Speaker applications closed on September 10th, we’re busy reviewing talks and will have some special announcements soon!
Dion Hulse
Michael Viller
Michael has been the “Mick” of many things over the past 36 years of his life however one thing that he’s always been passionate about is building websites, He started teaching himself to build websites back in ’99 with HTML, then moved to mambo, then was an avid Joomla user for over 10 years and a very anti-WordPress person up till a few years ago, but hasn’t touched Joomla since.
Maddison Selleck
Maddison Selleck is the Chief Business Development Officer at VentraIP Australia.
Rheinard Korf
At the age of twelve Rheinard discovered a love for programming languages and writing software for friends and family. Whilst studying Information Technology he also discovered a love for teaching programming and has done so for over a decade before turning to programming as a career.
Rheinard has a passion for frameworks, programming languages and APIs. His most ambitious project he has worked on recently is Tide – a WordPress code quality and review ecosystem written primarily in the Go programming language. Now he is at it again, dreaming big and exploring the future of WordPress in an API dominated world.
Dale Reardon
Dale Reardon is from Tasmania, Australia and along with his wife, Jo, have founded My Disability Matters, a Worldwide online community for the disability sector. Dale is qualified as a lawyer but he asks that we not hold that against him. He loves everything to do with France. Wine, food, and champagne. Dale is legally blind and uses a guide dog, Charlie.
Dale advocates for accessible web-design and has a particular hatred for graphical captchas that frustrate him and so many others, he’s also a passionate advocate for equality, anti-discrimination and disability rights and equality.
Sally Eberhardt
Sally Eberhardt a proud and happy introvert (although you’re forgiven for not realising this upon meeting her), has recently published her first book entitled Pain-Free Networking for Introverts.
Her first networking experiences were nerve-racking to say the least, fearing about whether anyone would talk to her, whether she’d fit in, and general lack of confidence. Turning all that around she now shares her journey with others to remove pain and maximise the rewards of networking.
She’s a lover of wild places, animals, photography, family, street-art, traveling, dining out, reading, writing, and of course, the Communities she’s Networked with on her journey here.
Brendan Woods
Brendan Woods works as a Team Lead with XWP, managing large scale WordPress solutions. Currently completing a Masters of Data Analytics, Brendan has a deep interest in how technology continues to shape our lives.
Luke Carbis
Luke Carbis is a trained teacher who decided to trade moody teenagers for programming. Today, he works to foster diversity, community, and possibility at XWP.
Jane Tweedy
Jane Tweedy is founder & lead-trainer of FAQ Business Training, with a mission to educate and empower small business owners to DIY or outsource with confidence through accurage and topical training.
She’s also a part-time Business Connect and BEC Australia Approved Business Advisor for Western Sydney Business Centre, the NSW Government funded program has allowed Jane to help over 800 small business owners on an array of topics.
Paul Dunstone
Paul Dunstone is the founder and Managing Director of OSE Digital. Paul has over 15 years experience in web design, development and digital marketing and leads a team of experts who work to deliver WordPress and WooCommerce implementations on a daily basis.
Paul and his team have built a strong reputation for building fast-loading, scalable WordPress sites for organisations all across Australia.
Mandy Weidmann
Mandy Weidmann is Australia’s ‘Fundraising Whisperer’ – publisher of the Fundraising Directory and author of the Practical Fundraising Handbook for School and Club Volunteers. Mandy believes that parent volunteers shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time and is passionate about providing resources to make fundraising easier (and more fun).
She is also a self-confessed app addict!
Tony Cosentino
Tony has been developing & building with WordPress for 10 years now in the SMB space as a freelancer based in Sydney. He attended his first WordCamp in New Zealand in 2011 and quickly followed it up by WordCamp Melbourne the same month – he was hooked!
With the rise in voice technology he’s turned his mind to podcasting and hosts his own show ‘The Tony Cosentino Show’ about his and other peoples passions and obsessions including WordPress and Podcasting.
Paula Glynn
Paula Glynn is the lead Search Specialist at PixelStorm and an experienced Pay per Click Guru. For the last decade Paula has been living, breathing and dreaming PPC and digital strategy.
When not optimising client’s accounts, she is reading the latest industry case studies and trends.
Ben White
Ben White is the CMS Engineering Manager at Fairfax Media Australia, and has been utilising WordPress at scale with media publishers since 2011.
He likes keeping things simple and automating things that are not, so he can have more time to spend with family and play video games.
Peter Wilson
Peter Wilson is a Senior WordPress Engineer at Human Made and committer to WordPress core. Peter has worked on the web for twenty years on everything from table based layouts in the 90s to enterprise grade CMS development.
He’s a big fan of musical theater and often encourages his WordPress community colleagues to join him for a show or two in New York or in the West End.
Scott Huntley
Kenneth Scott Huntley (please call him Scott) is an Instruction Designer for the Student Management Services Program Project at TAFE NSW. Scott also runs a number of WordPress workshops a few weekends every year at the local community college in Parramatta.
Toni Livesey
Based in Harvey Bay, Toni started with her first website over 20 years ago in 1996 with nothing more than Notepad and a couple of HTML tutorials. Much more recently she’s written a training manual for a training course in WooCommerce delivered to indigenous startups by the QLD government.
She’s worked with clients in all types of business; including online stores ranging from large fishing tackle sites that sell tens of thousands globally to small local businesses selling disposable nappies.
Never saying no to a challenge and always solving the problem, has lead to the fond nickname ‘Crazy Lady’ from her family – in her spare time she’s a wife, mother and step-mother to 10, and grandmother to more kids than she can count on all her fingers and toes.
Gal Baras
I’m a Brisbane-based online marketing consultant working with small/local businesses and running several business websites. All the websites I work on are based on WordPress and I provide “the full suite” for them: domain, hosting, web development, SEO, conversion optimisation, moral support, maintenance, backups and more.
Before starting this business, I was in corporate IT for 1 years and worked on very large systems for very large organisations, which gives me a large-scale, methodical perspective on website setup and operation.
Having been “just a number” all those years, on the other hand, made me choose small clients, where personal touch and care are important and appreciated by both sides.
Emma Patterson
I’m a graphic designer turned web designer on a mission to teach others how to build beautiful & professional websites with WordPress.
I’ve been freelancing since 2011, and working with WordPress since 2012.
Through mentoring and my WordPress-based eCourse I now focus on teaching other graphic designers and entrepreneurs how to build their own websites using my 9-step process.
Outside of work, I’m obsessed with sausage dogs, nature, wine and Mexican food.
Andrew Duncan
Andrew Duncan is the CEO/Owner of Databuzz, a FileMaker Business Alliance partner based in Sydney, Australia. He has been developing FileMaker solutions since 1992 and has been working with APIs for over 15 years.
Andrew is the developer of fmEcommerce Link (WooCommerce Edition), a popular solution for integrating WooCommerce with the FileMaker platform (FileMaker is an Apple subsidiary that provides a unified platform to create and deploy custom apps for mobile, cloud, and on-premise environments.)
Andrew speaks regularly at the Sydney FileMaker Developers group which he convenes, with a particular focus on FileMaker integration. He has developed a number of award winning FileMaker integration solutions, including fmSMS, fmAccounting Link and fmEcommerce Link.
Andrew writes regularly on his Databuzz blog and is an active member of the FileMaker Community.
Leon Stafford
Leon has worked around the globe in technical roles the past 15 years. He has a passion for low-resource computing and doing more with less.
Kate Toon
Kate Toon is an award-winning SEO copywriter and SEO consultant with almost two decades of experience in all things advertising, digital and writing. Originally from the UK but now based just outside Sydney.
She has worked with big brands such as eHarmony, Curash and Kmart. And she’s helped countless small businesses produce great content and improve their copywriting and SEO.
Kate is also the founder of The Clever Copywriting School and The Recipe for SEO Success eCourse, the co-host on the Hot Copy Podcast and the host of The Recipe for SEO Success podcast.
Kate recently published her popular business book, The Confessions of a Misfit Entrepreneur – which also has it’s own podcast.
She presents the Write for Business show for the Dale Beaumont’s Brin.ai app and is the founder of The Copywriting Conference – Australia’s first dedicated Copywriting Conference.
Ben McAdam
I’ve been fiddling with WordPress and with numbers for many years now, though I’m much better at the latter! I’m a Virtual CFO, which is like an accountant that helps business owners to understand their financial numbers and grow their businesses and profits. I’ve grown my own agency in the past, so I understand the challenges from the inside, not just as an outside adviser.
Jen Jeavons
Jen Jeavons is a Brisbane-based digital designer, Creative Director, serial entrepreneur and award winning singer/songwriter – so probably not the best person to challenge at a drunken karaoke night. Jen founded Pixel Palace (a digital design studio here in Brisbane) in 2009 and today works as the company’s managing & creative director. With a successful creative career path spanning the music industry, fashion, web & digital design and now a blooming coffee empire, her colourful lifepath has had one common theme – human connection through storytelling.
With over 16 years experience in web, Jen has seen the evolution of digital first hand and in 2018 her ability to connect on a personal level is more powerful than ever – in the real world and online.
Phillip Johnson
Richard Scherer
Richard began his professional career in media as a newspaper journalist before moving into communications for a number of federal government departments and agencies.
His first website, in the mid-1990s, was hand coded, but for more than 10 years he’s used WordPress as his CMS of choice to design websites for community and not-for-profit groups. He has also had on-air and governance roles in Canberra community radio station, ArtSoundFM.
He has attended three previous Wordcamps (Brisbane, Sunshine Coast and Sydney) and found all of them to be of great value.
In mid-2018 he co-founded livingartscanberra.com.au, a not-for-profit website, which podcasts and webcasts interviews with arts practitioners. His most recent paid job is as a project writer with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Canberra.
Stephen Rees-Carter
Stephen has been a PHP developer for many long years and still loves working with PHP each day. He joined the security industry back in 2012 and has been working on security products, large SaaS applications, and spent some time cleaning infected WordPress websites. Now he’s a senior developer at Wordfence/Defiant, working hard to secure your website.
Samuel Levy
Sam is a Freelance Web developer who has worked in development for over 12 years, and has freelanced for the last 7. He’s done everything from server management to front-end development, but is most happy solving ugly problems with elegant solutions.
Wil Brown
Wil hails from Sydney where he lives his life as a Dad, WordPress Consultant, Developer, Conference Organiser and Speaker.
Ben Rollins
Ben is the Head of Development at Punch Buggy, and has worked in development, in one form or another, for over twenty years. He likes good wine and running stupid distances through the mountains, but hasn’t yet found a pleasant way of combining the two.
Ryan Fitton
Ryan is the Co-founder of Punch Buggy and is passionate about the digital and helping brands innovate with unique experiences. When he’s not optimising customer journeys, you’ll find him mountain biking, surfing or spending time with family.