Speaker Spotlight: Angèle Lafond

April 22, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: 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.

Angèle is participating in the panel Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? Its easy.  Lots of plugins, lots of options.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I want to share what I learned the hard way.
What is your talk going to be about? How i have built my biz with WP.

3 pages that keep generating money

1 page I use for list building.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? WordPress seo by yoast – easy

Visual form builder PRO – I’ve incorporated forms in everything from sales pages to purchase confirmations in order to access products to collecting tax information from clients to sending follow up messages to people I’ve networked with

Shareaholic – they look great!

WordPress Editorial Calendar – scheduling posts

Linkwithin

Zip list recipes
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Speaker Spotlight: Rick Radko

April 19, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: 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

Rick is presenting: Getting WordPress to Speak Your Language and Introduction to WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I work with WordPress because it’s really easy to use.  My clients get web sites that they can manage and update mostly on their own, and as a developer I get a framework that is easy to modify or extend with add-ons and plugins.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I’ve worked with WordPress for the past 5 years, and I want to see it continue to grow. Organizing this WordCamp and speaking too, provides an opportunity to give back to the WordPress community in a way that supports it and helps it thrive.
What is your talk going to be about? My talk on multilingual WordPress is intended to introduce users of all levels the concepts and resources needed to be able to set-up a WordPress site in one or more languages other than the default English.

The “Introduction to WordPress” is to help new WordPress users get a running start before all the sessions on Saturday.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? As a developer I use a lot of different plugins, but few that I use most of the time are Gravity Forms, Google Analytics for WordPress, and TinyMCE Advanced. I’m also using a couple new ones for building multilingual sites on WordPress multisite – Multisite Language Switcher and WP Native Dashboard.
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Speaker Spotlight: Kathryn Presner

April 19, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: 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.

Kathryn is presenting: Help Me Help You: The art and science of getting good WordPresss support

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I love witnessing how WordPress makes it easy for just about anyone to publish their content on the web. Every day, I hear from users all over the world – from teenagers to folks in their eighties – who are equally passionate about WordPress, and that makes me smile.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I was excited to see a new WordCamp spring up just a few hours away from Montreal, where I’m based. There was no question about showing up to support it!
What is your talk going to be about? As a volunteer moderator in the WordPress.org support forums, and now a Happiness Engineer for WordPress.com, I’ve watched people ask for help in some pretty ineffective ways. Knowing how to get useful WordPress assistance is in itself a skill, so I’ve decided to share some tips on what to do – and what to avoid – when you’re stuck on a WordPress problem and ready to reach out.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? Akismet may be the most taken-for-granted plugin out there. But deactivate it and just watch what happens!
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Session Highlights – Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

April 18, 2013 by Richard Martin • Comments Off on Session Highlights – Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

Whether you are a business looking for customers, a non-profit promoting an important cause, or a brand promoting your identity, your website is essential to your success.

During the panel discussion, Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress, you will meet a diverse group of people who use WordPress to promote their message. The panel includes a blogger, a small business owner, a non-profit, and representatives from Carleton University and the Ottawa Citizen.

The session will be presented in two parts. You are free to attend either of the parts. The first part starts at 3:15 and the second part starts at 4:15.

The panel will discuss a range of topics, including:

  • Why each panel member chose WordPress.
  • How do they develop content that promotes their key messages.
  • How they use WordPress to attract an audience.
  • How they measure the success of their WordPress website.
  • What role social media plays and how they integrate it into their WordPress site.
  • What lessons have they learned.

The panelists include:

Julie Harrison is communications professional and an Ottawa blogger. She runs a WordPress blog called Coffee with Julie where she blogs on topics ranging from living, family life, travel, and what is new and worthwhile to see in the media. Julie will be talking about blogging, social media and her favourite coffee.

Angele Lafond is the owner of Shoebox be Gone-a bookkeeping service for small business and entrepreneurs. Angele also provides income tax services, workshops, and products such as the Ultimate Shoebox. Angele uses WordPress to promote her business.

Mary Kathryn Roberts is the Communications Advisor in the IT department at Carleton University.  MK will be speaking about Carleton University’s use of WordPress. 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.

Jasmine Vesque is the Vice-president of Communications and Webmaster for a burgeoning non-profit organization: The Forget for a Moment Foundation. She will be discussing how the Foundation uses WordPress.

Charles Jaimet is the Lead Developer and Strategist of Digital Products at the Ottawa Citizen. Charles will be discussing how the Ottawa Citizen uses WordPress.

Richard Martin is the host for the panel. Richard 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.

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Speaker Spotlight: Stéphane Boisvert

April 18, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: 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.

Stéphane is presenting: Debugging Bugs with a Debugger

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I find WordPress to be the perfect balance of Flexibility while still having a stable structure to work with.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I think debuggers are underused and that as soon as developers discover debuggers it will open their eyes to the magic of what is going on behind the code.
What is your talk going to be about? See: Debugging Bugs with a Debugger
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? There are 2 plugins that I would say I rely upon all the time that is Gravity Forms and WPML. Both of those plugins do their job consistently and we use them on every site we do.
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Speaker Spotlight: Mary Kathryn Roberts

April 18, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: 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.

Mary-Kathryn  is participating in the panel Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? From a business perspective: We needed a system that was customizable and user friendly.  The community was a big win and not only from a support perspective.  The tool is constantly improving and we’re able to stay current in our web offering.From a personal perspective: I blog using WordPress because it’s easy.  I’m not a web developer.  I’m a comms person and I love being able to focus on my content without being bogged down by the technology.  It’s so easy to add widgets and to change the look of my blog.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? It’s great to get out into the community and share stories and experiences.
What is your talk going to be about? Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? The Carleton CMS theme. I work with non-techy people who need to just be able to work with web content.  The CCMS theme is clean, simple and (soon to be) responsive.
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Speaker Spotlight: Charles Jaimet

April 17, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: 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.

Charles is participating in the panel Building Your Business, Cause, or Brand using WordPress

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? I love being able to install a CMS with plugins that does 90% of my development work for me and still gives me full access to the code so I can tweak it to my specific needs.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I am very interested to see how others are using the software to achieve their communications goals. I will be speaking, but I’ve come to learn.
What is your talk going to be about? I will be engaged in a panel to discuss achieving communications goals using WordPress.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? FeedWordPress, because it allows for very simple crowd-sourced content aggregation.
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