned either through furthering my education or personal experience.
Scott Croom
Scott Croom has been working in the Web Design industry for 4 years. Both humble and humorous, he guides his design team to creating swift and clean designs for small to large businesses. Scott got his start in Wall St management but being a lover of technology, he later taught engineering and programming. It was while coaching a winning robotics teams that Scott really became truly aware of how critical having systems in place was the foundation of a project’s success.
Scott currently manages a web development team that will frequently juggle dozens WordPress projects at a time as well as a member of the Project Managers Institute.
Claudia Charbel
Claudia is a customer service addict. She’s worked for some of the largest companies in I.T. and throughout her career, Claudia has focused her work on proactively finding solutions for her customers. She believes that, by giving customers a channel to voice their feedback, businesses can improve their processes and features.
Taylor Bare
Taylor Bare is CEO of TaylorMade Web Presence, a website and online presence development company. He has an extensive background in search engine optimization, WordPress site development and web tools training for entrepreneurs. He’s also helped companies reach the first page of Google and increase their online conversion rates through split testing.
At TaylorMade Web Presence Taylor and his team provide authors, speakers and coaches with the tools and training they need to build their platform, get paid and make a difference. Because Taylor believes small business owners and entrepreneurs should be able to make website changes on their own timetable, he teaches them how to take control of their web presence through the power and simplicity of WordPress.
With a certification in advanced search engine marketing techniques, Taylor knows how to bring targeted website visitors, and as a certified Guerrilla Marketing practitioner he knows what it takes to turn visitors into sales.
Christopher Lauzon
Chris has worked for several start-ups in the Austin TX area for years, focusing mostly on eCommerce solutions in a technical support role. He moved on to becoming the director of support at WP Engine, and then a Happiness Engineer at Automattic. He is now the CEO of Pressable, a Managed WordPress Hosting Company.
Daniel Espinoza
Daniel has been a professional developer for 20 years and been running Grow Development for the past 8 years. He focuses on WooCommece development building commercial plugins and custom ecommerce sites.
Daniel authored the “Getting Started with WooCommerce” video series for WP101 and produces growdev.tv – a free WooCommerce focused question and answer series.
Daniel and his wife Amanda live in San Antonio with their three kids when not traveling the world as a family.
Emily White
Emily White is a web and graphic designer and has been designing WordPress websites for about eight years. She runs a full-service design and development studio, specializing in custom WordPress sites built on the Genesis them framework. She’s worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world, helping them to grow their businesses and personal brands. Her attention to detail, professionalism, and unique design style is what her clients say they love most about working with her. Emily lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and three daughters.
Stefanie Young
Stefanie works with Grok Interactive as their WordPress Director and Frontend Team Lead. She has been working in web development and design for me than 5 years and using WordPress as a primary tool for 3. Outside of the workplace you can find her running around town catching Pokemon and competing within the eSports scene. She loves caffeine, books and Game of Thrones, and while she won’t admit it, she loves a great pun!
Garrett Heath
Garrett has blogged about San Antonio food and culture on SA Flavor since 2009 and believes the best cheese enchiladas in town are found at Oscar’s Taco House. He currently works at Rackspace as a social media marketer and has held roles as an operations analyst, cloud project manager and content marketer. You can read his blog about digital marketing at MarketingBytes.io.
Isaac Castillo
Isaac does development under his own company Echo Design Solutions. He has been doing development for over 15 years and enjoys new challenges and the fast paced exciting world that is development today. When he is not developing he is wrestling with his four kiddos and trying really hard not to be the 5th kiddo to his wife (Wife: “Which he fails at”). In his spare time he enjoys coffee, beer, fine cigars and working on house remods.
Alan Bush
Alan Bush is a Community Manager at Rackspace by day, a husband, daddy and comedian by night. Alan likes beer, coffee, puns and the Kansas City Royals. He dislikes writing about himself in the third person.
Zach Charo
Zach does customer support for Pressable. He is an attentive and creative problem solver who is quick with a smile or a funny joke to brighten up your day. When he’s not busy neutralizing script kiddies, shutting down spam bots or optimizing stores, Zach enjoys long walks on the beach, playing guitar, fixing cars, HAM radio, watching old movies, and hanging out with his amazing wife.