Presenters

Jason is a polyglot full-stack web application developer who enjoys flying seaplanes in his spare time.  He creates some of that spare time by not spending time manually configuring the environments in which his software runs.

Gian Wild is the CEO of AccessibilityOz, with offices in the United States, Europe and Australia. She has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998, when she worked on the very first accessible Australian web site. Her major achievements include: six years’ active membership in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group contributing to WCAG2; her speech on the importance of web accessibility at the United Nations Conference of State Parties in 2015; and the release of the ICT Mobile Site and Native App Accessibility Testing Guidelines as the Mobile Sub-Committee Chair of the ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium. In 2019, Gian won the inaugural Accessibility Person of the Year in Australia. Gian speaks at conferences in Australia, the US, Canada, South America and Europe.

I am the co-founder of Reclaim Hosting, an independent web hosting company focused on the higher education community. Previously I was the director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

I have been working for more than twenty five in education with a consistent focus on the development of teaching and learning in higher education. In addition to my extensive experience teaching at the college level, for the past eighteen years I have worked primarily in the field of instructional technology.

My experience as an instructor coupled with my extensive collaborations with faculty and students with a specific focus on curricula, pedagogical and technologically enhanced projects has informed much of the innovative work I have been a part of in the field of instructional technology over the last decade.

I have been part of a number of exciting projects at the University of Mary Washington. In 2006 I started the web-based educational publishing platform ELS Blogs for the English Linguistics and Speech department at UMW. This pilot project led to the development of UMW Blogs in 2007 which went on to become an enterprise level academic publishing platform. In 2008 the madness that was EDUPUNK was attributed to a series of posts I wrote on my personal blog.

In 2010 I re-imagined the Computer Science 106 course on Digital Storytelling at UMW as an open, online community referred to as ds106—an experiment in teaching and learning on the web that is still going strong and has been celebrated internationally as a compelling community-based approach to online learning. Additionally, I helped spearhead an initiative at the University of Mary Washington called A Domain of One’s Own that, starting in Fall 2013, gave all incoming Freshman their own domain and web hosting account. For a clearer picture of my approach to teaching and learning technologies in higher education take a look at a selection of presentations and interviews I have given over the past eight years.

In 2015 I left UMW to go full-time at Reclaim Hosting, and it has been a joy running a company that supports the work faculty and students do in higher ed, a space my work was born out of and remains near and dear to my heart.

Finally, I write regularly about my work as an instructional technologist–in addition to several other interests of mine such as film, literature, video games, and media of all kinds–on my home away from home: bavatuesdays.

Rachel Cherry (she/her) is a web engineer and consultant with over 16 years of experience, primarily in higher education and enterprise-level environments. She is a focused specialist in digital accessibility and performant front-end web engineering. Rachel is the Senior Digital Accessibility Developer for the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. As a member of the University's central digital accessibility team, Rachel serves as the lead technical expert for the University's digital accessibility compliance program.

Bret is a web developer at St. Olaf College, where he builds custom blocks, plugins, and other random apps to support their WordPress multisite and theme. He has worked in higher education for 5 years, initially employed at Carleton College (the other liberal arts college in Northfield, MN) to lead the migration of their content over to WordPress. An Enneagram 5 to the core, he enjoys solitude and any project challenging enough to turn his brain into a pretzel.

Before his current career, he worked as an animator for commercial and medical animation, a stay-at-home parent, and a bookseller (mainly to be surrounded by books). In his off time, he enjoys dabbling in personal coding projects and writing short fiction.

Jesse Friedman brings nearly two decades of experience in working with and contributing to WordPress. He is the host of the Impressive Hosting podcast and a regular contributor to notable publications. He is a local WordPress community leader and an experienced WordCamp organizer. As an author of several books including the 'Web Designer's Guide to WordPress' and a decade of experience as an adjunct professor Jesse has had the privilege to educate thousands of students in and outside the classroom. Currently, as the Head of WP Cloud at Automattic, Jesse focuses on innovating and elevating the standards of WordPress cloud hosting.

Charles Fulton is a web developer at Lafayette College and a frequent train rider. He has worked in higher education web development for over a decade. At Lafayette, he helps manage the web infrastructure, broadly defined. He architected Lafayette’s continuous integration and delivery environment, based on GitLab and Docker, and recently finished moving its WordPress platforms to Amazon Web Services. Charles maintains over a dozen WordPress and Moodle plugins. He serves on the Steering Committee for the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP) and helps maintain CLAMP's Liberal Arts Edition distribution. In his spare time, he builds model railroads and reviews B-movies.

Developer Relations Engineer at Platform.sh. Former Programmer/Analyst-Principal at the University of Missouri. Web application security and accessibility evangelist. Software instructor. Conference lecturer and presenter. Runs on passion and coffee. Outside of work, you'll find Gilzow mountain biking, snowboarding, enjoying live music with his kids, and dancing wherever the mood strikes.

Boone Gorges is a WordPress developer and consultant. He is an emeritus commiter for WordPress and an emeritus lead developer for BuddyPress. His consultancy Hard G LLC specializes in custom plugin development and WordPress services to cultural heritage and educational institutions.

Mike is a Web Developer who strives to create accessible and performant websites. He likes the problem solving and challenges presented working in the WordPress community.

Michelle is based in Minneapolis, MN, and is currently the Director of UX Engineering at Lone Rock Point. She has previously collaborated with clients ranging in size from solopreneurs to enterprise as an independent consultant. Michelle employs a strategy-based approach to design and development 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 pursuing professional, personal, or wellness goals, she enjoys giving back through speaking and connecting with others. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of "Why?"

Joeleen is a Senior Web Engineer with Human Made, where she serves as technical and team lead for complex and large-scale WordPress projects. She has been working with WordPress since 2008, using it to solve problems for universities, small businesses, non-profits, and enterprise clients.

Joeleen is excited to combine new technologies with proven web foundations to showcase WordPress's capabilities, and her background in design and fine arts help her bring beauty to each project she touches. Her goal is to make every project beautiful, usable, and accessible.

She currently lives near Raleigh, NC where she hoards fancy yarn, sometimes knits things with it, obsesses over chocolate, and leads her family on adventures.

With two decades of expertise as an educational technologist, John Lenehan is committed to driving innovation and leveraging technology to enhance education. As Research and Development Lead in the Digital Learning Department at Hibernia College, Ireland, John collaborates with various departments and external partners to create solutions that improve the College's blended learning model. John's involvement in diverse projects has required him to maintain a broad skill set in user experience design, web development, services, and project management within a digital education context.

Adam is the Lead Web Developer at UNC Chapel Hill IT Digital Services.  He previously taught Digital Media at UCF in Orlando, Florida, and worked as a Web Developer for New College in Sarasota, Florida.  He enjoys going on adventures with his family, hockey, and skating. He first started working with WordPress near the release of version 1.5.

James Nicnick is a web developer at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Having spent the majority of his 16 year career in marketing developing and managing client websites and applications, he made the transition to higher education in February of 2022. He currently focuses on the College’s WordPress properties developing custom functionality within their themes and plugins, assisting faculty, students, and staff with their web content needs, and ensuring that the various WordPress deployments are functional and up-to-date.

Steve is a developer with 18 years of experience building WordPress and Drupal sites. While interning at a theatre company in college, Steve overheard the artistic director say they needed a blog and an online magazine. Steve volunteered to build the sites and WordPress 2.0.4 got the job done. His path was changed and he's been making websites ever since.

As a freelance and agency developer, he built sites for a range of clients including The Joffrey Ballet, Foreign Affairs, Marketplace, Public Radio International, and many higher education institutions. You can find patches from Steve all over Drupal core and contributed modules.

Mike has more than two decades of experience in higher education. A former English professor, he's since worked as a writer, a front-end web developer, a digital and content strategist, and a social media strategist, among other roles. He's also an award-winning speaker. In his current role at OHO Interactive, he uses his experience to help clients solve their content and governance puzzles.

John is a storyteller with design and development skills. He designs and builds websites at https://johnrhea.com, counts his words carefully at https://8wordstories.com and helps you kill zombies while learning web development at https://undead.institute.

He lives near Charlottesville, VA with his wife, Carrielyn, and, like, a lot of kids (eight at last count) plus more pets than is wise to enumerate. If you see him and he’s both awake and properly dressed, you know he’s having a good day.

Lincoln has extensive experience in instructional technology, community management, Web engineering, and engineering management. He's used WordPress as an engineer for 15 years, including professionally for the last four. He has lead engineering at uConnect, creator of the Virtual Career Center, for two years. Lincoln was the WPCampus housing coordinator in 2023, and recently led his 24-year old, 300-person social club Icrontic through creating a Board of Trustees modeled on the WPCampus process. He has lived in & restored his historic home in Detroit for the past decade with his husband Aaron and rat terrier Rocky.

Steve Ryan is a WordPress engineer for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. His interests include basketball, tennis, chess, and manipulating his two kids into doing their homework. A husband and a father. A big Stephen King fan. Favorite colors are maroon and gold. #goDevils

J.J. Toothman is a 20 year veteran of Web and digital interactive spaces, including Program, Product, and Project Management roles, with Web and mobile application development backgrounds. He’s put these to service to develop NASA’s first WordPress-powered public blog, and has consulted with NASA to lead the development of their enterprise Web strategy ever since, focusing on SaaS solutions to support NASA’s mission operatives and program researchers. He later worked with Ticketfly to develop and implement their social marketing platform for music venues. J.J. is a subject matter expert in enterprise collaborative software, open source content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal, working with open source communities, and deploying, onboarding, and managing multitenant CMS solutions

Kristin Van Dorn has worked in higher education web marketing since 2009. Before Bravery Media, Kristin worked in user experience consulting and digital strategy roles across the University of Minnesota, including as an analyst in their world-class usability lab, where they facilitated over 80 unique evaluations and product tests per year. In 2013, Kristin completed an interdisciplinary master’s degree where she studied higher education institutions’ unique branding and marketing challenges.

Kristin is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota, earning her doctorate in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development. She blends her advanced academic research skills with user experience methods to provide teams with reliable and actionable user intelligence. 

Jennryn Wetzler is the Director of Learning and Training at Creative Commons. At Creative Commons (CC), she has the joy of forming collaborative partnerships around the world; with partners, she develops programs and open licensing training to increase open access to knowledge and culture in the public interest. Prior to CC, Jennryn worked at the U.S. Department of State, piloting using Open Educational Resources (OER) for public diplomacy and global partnerships. She’s also enjoyed gaining a different perspective of education through language studies and international development work in Egypt, Niger, and Thailand. Jennryn has a Masters in ‘Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs’ from American University’s School for International Service. Now based in Maryland, Jennryn lives with her husband, two kiddos and an adopted cat that acts much more like a dog. 

Rachel Winchester, or Win for short, graduated from Swarthmore College in 2017 with a bachelors in art history and interpretation theory. Now, she is an independent product designer, a dynamic public speaker, and the founder of The Focus Assistants, a Brooklyn-based startup. Catch her hosting the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup virtually every month as well as The WWW (Work with Win) Livestream on LinkedIn every week. Win started Visual Webmaster L.L.C. where she pursues a variety of internet projects as well as hosts art & design workshops, showcases, and related events for artists, entrepreneurs, and academics.

Angie Wolf has worked in IT at a small liberal arts college for three decades, in both technical and administrative roles. Presently, she has responsibility for Library and IT budgets and assuring that contracts and services are the best fit and highest value for the college. She has a background in systems and network administration as well as providing technical support for events and video production.