Mikey Arce
Mikey is a WooCommerce Happiness Engineer by day, and by night he is probably organizing WordCamp Vernon.
Lisa Armstrong
Lisa is a Kelowna based web developer who has been in business for over 13 years. During that time, she’s created a number of web applications for a wide range of industries.
Lisa starting using WordPress about 5 years ago because of how easy it was for users to manage their own websites. These days, she often uses WordPress as a base for her web applications by writing custom plugins and templates for her clients.
She finds this gives her clients the best of both worlds — the web application they need inside a WordPress site they can use.
When she’s not building web apps, Lisa can be found outside, rock climbing, mountain biking or horseback riding.
Laurena Rehbein
Laurena Rehbein is a Woo Happiness Engineer, working in accounts and pre-sales for the WooThemes department of Automattic. She currently lives in Oliver, in the Interior of British Columbia (in Canada’s only desert), with her husband and three vastly-different-but-equally-entertaining sons. Her past lives include teaching, journalism, and business ownership doing website design and development. She is always learning something new, and is passionate about finding awesome solutions to tough problems.
Kristina Plauche
Kristina Plauche is a Happiness Engineer/WooSupport Ninja with Automattic and former entrepreneur. She built a successful subscription based produce business using WordPress and WooCommerce. In the process she fell in love with the technical side of web development and changed career paths. Now she shares her expertise and experiences with other WordPress users regarding blogging, ecommerce, email campaigns, social media integration and more.
Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson likes to make stuff. In addition to building several products, such as the Product Hunt Handbook, and Amplification, and the MegaMaker, he hosts multiple podcasts and writes extensively. When he’s not working, he’s chasing his 4 kids and spending time with his beautiful wife. He blogs at justinjackson.ca and tweets at @mijustin
Ainslie Koopmans
Ainslie Koopmans is a WordPress fanatic. She got started with WordPress 6 years ago when she needed to build an e-commerce site for a cosmetics company that she co-founded. Through YouTube and lynda.com, Ainslie learned the ins and outs of WordPress.org. After selling her cosmetics company, she attended BCIT in Vancouver in the technical Web Design program. Now Ainslie works full time as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic where she gets to help users every day using WordPress.com.
Chris O’Connor
I’ve been building web sites since the mid/late 90’s, and am the author of the book WordPress For All : How To Create A Website For Business Or Personal Use, Quickly & Easily – Whatever Your Skill Level. I am also an instructor on Udemy where I teach various aspects of WordPress, Kindle, and Raspberry Pi.
I’ve been using WordPress since it was first released, and prior to that, B2 (the software WordPress was forked from). I’ve built numerous websites both for myself and for clients, using HTML, WordPress, and Joomla.
Cathie Dunklee-Donnell
I’m from an English major and teaching and writing background. I’ve taught elementary school as a teacher and as a writer my stories have been published in many literary magazines and broadcast on CBC. My career switch happened when I couldn’t get a teaching job in Calgary so I went back to SAIT to become an internet and network specialist. Then I was recruited to be a computer specialist by Clark County School District where I worked for five years.
We moved back to Canada and I started my own business called Ducktoes Computer Services (pun on web feet – Make a Splash on the web with Ducktoes). I started working out of the house, then got a small office, a larger office, then moved to a retail store on a busy street near downtown Calgary with 9 staff members. We do seo, web design, computer repair, laptop repair, IT support, remote support, data recovery, and virus removal.
Lately I’ve attended and become certified by Bruce Clay, SEO guru, for Advanced SEO. I also have attended two years in a row Pubcon Master’s Class in SEO and the entire conference. I’ve also attended Local Search U.
We have 30 SEO clients who are all ranking on the first page of Google except for new clients. We use only White Hat SEO practices and most of our clients have WordPress sites.
Jonathan Hall
I am a website designer and WordPress plugin developer based in Chilliwack, B.C., where I operate Hearken Media and Potent Plugins. I studied Computer Information Systems at the University of the Fraser Valley, completing my Bachelor’s degree with a concentration in Software Development in 2013.
Natalie Osborne
I am the owner of WONDERBUILD.com, a small website boutique that specializes in custom sites on the WordPress platform. I operate two offices in Anchorage, Alaska and Big Sky, Montana. Our goal is to help small businesses and entrepreneurs with the best solution for their website needs. It just almost always happens to be solved with WordPress.
Before starting my own small company, I worked as a web producer and manager for some pretty awesome Dot.Coms – MLB.com, KBKids.com (which became eToys.com) and a handful of other companies that were acquired by, merged with, or became other companies. It was the 2000’s afterall.
And I love to ride mountain bikes in BC, which is of course a huge reason I am attending Vernon’s WordCamp!
Joey Kudish
Joey is a Montreal-native, now Vancouverite, who works at Automattic; currently as a WooCommerce developer, amongst other projects. Joey loves to travel and working from coffee shops or co-working spaces. He’s an avid hiker and explorer. Eager to explore the Vernon area!
Anton Iancu
I have been designing websites since the early 2000. After a tech-world hiatus of about 8 years, i returned to web development in 2014 and honed my development skills with a particular focus on WordPress-driven solutions. As a designer and developper with a strong business background, i enjoy the end-to-end creation of solutions that solve concrete business problems. As an attendee to every WordCamp that i could reach, i’m ready to start giving back to the community as a speaker, sharing my acquired knowledge with those who are in the shoes i was in a few years ago.