WordCamp Savannah 2010

Sheri Bigelow

Sheri is a designer, developer, and photographer currently living in Saratoga Springs, New York. She earned a Bachelor’s in Business and a Chemistry minor from the University of Utah before spending eight years managing websites for Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City. She has always considered herself a WordPress evangelist, and now her endlessly positive nature makes her a perfect fit as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic.

Amanda Blum

Amanda Blum is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, and Creative Director of Howling Zoe Productions, a creative strategy firm involved in design, marketing and public relations. Helping microbusinesses and non profits find new ways to reach their target demographic for over 10 years, Amanda represents a wide range of clients including P.R. Agents, boutiques, entrepreneuers and web 2.0 companies. Amanda has been active in community volunteering for almost 20 years including HIV agencies, Red Cross, animal disaster rescue and environmental causes, and is dedicated to helping non profits utilize social media tools to help further their mission.

Caila Brown

Caila is a SCAD senior majoring in Graphic Design, and serves as the General Manager of SCAD Radio and the Art Director of District Quarterly. She is also a BuzzBuilder at Likeable Media, as well as the co-organizer of WordCamp Savannah. She likes all things labeled cute, kittens, biking and cupcakes. Her favorite shows are 30 Rock, The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory and Glee. Want to quote movies to her? Pick from Anchorman, Star Trek, Princess Bride, Singin’ in the Rain and Zoolander.

Anthony Bubel

After earning a B.B.A from Temple University in 2008, Anthony decided to put away his suit and work for Automattic so that he could shower happiness over the WordPress community. When not supporting WordPress.com users, you can find him cooking and listening to Pearl Jam with his new wife in their new home in Augusta, GA.

Dan Cannon

Dan learned how to build a website before he learned how to drive. This passion as a youth led to a career path when Dan entered Georgia Southern University and began studying Information Technology. While pursuing his undergraduate degree in Information Technology, Dan worked as the Web Applications Developer for the Center for Excellence in Teaching at GSU. There Dan created a centralized information system allowing all of the department’s data to be easily accessed and shared among faculty. Dan also designed and built an online article review system for the department’s scholarly journal – one of the first of this type of system. Dan received his B.S. in Information Technology in 2008 and began working as the Web Applications Developer for Nicasio Design and Development in Savannah where he spearheaded the development of the company’s e-commerce solution, NicE-Comm. When he’s not building innovative web apps, Dan unwinds by riding motorcycles and watching college football (specifically the Tennessee Volunteers and Georgia Southern Eagles).

Sara Cannon

Sara is an artist, graphic designer, and WordPress Developer living in Birmingham, Alabama. Her web expertise includes: Flash, xml, html, php, and MySQL. Originally from outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Sara came to the south and graduated with a BS from Samford University in Graphic Design. She is a member of the Internet Society of Alabama (IPSA), and is a founding member of the Birmingham Art Collective.

Ptah Dunbar

Ptah is an independent WordPress developer who has contributed code to core as well as creating themes and plugins. Though he bounces between the U.S. and Europe, for now Ptah is making his home in Florida.

John James Jacoby

John is a web slinger originally from Milwaukee, WI but currently living in Miami, FL. When he isn’t playing Spiderman, he can be found contributing to BuddyPress core, moderating the BuddyPress forums, or singing the praises of BuddyPress from the mountain tops. He likes puppies, dislikes bright lights, and if he could be a Muppet, he would want to be Beeker.

Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith has been working with and contributing to WordPress since 2004. He is one of the lead developers of the WordPress core and offers freelance WordPress consulting services through Covered Web Services with a focus on scaling, security, and custom functionality. Mark likes patches that have more red than green, and his favorite WordPress features are the ones that you’re not even aware of. He eagerly looks forward to shooting down your feature suggestions with, “No, but it would make a great plugin!”

Judi Knight

Judi is an Atlanta-based designer and project manager who got her start as a clinical psychologist, then changed course and built a software company, then changed course again to do design work around residential and commercial buildings (for which she received an Atlanta Urban Design Award as well as an Award of Excellence from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation), and now designs brands and WordPress-based websites for small to midsized creative businesses. New Tricks, her design + blogs + social marketing consulting firm, allows Judi to use her psychology training to ascertain the message of a person and their business with her creativity in determining how best to present that to world and bringing her technical expertise into play in developing a site that is both creative and usable.

Daryl Koopersmith

Daryl is a senior majoring in Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He created the Elastic theme framework and a WYSIWYG theme editor plugin as his student project with WordPress for Google Summer of Code 2009, and has just completed his project for 2010, a visual CSS editor.

Beau Lebens

Beau is a web developer who hails from Australia, but lives in San Francisco. He’s been working on the web since about 1996 and developing PHP/MySQL systems since 2000. He has been involved in a variety of technical enterprises ranging from an exclusively-online division at a University to a niche Search Engine Marketing firm, with a short stint building an online scrapbooking network for parents. Interested in all things social, tech and web-related, Beau holds a degree in online community, culture and governance, and spends most of his time these days hacking web apps for Automattic.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt is the founding developer of WordPress, the open source blogging software that runs millions of sites around the world. In 2005, he started Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, bbPress, IntenseDebate, and BuddyPress. Matt lives in San Francisco and has a crush on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Andrew Nacin

Andrew Nacin (“nacin” in IRC and everywhere else) is an independent WordPress consultant in Washington, D.C. Since February 2010 he has served as one of the core developers of the WordPress platform, contributing and committing numerous patches. He is very active in the community and can often be spotted on the bug tracker, the development blog, mailing lists, and in the IRC development channel.

Andrea Rennick

Andrea_R, as she is known online, writes about WordPress MU at http://wpmututorials.com and is a heavy poster in the mu forums. She also likes to bake cookies and help others learn new things.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a creative designer and owner of E.Webscapes where she has been providing custom design solutions for WordPress users since 2003. Lisa is the author of the official WordPress For Dummies book and BuddyPress For Dummies. Keeping up to date on the fast-paced development coming out of the brilliant WordPress community is one of her favorite ways to pass time! You can follow Lisa on Twitter @LisaSabinWilson.

Shayne Sanderson

Shayne started working with WordPress in late 2006 and hasn’t looked back since. He now develops with 9seeds, where they specialize in WordPress theme and plugin development, among many other things. Shayne speaks about WordPress at WordCamp events around the country and loves meeting people and helping with WordPress issues whenever possible.

Matt Thomas

Matt has been a designer since before he knew what that meant. As a child, his parents would frequently return home to find their furniture re-arranged, art re-hung, and tables re-set. Ever since, Matt’s been interested in making things simpler, more beautiful, and more fun to use. Despite a four-year love affair with print design while obtaining his BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Matt’s loving the life of a web designer. He lives on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay with his trusty sidekick, Maggie. And most importantly, he doesn’t mind being the “other Matt” at Automattic.

Jane Wells

Jane is the user experience lead for WordPress, and has worked in the web industry for 10 years. A recent transplant to Tybee Island, Jane is also the co-organizer of WordCamp Savannah, a not-so-subtle attempt to begin building a local WordPress community. She really, really needs to find a home for this adorable kitten by the end of WordCamp Savannah.