Speakers

WordCamp Lancaster is thrilled to host these speakers at our annual one-day conference devoted to using and creating with WordPress on March 14th, 2020. In alphabetical order by first name, your 2020 presenters are…

• AJ Morris

  

  AJ Morris is the Product Innovation and Marketing Manager for iThemes, a WordPress plugin and training company that helps businesses, bloggers, and freelancers protect their investments in their sites. He spends most of his time helping store or site builders solve challenging problems through online education and consulting with businesses build digital storefronts.

• Austin Ginder

  

  Austin Ginder is a Lancaster, Pennsylvania local seen frequently working out of coworking spaces and coffee shops. He’s a husband, father of six children and runs Anchor Hosting, a hassle-free WordPress hosting service for web professionals. He helps agencies and freelancers keep their customers WordPress sites running smooth.

• Daniel Olson

  

  Dan is the Chief Operating Officer of DigitalCube, a company committed to supporting WordPress and its communities. He’s a web developer, AWS superfan, JAMstack advocate, and design thinking enthusiast.

• Donna Botti

  

  Donna is the owner of Delos Incorporated, a website development and digital marketing company in the Philadelphia area. Donna has been working with WordPress since 2010, creating websites and applications that help businesses grow and improve their processes. Donna frequently speaks to business organizations on how to make the web work for them. She enjoys hanging out with her family, the outdoors and Italian wine. Connect with Donna on Twitter @DonnaBotti

• Eileen Violini

  

  I’m a designer and developer of user experiences and interfaces for WordPress websites and products. With over seven years experience building WordPress solutions, I currently put my skills to work for clients and agencies as cofounder at Sidetrack Studio and WPBlockShop and as the User Success Advocate with Castos and the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin.

• Eric Karkovack

  

  Eric Karkovack is a freelance web designer and writer. A 20+ year veteran of the industry, Eric both works with and writes about his journey in using WordPress to tackle everyday challenges for clients.

  He is constantly amazed at the kindness and generosity of the WordPress community. It has inspired him to pay it forward through writing, speaking and sharing what he has learned.

  In addition, he enjoys writing about his adventures, including a lot of ups and downs, in running a freelance design business.

  Eric resides in Carlisle, PA, with his wife and daughter. He enjoys cheering on his New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Orioles, along with seeing how many types of birds he can feed in the backyard.

  He writes for several online publications, including Speckyboy Web Design Magazine, 1stWebDesigner, Envato Tuts+ and the Advanced Custom Fields blog.

• Erik Teichmann

  

  Erik has been a freelance WordPress developer since 2008, with a specialty in helping nonprofits tell their stories. He currently works as a WordPress developer with Inverse Paradox of Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

• Jason Coleman

  

  Jason is co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress and CEO of Paid Memberships Pro, the 100% open source membership plugin for WordPress. He has been pushing WordPress to its limits for many years and is an advocate for using WordPress as an application framework to build web sites and apps that go above and beyond the typical blog of CMS site. Jason works out of his home in Reading, Pennsylvania where he lives with his wife and business partner Kimberly Coleman and their two children.

• Joe Casabona

  

  Joe Casabona is an accredited college course developer and professor.
  He also has his Master’s Degree in Software Engineering, is a Front End Developer, and hosts multiple podcasts.

  Joe started freelancing in 2002, and has been a teacher at the college level for over 10 years. His passion in both areas has driven him to build Creator Courses, a school for those who want to create online businesses.

  As a big proponent of learning by doing, he loves creating focused, task-driven courses to help students build something. When he’s not teaching, he’s interviewing people for his podcast, How I Built It.

• Jonathan Bentz

  

  Senior Digital Marketing Strategist Jonathan Bentz leads vital SEO projects for Direct Online Marketing (DOM) in Pittsburgh, PA.

  Jonathan’s journey as a thought leader in SEO began back in his West Virginia University (WVU) days, where he received a degree in journalism. Following a decade of experience running digital marketing campaigns in agency settings and competitive industries like hospitality and cloud technology, Jonathan signed on with DOM to significantly contribute to its growing SEO client services.

  Immediately after his arrival, he integrated corporate branding and voice with SEO. Jonathan’s SEO approach isn’t near-sighted or trapped in any trendy bubbles. It’s an all-encompassing strategy devised to bolster each brand with natural web authority.

  Over the years, Google has evolved into an artificial intelligence-driven trust machine. If your site isn’t building brand trust with Google, it’s probably dying.

  Jonathan believes strongly in technical analysis, but not needlessly complicated site renovations. You’ve built a fantastic product or service; our team’s job is to ensure that your site’s SEO technical attributes are on point.

  An SEO campaign isn’t about traffic volume; it’s about traffic volume that creates revenue. For Jonathan, this means a sophisticated site analysis that extracts data and metrics about backlinks, competition, and revenue-oriented keywords. Through a discerning look at these factors, Jonathan and his team can forge a sensible way forward for the brand.

  Jonathan’s expert SEO analysis has been published in prominent publications such as Entrepreneur.com, Ecommerce Times, and CIO Online.

  In his free time, Bentz serves on the leadership team at his church. He is committed to creating new economic opportunities for underserved communities and uplifting those areas for children and future generations. He also enjoys spending time with his young children and family.

  He grew up in Lancaster, PA, and graduated from Penn Manor High School prior to attending WVU. He returned to the area in 2008 as the second outside hire for Grant Street internet marketing agency Lupeer and also served as the first in-house marketing manager for Harrisburg IT services provider Netrepid before relocating to the Pittsburgh area and leading the SEO team at DOM.

• Kerch McConlogue

  

  Kerch McConlogue, retired ADHD coach and frontend developer, has been writing code by hand for 20 years and using WordPress since version 1.5.
  Her passion is helping WordPress novices to understand the basic care and feeding of their own sites and to get past their fears of breaking the internet. A one-person shop, building sites mainly for small to midsized businesses, she handles a lot of the design work.

• Kevin Kresge

  

  Kevin Kresge is the Digital Marketing Director at Visual Impact Group based in York, PA where he manages all digital marketing projects like search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM), as well as other pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) for clients from a large variety of industries.

• Kim White

  

  Kim White has been a web developer for over twenty years building websites and web-based applications for advertising agencies, non-profit organizations as well as small to medium-sized businesses.

  Kim has been using WordPress since 2008 and is the Co-organizer of the Lehigh Valley Meetup and Lehigh Valley WordCamp. She has been part of the organizing team of WCUS for the last 3 years.

  Recently, Kim joined the support team at Paid Memberships Pro.

• Laura Byrne Cristiano

  

  Laura began her career with non-profits, where marketing the mission was part of everyone’s job. After dabbling in FrontPage for a few years, Laura found WordPress in 2006 when she and a friend unexpectedly created a viral website. Thrust into a vortex of website management meets Hollywood, her marketing arsenal exponentially grew with new skill sets in SEO, social media strategy, podcasting, event management, and more. Today, she’s Bet Hannon Marketing’s content specialist. NewYorkerLaura.com Laura currently resides in Philadelphia, PA with her husband, Kevin, and dog, Scully.

• Matt Ryan

  

  Matt has a WordPress consultancy business offering custom website development and monthly website maintenance and help desk services. Originally from Baltimore, MD he now calls Sadsbury Township, PA home. He is back into coding after a long hiatus having survived for a time as a network project manger and software channel manager. He has become an avid Phillies fan, but tends to favor the minor league teams in Reading (Fightins) and Lehigh Valley (Iron Pigs). He and his wife are empty nesters, with a brand new grand-daughter. You can find Matt on Twitter at @ryancommamatt.

• Mike Auteri

  

  Mike Auteri (@mauteri) is a Senior Software Engineer at Penske Media Corporation (PMC) who leads development for many well-known publishing brands on WordPress.com VIP. He’s contributed a few lines of code to WordPress core, written a couple plugins, presented at meetups/WordCamps, and is a co-organizer of the WordPress Montclair Meetup and lead organizer of WordCamp Montclair 2020. A New Jersey native, Mike lives not 4 blocks from a house featured in the Sopranos. Mike is a fan of good beer, hot sauce, and an avid fencer.

• Pam Aungst

  

  Pam is a major SEO nerd, a huge fan of WordPress, and a Slayer-loving metalhead. She was named one of the “Top 10 Women in SEO for 2019.” Pam offers SEO consulting and training, as well as white-label services for agencies that want to provide high-quality SEO services to their clients.

• Sal Ferrarello

  

  Sal is a WordPress developer at WebDevStudios who is passionate about code and web development. He has contributed repeatedly to WordPress Core, Genesis, and is the author of the Bootstrap Genesis Theme.

  Sal’s previous experience as a Magician/Juggler, Computer Science & Mathematics teacher, and Radio DJ makes him an entertaining and engaging speaker. He has spoken on a wide variety of topics including object-oriented PHP programming, enforcing code standards with PHP Codesniffer, WordPress Post Meta, and avoiding the pitfalls of DNS.

  Sal is also a proponent of developers blogging and shares his development notes and tips at salferrarello.com as well as on Twitter at @salcode.

• Stephen Kriso

  

  Stephen has been involved with WordPress for over 10 years and has experience with web development and management for 20. He also has experience in video and audio production and editing. His passion and expertise are in strategic business planning and digital brand building. He is a graduate of the Disney Institute and a WP Elevation member for WordPress consultants. He also has his own Digital Media consulting agency, Stag Media Consulting.

• Tara Claeys

  

  Tara Claeys began her career in advertising and marketing in the early 1990’s. After her first child was born, she supplemented her full-time job as Mom with illustration and stationery design for clients around the world. Her extensive marketing background and understanding of business quickly became her focus. Founded in 2010, Design TLC, specializes in websites and digital marketing for small schools, enrichment programs, camps and education-focused nonprofits.

• Tracy Rotton

  

  Tracy Rotton (she/her) is Founder and Principal of Taupecat Studios, an independent WordPress development agency based near Washington, D.C. She has been a web developer for over twenty years, and a WordPress developer for ten, specializing in custom theme and site development for nonprofits and the enterprise. She has spoken at WordCamps throughout the eastern United States and has been a core contributor to WordPress and related projects.