Our Speakers

Meet our fabulous speakers for WordCamp Ottawa 2013.

For more information about speaking at the Ottawa WordCamp, please see the “Become a Speaker” page.

You can see the sessions at: Sessions

Al Davis

Al Davis has spent more than 15 years working with small business owners, helping get their businesses online. In his former life as a Hosting Product Manager, Al has seen the good, the bad, and the (very) ugly when it comes from taking a website idea to website reality. Currently, Al is a Program Manager for the world’s largest hosting wholesaler and is in charge of WordPress strategy and product direction for several of the world’s largest telcos and ISPs. Al also teaches Intro to WordPress at George Brown College in Toronto and expands to offering an Intermediate WP class in the summer, in addition to offering both classes online. He has formerly been an organizer of Toronto’s WordPress MeetUp groups as well as the two WordCamps that are hosted in Toronto. When not working with WordPress or writing for his site at WPTeach.com, Al can be found on his Harley or taking in a football game somewhere.

Angèle Lafond

Founder of Shoebox-Be-Gone and The Shoebox Party™. Wife, Mother, Business Owner, Blogger, Public Speaker, A.K.A. SuperWoman.  I survive on caffeine.  Creative uses of various WordPress plugins has helped me grow my business.

Brian Rotsztein

With 16 years of Internet marketing experience, Brian Rotsztein brings a seasoned approach to working with clients. As the head of several well-established web design, SEO and Internet marketing companies (RedstoneX.com, Uniseo.com, MailPrince.com,…), he helps businesses gain a competitive advantage. An entrepreneur with integrity, he implements realistic, hype-free strategies to maximize return on investment. He holds two Master’s degrees, has taught university courses, and provides professional consulting and training services for topics such as SEO, search engine marketing, and social media for business. He’s been a WordPress fan since he started using version 1.6 (in 2005!). Twitter: @brianrotsztein

Charles Jaimet

Charles is the lead developer and strategist at the Ottawa Citizen. He is a PHP/mySQL/Javascript programmer with a degree in journalism and a deep interest in audience development and online publishing. Before joining the Citizen he owned a web agency in BC specializing in custom WordPress development.

Christine Rondeau

Former Chemist and University of Ottawa graduate, Christine became a web developer in 2001.  The early days of web development consisted of building custom made php-based CMS and Movable Type blogs. Like so many other developers, Christine gradually migrated towards WordPress and has been using it in almost every project since 2005. Christine teaches WordPress at a community college in Vancouver, BC, is a forums moderator at wordpress.org and an active member of the WordPress community.

Christopher Ross

I am a Canadian WordPress designer, developerspeaker, teacher, and consultant who enjoys long walks with shortcodes, functional arguments, and playing with other people’s APIs.

Clarissa Peterson

After spending more than a decade in Washington, D.C., managing websites for nonprofit organizations, Clarissa Peterson set off last fall on an international road trip that took her through nearly twenty states and provinces. While traveling, she works from the road as an independent UX designer, web developer, and consultant, and she frequently speaks on responsive design and mobile strategy. Clarissa is the author of Learning Responsive Web Design, to be published later this year by O’Reilly Media. You can find her on Twitter: @clarissa

David Hamilton

David Hamilton is a Toronto-based word nerd who, since finishing journalism school, has written for the National Post and several technology publications. He now works as a copywriter, blogger, and content strategist for Kobayashi Online. He loves travel, great conversations, and striving to be a better writer. Contact him via Twitter (@ko_davidh) or email him at david@davidihamilton.com.

Jasmine Vesque

Jasmine is a natural-born communicator who enjoys helping people share their most important stories and ideas. She currently works as the Communications Marketing Manager for the Nedlaw Group of Companies where she does everything from build websites in WordPress, content marketing, and social media. She also volunteers as the VP of Communications and Webmaster for a new non-profit organization, The Forget for a Moment Foundation. With a diploma in NewMedia and Publication Design, Jasmine loves design and sometimes works as a freelance Graphic Designer. In her spare time she enjoys cooking, reading, guerrilla knitting, and photography. She welcomes tweets at @jasmineVesque.

Jordan Quintal

Jordan Quintal is a seasoned web developer with 15 years of experience. His ever-growing web development company thegenius.ca specializes in WordPress-based websites, plugins, and a variety online/offline services.

Julie Harrison

As a communications strategist and freelance writer, Julie first pressed “publish” on her blog Coffee with Julie in 2009. Since then, her blog has been cited by Canadian Family magazine as one of “18 Mom Blogs We Love,” Savvy Moms’s “35 Top Mom Bloggers List,” Capital Parent Newspaper’s “Ottawa Parenting Blogs We Love,” and has been a Canadian Weblog Nominee for Parenting and Travel categories for the past three years. She is a huge fan of strong coffee and social media and you can find her on Twitter @coffeewithjulie and at www.coffeewithjulie.ca.

Kathryn Presner

Kathryn thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she now supports WordPress.com users around the world as an Automattic Happiness Engineer. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress at WordCamps, Girl Geek Dinners, Podcamps, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress hours are spent collecting vintage Pyrex mixing bowls, growing organic garlic, and cavorting with her three cats.

Mary Kathryn Roberts

MK is the Communications Advisor in the IT department at Carleton University.  Back in 2009 she was brought in to help with the transition to CCMS, Carleton’s WordPress-based content Management system.  As a web content specialist she designs and hosts Writing for the Web and Google Analytics workshops.

Mohammad Jangda

Mo wrangles code and VIPs at WordPress.com. He enjoys ice cream and other sugary things.

Richard Archambault

Richard loves the web and really loves WordPress. After attending his first WordCamp Montreal in 2010, he was hooked! Now a Happiness Engineer with Automattic, Richard wants to help spread the WordPress goodness to anyone else who’s interested in the web. When he’s not tinkering with his sites, he loves going to Mexico to eat spicy tacos and ride around on the metro! You can find online as @richardmtl.

Richard Martin

Richard Martin is an online entrepreneur. He created and manages a site that provides health services to clients and continuing education training for health professionals. Before going online he did product marketing in Silicon Valley with several companies including Apple, Cisco and Broadcom. Richard now lives in Ottawa. Twitter: @richardgmartin

Rick Radko

Rick Radko is a creative, artistic, and entrepreneurial engineer with a passion for finding solutions to difficult design problems. He is the owner of R-Cubed Design Forge, where he develops custom web applications, social networking and team collaboration solutions for businesses. Rick specializes in custom application development and multilingual websites. He is co-leader, and a frequent presenter at the Ottawa WordPress Group.  Twitter: @r3designforge

Scott Gallant

Scott is a front-end web developer and UI/UX expert based out of Prince Edward Island. He co-founded WP Status and runs a design firm that specializes in WordPress theme development.  Get in touch at scott@wpstatus.com or on twitter @scottgallant

Shannon Smith

Shannon Smith is the founder of Café Noir Design, a boutique Montreal web design company specializing in multilingual web development. She builds beautiful, functional websites that her clients can update themselves and that are easy for search engines to find. She support things like making the web accessible for everyone, using open source software, helping organizations find greener more sustainable ways to operate through online technology and helping non-profits with online community organizing. Also sewist and mother of four.  twitter | google+ | blog

Stéphane Boisvert

Stephane Boisvert is the Senior Digital Advisor to the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He has extensive experience in custom web application development. He has been using WordPress and BuddyPress on liberal.ca and its many subsites helping Canadians take a more active role in the political process.

Troy Chaplin

Troy is a WordPress designer, developer and enthusiast who enjoys pushing the envelop with each new project. With over 10 years of experience in a creative environment, Troy has dedicated his professional life to working with WordPress on several levels, helping a small team at Carleton University enhance their web presence and providing content editors around the university with intuitive tools to help promote their activities and initiatives.

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