Category Archives: Speaker Interviews

Kitty Lusby on Tacos, Tacky Mugs, and Blogging

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Get to know Kitty Lusby, a full-time professional blogger, in today’s speaker interview.

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Kitty moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in order to have 24-hour access to tacos. An entrepreneur since her teen years, Kitty’s blogging career finally launched in 2014 with a series of freelance gigs that eventually grew into a successful business. She began to make a name for herself as she built her clients’ brands along with their blogs, and that skill eventually led to a massive rebranding of her personal blog, which is now a resource for bloggers and business owners alike. Among her other attributes, she’s smart, funny, good looking, and single. She discusses all of this and more at KittyLusby.com.

 

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

My brief, third-person, professional biography is obviously near perfect, but I confess that I am a more complex and interesting person than one paragraph can manage to convey. What you should know is that I’ve written copy and blog posts for more than 10 separate industries, and in addition to being published on various blogs around the net, my work has appeared in magazines, short story compilations, and even form letters for collections agencies. Also, I have a pet rabbit named Buford, and I enjoy collecting tacky coffee mugs.

Kitty's tacky pirate mug

Kitty’s tacky pirate mug

 

You undoubtedly have had an innumerable amount of incredible tacos, but what is that one astounding taco you’re still chasing to this day?

The holy grail of tacos are taco cart tacos. You know, the kind where someone’s Mexican grandma makes a huge pot of tamales and the meat options include beef cheeks and tongues. One of my fondest taco memories, though, was a filet mignon taco with shiitake mushrooms at Tommy Bahamas. It was definitely NOT Mexican, but it was still a transcendent taco experience. They had it as a special once and I haven’t seen it on the menu since. Keep hope alive. They’ll eventually run that special again…right?

 

What unique blogging habits, if any, have you developed that most bloggers wouldn’t consider?

I refuse to wear pants while I work. Pants restrict the creative process. My blogging process involves planning things on paper, dancing around my living room, and occasionally taking naps. Lots of my blog post ideas come from online forums, too – if I see a lot of people asking the same question, or if I see a lot of people giving questionable answers to a certain question, I blog about it.

 

What are the benefits of becoming a “Kitty Elite” member?

I guess you’ll have to become Elite and find out.

 

What’s one small step can bloggers take today to start them on a journey towards owning and operating a profitable blog?

The obvious step is to start blogging. If someone is really serious about blogging as a career, though, the step they should take right now is to start writing a business plan. It’s important to figure out how the money is going to be generated and do the appropriate research and planning.

 

Can you recommend any resources to help people accomplish this research and planning?

Blog monetization is always a hot topic, but there’s a ton of misinformation and misconceptions around good monetization habits. In a nutshell, most people who teach monetization or sell online training courses focus mainly on ways you can “rent” your audience’s attention to someone else’s business for a minuscule percentage of revenue. Affiliate marketing, adsense, and sponsored posts might seem like the easiest way to make money, but they’re neither easy nor smart if you want to build a career. Good monetization strategy comes from marketing your own widget to your own audience. Here’s a blog post that goes deeper into this: http://kittylusby.com/blog-monetization/

I’ll have a blogger-specific business plan resource available on my website in the next 30 days, but for now, I recommend that new blog entrepreneurs take a look at the Small Business Association’s guide to business plans. It’s fairly comprehensive, and startlingly impressive for a government resource: https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/write-your-business-plan

Head over to the Blue Whale at 1oam on Saturday, September 10 at WordCamp Los Angeles to catch Kitty’s presentation Going Pro – How To Make Your Blog Pay Your Bills.

Meet Speaker Jerret Farmer & Dummy Mike Puppet

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Get to know Jerret Farmer, an individual with an eclectic employment history and a passion for WordPress.

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Jerret has been employed as a Producer, Project Manager, Software Architect, Programmer, 2D/3D Production Artist, Art Director, and Lead Technical Artist. He’s worked for Image Comics: Top Cow, Activision, and FOX studios. He has worked on licensed properties for Marvel, Universal, and Warner Brothers studios.

Currently, Jerret works as the Manager of Digital Innovations at CauseForce, overseeing the creation and maintenance of their main websites and multiple WordPress blogs.

I prefaced our interview by letting Jerrett know of my relative ignorance to the practice and art of ventriloquism.

Well, the good news is that we have that in common. Part of what makes the bit work is that I’m not a ventriloquist. I know how that sounds. You are correct in stating that these presentations tend to be on the dry side and I wanted to do something that really engaged the audience right up front and get them involved with the whole of the presentation.

My first swing at the bat was at WP OC and that worked really well. I only used the puppet at the very first and once I warmed up the audience I got into putting up a site. This time I’ve shaken off a bit of the fear and doubt of trying it and will do a lot more with the act.

Speaking without moving your lips and switching voices on the fly takes a lot of practice and relaxation. I don’t have a lot of time and public speaking is very scary so I think most of the humor comes from how bad I am at it.

 

 

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

I am in the witness protection program.

 

Introduce us to your dummy. Name, gender, hobbies, anything we should know that isn’t obvious?

Mike Puppet. He really, really likes Elvis. But that will probably be obvious.

Mike Puppet

Mike Puppet

 

How did you get started and involved with ventriloquism?

Once I have started, I’ll let you know.

 

What made you decide to put together a WordPress related presentation utilizing a dummy?

It was a suggestion from a co-worker. I really wasn’t sure if he was joking, but I thought it was a great way to engage an audience. That and Mr. Puppet insisted.

 

In a few words, and without giving away the big secret of your presentation, what’s one mistake you and Mike Puppet can help WordPress newcomers avoid?

Always put on security and backup software first. Not even a dummy runs a site without protection.

 

What security and backup software, if any, would you recommend beginners install before getting started?

I always install iThemes Security Pro and their backup software Backup Buddy. Those are the two first products I install.

Jerret Farmer and Mike Puppet will be at WordCamp Los Angeles in the WordPress by a Dummy.

Speaker Jacob Arriola on Flexbox and Changing Careers

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In today’s speaker interview we talk to Jacob Arriola, a front-end developer from Los Angeles who spends most of his time working with Sass, JavaScript and building custom WordPress themes.

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Jacob works with Zeek Interactive and is always trying to learn new languages and frameworks to deliver rich and engaging UI experiences.

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

I discovered tech/programming/dev work while in business school. I originally wanted to get into Corporate Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions or Private Equity; however, I found a passion for web dev and made a big change after graduate school, despite getting an MBA.

I’m a late bloomer into tech. Didn’t start until I was ~ 35.

 

 

What’s the language or framework you’re currently most excited about and why?

I’ve been learning EmberJS over the past 6 months. It excites me because of empowering me to build very rich UIs that aren’t server dependent (ie click on something then wait for the server to get back to you via a page refresh). And because Zeek builds a lot of APIs with WordPress for native iOS apps, I’ve been testing on building web apps that are stand alone JS applications that use WordPress as its API/data store. So in essence, we could have WordPress provide data for both a native iOS app and a web application powered by EmberJS.

What was your flexbox “aha” moment?

Vertical/horizontal centering, for sure. I would always find some hacky way to vertically center items and it never felt quite right, especially with fluid layouts and things moving all over the place.

Are there any scenarios that come to mind when flexbox would not be an appropriate solution?

Not really! The flexbox module provides developers with a toolset, so it’s up to the developer and project to determine fits. Despite that, use-cases are endless!

What’s one flexbox gotcha that flexbox beginners should avoid?

Browser support, for sure – especially dealing with IE 10 and 11. Most of the gotchas happen there. Phillip Walton has put together a great repo on issues and workarounds: https://github.com/philipwalton/flexbugs

Jacob will be speaking at length about Flexbox at WordCamp Los Angeles in the Blue Whale on Saturday, September 10 at 3:30pm

Speaker Interview: Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with “sketch”)

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Get to know Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with “sketch”) in today’s speaker interview.

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Sallie first got online in 1985, via the mainframe at Brown University. She founded an online journal in 1993 and built her first HTML website in 1994. Since discovering WordPress in 2005, she hasn’t looked back. Sallie became the organizer of the East Bay WordPress Meetup in Oakland, California, in 2009.

Sallie has produced WordPress videos for Peachpit Press, taught introductory WordPress classes for Mediabistro, and acted as Technical Reviewer for O’Reilly’s WordPress: The Missing Manual. She runs her WP Fangirl consulting and development business from her home in Oakley, which she shares with her husband and two cats.

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

Let’s see. I don’t think the bio mentions that the reason I first started publishing online was that I was a classicist specializing in Greek and Roman theater in modern performance. I learned Greek before I learned HTML, and I keep telling myself that if I could learn Greek, I can learn JavaScript. It’s not that human languages and computer languages are similar; the point is that I’ve mastered difficult things before. The electronic journal that I started in the ’90s is still around over at http://www.didaskalia.net, though I haven’t been involved with it for many years. I think having a humanities background helps me relate to clients. Also, I think building a website is probably more like producing a play than it is like creating a brochure.

 

We’re very obviously comparing apples to oranges here, or maybe apples to shoes, but now that you’ve studied both, do you consider learning Greek or PHP more difficult?

Human languages are much more complex than computer languages. In PHP there are three ways to write a conditional, and all of them are a combination of indicative and imperative. In classical Greek there are three present, three past, and three future conditional forms, in the indicative, subjunctive, and optative. Not to mention the fact that with Greek you start as if you were in first grade again, just learning the letters of the alphabet.

But as a counter to that, there’s the fact that you can speak a foreign language badly and be understood. Human languages have redundancy built into them and they also have humans to interpret them. If you use the wrong punctuation in an English sentence, pedants like me will be annoyed, but we’ll know what you meant. If you use the wrong punctuation in PHP, you get a fatal error. The computer doesn’t know what you mean unless you get it exactly right.

 

I absolutely love the idea of considering a website more akin to a play than to a brochure — code is poetry after all. Could you expand on this idea a bit?

Live theater involves complex interactions between the actors, who all have to work together in order for it to work. WordPress websites are the same: you have themes and plugins that have to work properly with WordPress core and each other in order to bring the site together as a whole. And plays are responsive: you have to adapt your production to the space that you’re working in. And neither would be complete without the audience.

 

Tell us about your cats: What are your their names, breeds, and personalities?

Their names are Bece and Kiki. They’re lynx points–what you get if you cross a tabby cat with a Siamese. Bece is president of Attention Seekers Anonymous, and you’ll find her stealing the show on WP-Tonic Live on Saturday mornings. I call Kiki “Velcro Kitty” because she climbs onto my shoulders and sticks there even if I get up and walk around. They were originally my mother’s cats, but she married a man with a spaniel that thought it was a pit bull, so my husband and I had to fly out to Cleveland and bring them back with us. Here’s a photo of the two as kittens, when they still lived with my mother, and one taken more recently.

Bece and Kiki

Bece and Kiki

 

What is WP Fangirl?

It’s actually the second name I chose for my WordPress business. The first one had “WordPress” in it, and Jen Mylo politely informed me that was a trademark violation, which I should have known. I am a huge fan of WordPress, so I ended up with WP Fangirl. I’m still trying to think of what the heck to do for a logo, though.

 

Okay, but aside from the name, what is the business of WP Fangirl?

I build WordPress websites for businesses and non-profits, with a focus on helping them achieve their goals. Most of my work is custom theme development and creating functionality to support content strategy.

 

What’s the strangest problem you’ve ever considered WordPress for or actually used WordPress to solve?

That’s a tough one. Most of the projects I’ve done were pretty well-suited to WordPress; I’m not likely to take a job on if it’s not within my area of expertise. The strangest thing I’ve seen recently is an HTML site that used to be a WordPress blog. The client’s IT staff actually created a system where content is written in Markdown and exported to HTML, and each of the HTML files is an index.html inside a series of folders that mimic the permalink structure from the previous WordPress install. It’s now my job to turn it back into WordPress, and the import hasn’t been a particularly smooth process.

 

When presented with a new project, is there any particular red flag or quality of the project that immediately makes you think “NOT WordPress!”?

It’s rare that it’s an immediate response, unless the prospect tells me they have a budget of $200. It’s more a matter of finding out what they really need and what they’re trying to accomplish, as well as what they’re willing to invest in a website in terms of time and effort. Some people don’t need or want everything WordPress has to offer. You can build a site that’s a single landing page with WordPress, but should you?

Get out to WordCamp Los Angeles 2016 and catch Sallie’s presentation, Is WordPress the Best Tool for This Job?, on Saturday, Septermber 10, at 1:30pm in the Blue Whale.

Speaker Interview: Kari Leigh Marucchi

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Get to know Kari Leigh Marucchi in today’s speaker interview.

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Kari, previously a co-founder and WordPress project manager at VeloMedia/Crowd Favorite, Kari Leigh’s been WordPress’g since 2009, and WordCamp’g since 2012. Since early 2015 she’s been contributing to the WordPress community by comprehensively photographing the WordCamp experience and the faces of WordPress at many handfuls of Camps. She teams with other photographers to collect still photography from Camps around the world, and around this effort has developed the WP Photo Project. Her project seeks ultimately to build the sibling to wordpress.tv, at wordpress.photo — a central archive of deeply-searchable WordCamp history still photography, making it available to serve those in the community and to commemorate and document the WordCamp culture they’ve inspired over the last decade-plus.

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

Los Angeles is my original home and I’m honored to have spoken at a Camp first in 2012 at WCLAX, and (for the first time having spoken at a Camp since then) to be speaking at WordCamp Los Angeles 2016.

 

I want to know more about contemporary photography but I don’t know where to get started. What one photographer should I be aware of and looking into that I don’t even know exists?

I believe one’s taste and individual talent is extremely subjective and I’d hesitate to make a blanket recommendation on specific photographer. Forgive me for turning the question on its head. If I’m asked for advice on developing as a photographer, I say the following.

Start with what you might think is your focus talent. I had thought for a long time that I might have a talent for event photography before I decided to do it full-time. Long ago I had fallen into it accidentally when I lived in Italy for a year. Still unable to speak Italian comfortably I tended to bring my camera to events and parties and hide behind it. I found that my event portraits and captured candid moments received above-the-average good feedback and many ended up using my work for profile avatars. So when I thought this might be what I should do it professionally and I saw that my technical skills weren’t supporting me in being able to capture what I see in my mind, I set about creating my own internship program. I had heard on a professional photographer’s podcast the advice to assign one’s self fifty assignments for a year, and I set about doing it.

Averaging once a week, I shot a different subject (or a subject with a different purpose or character) in a different style. This forced me, whether I’d found an example to mimic or I’d intended to match a vision I had in my mind, to acquire the equipment needed to produce the image, to learn the equipment, to learn the needed shooting technology, to practice working with people and light, and to learn the post-processing techniques required to produce the image I’d intended. This meant getting more deeply knowledgable about my machine and equipment, as well as the software I use. And then I got involved in shooting WordCamps and have shot eighteen at the time of this exchange.

I treat every event I shoot as an opportunity to practice and achieve a new level of capability. If you look at my portfolios of Camps, each one has a different general look to it. This is largely due to the location and the weather at the time, and those difference make every event a new challenge. The same settings don’t work for every Camp, nor for every room, nor for any one room as the light changes throughout the day if there are windows, or there are adjustments to the lights in the room throughout the day — which definitely happens. All of this forces me to understand better the science involved and to better the un-thinking use of my machine.

So I can’t recommend more throwing oneself into the deep end of a forgiving pool, a lot of them actually, with self-assignments and volunteer work. Shoot. Keep shooting. Get better. And find and know what the through-line theme of the spirit of your work is. It started with what I want to see in event photography, so start with what you want to see in your chosen genre. I want to see people happy, confident, sharing, giving, and enjoying each other’s company — so that’s what I attract myself to, and that’s what I make sure I capture and publish.

 

You mention camp portfolios, where can we find those on the internet?

Since the project is about the portfolios that are eligible to have other photographers’ work in them and those are the Flickrs I build for each Camp I do, here’s WCLAX’s https://www.flickr.com/photos/wordcamplosangeles/albums.
And one more for fun, that also includes a few other photographers https://www.flickr.com/photos/wordcampminneapolis/albums.

 

What is the WP Photo Project?

The WP Photo Project is an investment in the vitality and bonding of the WordPress community with the production and publishing of still photography by many photographers at WordCamps worldwide. It seeks to honor the legacy of the community culture that’s has developed over the years, while giving back to those who contribute to the WordPress Project and supporting those who are starting to and continue to do business powered by WordPress.

In addition to the collection of photography, the project involves the promotion of the project itself, the development of best practices, and the build of a wordpress.photo proof-of-concept prototype. Currently in production, wp.photos will feature a highly-searchable archival repository of shareable, downloadable WordCamp photography that operates on the open source principle and the Creative Commons license, featuring Camp photos from all that wish to contribute in the spirit of the community.

 

Do you have any particularly memorable WordCamp photos or photo experiences?

I have to laugh because it’s of course my mission in every moment that I carry my camera at a Camp to create memorable photographs. I’d assert that if any one photo someone captures at a Camp is not of a memorable moment or a good still life of those things that make the Camp memorable, it should be discarded. But yeah, definitely some rise to the top in my mind. I see memorable moments happening all around me at Camps, which is why I’ve fallen head-over-heels for the experience and have been attempting to make shooting Camps a predominant part of my life. But I never am able to capture all that I see. Is my equipment ready for that moment with right lens and and set for the available light? Is my machine going to be as fast as my finger and my intention needs it to be?

At WordCamp U.S. I headed to the speaker/sponsor dinner rather exhausted from travel arrangement nightmares, and my head wasn’t where I needed it to be to manage the low-light situation I found myself in. I absolutely hate flash photography (at events) with a passion so I knew I wouldn’t get very many decent shots and for the most part just relaxed and enjoyed. But I kept my machine in my hand and I thought, I might get lucky, I might not. Right in front of me some new people arrived and friends were greeting each other. I love capturing hugs and the affection of friends, so I raised my camera and let my fingers set it as quickly as they could, knowing that I’d likely miss the shot. But boom. They weren’t facing me, these two very different heads that had come together in a darling side hug. If you know either of these two ladies, you’d have known exactly who they are even from behind, but it didn’t matter because it could be anybody. The shot said everything — the WordPress community is very diverse, and very friendly, and an incubator of friendships — and I got it.

 

 

Your contributions to WordPress appear to be primarily non-code related. What have you learned that could help others get started with their own non-programmatic contributions?

The most effective ways to start contributing to the WordPress community without contributing code is to volunteer at a WordCamp, and at local WordPress Meetups. It’s amazing and feels great how much I’ve been able to help just showing up to a Meetup and sitting with someone new to WordPress to talk them through their finding their way initially. At Camps, and especially Contributor Days, there are always talks and guidance about the diverse kinds of support needed by the WordPress Project and in the community. As a matter of fact, people who know no code at all can help by transcribing WordCamp talk video for wordpress.tv, and that kind of help can go a very long way.

 

Please tell us about your Coffee and Glass campaign

The Coffee & Glass fundraising campaign is simply a thank-you fund. I can’t count how many times at a Camp I’ve been asked by someone if they can pay me for my photographs of them. My shots taken at Camps are gifts back to the community, to all who attend and work at them that I’m able to capture well, so I say no thank you. But, if it’s clear they’d like to say thank you monetarily and offer a show of support for what I’m doing, I might say that yes, there is a way to buy me a cup of coffee or a drink or a lens (glass), or whatever feels good. No quid pro quo, but gosh it feels good when I get a notice of a new donation. And it really really helps, both functionally and spiritually.

Check out Kari’s talk at WordCamp Los Angeles 2016 where she’ll be presenting Still Photography & WordCamp Culture: Participating, Recording, Contributing.

Speaker Interview: Andrew Norcross

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Get to know Andrew Norcross, the founder and lead developer of Reaktiv Studios, an agency focused on solving complex problems with killer WordPress solutions, in today’s speaker interview.

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After quite a few years in the finance industry, Norcross switched to coding and hasn’t looked back. He’s got skin in both the service game — Reaktiv Studios is a WordPress VIP Featured Partner, helping top-tier clients with their WordPress development— and the product game, with Reaktiv’s flagship plugin, Design Palette Pro, continually being developed and supported. An organizer for WordCamp Tampa, Norcross loves to keep giving back to the WordPress community with free plugins, education talks at conferences, and core contribution to WordPress. Norcross lives in Tampa, Florida with his amazing son and a rescue dog that believes he’s a human.

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

I’m not totally sure I would call my bio “professional”, but I’d like to think I cover the basics pretty well there. The biggest thing that isn’t mentioned is that I’m pretty low key about life. I love what I do, and I enjoy the community that surrounds WordPress, but I’m not a big “party” guy.

 

What about programming and web development stole you away from the finance industry?

I never really planned on having a career in finance to begin with. I just sorta did it. I kept showing up, they kept paying me, so I rode it out until I had a better idea. I began programming out of boredom, and loved the idea of solving puzzles and being able to see what I had accomplished.

 

How did you learn how to program? What would you say is the best way for someone to learn?

I began programming when I was 8, but quit when I was 10 because I decided it was more important to be cool. This was pre-internet, when being a nerd meant you’d likely get beat up. I started again around the age of 25 because I was bored. For me, I learned by reading source code, and finding working examples of things. I would make changes, see what broke, and learn to fix it. That’s still sort of how I learn now.

For others wanting to learn, I would simply suggest starting with a tangible goal in mind. Instead of “I want to learn PHP”, try something with more scope like “I want to build a form to organize my notes.”. Programming can seem endless, so having a clear-cut measure of success (I believe) is crucial.

 

What is your dog’s name, Is your dog, in actuality, a human, and would please share a photo with us?

His name is Toby. Black Lab / American Bulldog mix, 90lbs of pure love and affection. While at times he may act like a person, he is in fact 100% dog.

Toby

Toby wearing some sweet shades

 

What’s the most exciting thing Design Palette Pro can do for WordPress website owners?

I built Design Palette to fill a gap I saw in site development. There are people who need a full service development agency (like my own), and people who need literally nothing other than a basic template. But there are those in the middle, who want to have the ability to style and personalize their site, but don’t need all the bells and whistles (and cost) associated with having an agency or freelancer build their site. I think Design Palette fills that space rather well.

Andrew will be running a workshop, Plugin Architecture Basics, our first Developer Jam Session at WordCamp Los Angeles on Saturday, September 10, 2016 at 9:00am.

Speaker Interview: David Arceneaux

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Get to know David Arceneaux, a developer living in the command line, and also in Orange County, in today’s speaker interview.

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What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

I’ve been in school for a Very Long Time, ended up with a couple of Master’s degrees, then worked a series of odd jobs, ranging from managing a pizza place to being a PHP developer for WordPress sites.

 

What’s the most powerful command line shortcut most developers don’t know about? (Think “cmd + z” for nerds.)

The most powerful command line shortcut isn’t so much a single command, but a mode, Vi Mode. I grew up using the Vi editor, then learned about how to turn on Vi mode for the shell (there’s also Emacs mode). This lets me use the familiar hand memory I use in editing source code to also let me edit a command line expression, because I often find myself writing out similar command lines for what I work with.

 

Imagine you’re allowed to link to or briefly pitch something, what do imagine?

I’d love to establish something like the old AT&T Bell Labs. An open-ended, no pressure playground for researchers and developers to collaborate together on things that don’t represent themselves very well on balance sheets, but which history has shown us, end up being the foundation of the future. Think of UNIX and everything that sprang forth from it: it started off as a side project by someone who wanted to play a video game he wrote on another computer.

 

For the rest of your career you only have one text editor or IDE, which do you choose and why? BONUS: What editor theme do you choose?

For the text editor, I’ll go with what I’ve been using for more than half my life (in one form or another): Vi, this time around as NeoVim. The color scheme I love and use is Tim Pope’s Vivid Chalk: https://github.com/tpope/vim-vividchalk

 

As an individual living in the command line, what’s one of your command line “aha” moments that a command line newbie would find useful?

The one great epiphany I had is related to what I’ve mentioned earlier: vi mode for the command line.

Make sure to catch David’s presentation at WordCamp Los Angeles 2016 entitled Leveling up in WordPress development, a workshop on command line tools.

Speaker Interview: Marcus Couch

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Get to know Marcus Couch, the co-host of WordPress Weekly and WordPress A-Z.

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Marcus is the founder of MembershipCoach.com and coaches best-selling authors, motivational speakers, musicians and non-profit associations with developing and growing their high-end membership site businesses.

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?We can come back around to this. I’m pretty much an open book out there already.

 

Who, in your professional opinion, is the greatest author, speaker, or musician of the century?

I’m not a professional critic, but here are my own favorites:

  • Author: Tim Ferris
  • Speaker: Andy Andrews
  • Musicians: Metallica

In a brief elevator-like sales pitch, what is MembershipCoach.com?

It’s a membership site about making membership sites. We help people from all experience levels to plan, develop, launch and grow their membership sites. For developers, we have a seperate track that helps with the site spec and bidding process, what to charge and how to go about getting membership site clients. It’s not just a video tutorial site. I am actively participating in every project that our members create, should they wish my feedback and involvement, I give them everything they can handle.

 

You’re going on a long journey and you’re going to be pretty bored but, luckily, you get to bring a WordPress podcast to keep you occupied, which podcast do you bring?

In “The Avengers” there is a scene where Bruce Banner is asked to “Get Angry” and he replies, “That’s my secret Doctor, I’m always angry.” My secret is that I listen to every WordPress Podcast. I’m everyone’s fan. If they made the effort to fire up the mic in the name of WordPress, they deserve my attention. I regularly listen to over 20 different WordPress podcasts and seek out new ones all the time. There are people that had recently labeled me the King of WordPress podcasting, but it’s only because I understand the WordPress Podcast landscape better than anyone else. If you want to be a great podcaster, you have to be a great listener first.

 

What one tricky little gotcha can you help Membership Site hopefuls avoid?

Making sure the “recurring” button is clicked when setting up their membership product. I have a long term client that forgot to do this. He originally hired me to figure out why no one was paying him after month one. He spent almost $20K in PPC and Facebook ads, only to be forced to pitch the same people again just to stick with him. All because he hired someone that forgot to click the recurring order button.

At WordCamp Los Angeles 2016, Marcus will be presenting on Membership Site Success Strategies.

 

Speaker Interview: Christina Hills

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Get to know Christina Hills, the creator of the Website Creation Workshop in today’s speaker interview.

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Christina has been passionately teaching non-techie small business owners, authors, experts, coaches and consultants, how to easily create their websites in WordPress so that they can get their message out to the world. She puts the fun into teaching technology and empowers business owners to be in full control of their marketing and online presence. She has been running her WordPress training program to an international audience for the past 9 years. She loves to teach WordPress as a creative way to get clarity on your business, your marketing, and your message.

Christina is also an 12-year online marketing veteran, often seen at events as an expert speaker teaching on a variety of topics such as email marketing, membership sites, and ecommerce marketing, all with a focus on WordPress. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Christina Hills worked as a digital artist for the network promotions division of NBC-TV, and then as a senior technical director in the Feature Film Division at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic with film credits for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and ET the re-release. She now lives near the beach in San Diego, California with her husband and daughter.

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

When I was younger, I used to dance for the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center.

 

In your professional opinion, which Jurassic Park dinosaur is the scariest?

The Velociraptors of course!

 

What is the Website Creation Workshop?

It’s an online WordPress training program designed to help non-techie business owners create their own WordPress websites themselves without having to hire a web developer. It’s not a program to train people to become web designers or developers, instead it’s for the solo entrepreneur: coach, consultant, author, speaker, healer, or other independent professional who want to be creative with WordPress. I’ve been running this online training for over 9 years now and love it!

 

You’re stuck on a desert island with a laptop, an incredible cell signal from your hotspot, a mysteriously unlimited power source, and only one WordPress theme, which theme do you have and why?

I would say the Divi Theme from Elegant Themes! Because it lets the person who is not a designer, create beautiful image rich websites without having to know how to code.

 

What one thing do all WordPress users need to know about themes which will, without a doubt, save the metaphoric lives of their future WordPress sites?

Be careful if you hire a designer to build you a custom theme. If that designer disappears on you and if they didn’t code the theme properly, you could be in for a disaster once WordPress has a major update. That’s why I recommend off the shelf themes for beginners who are on a small budget.

Also, expect that you will be changing themes about once every couple of years. You will get tired of your layout and design and will want something new. It’s part of the process and does not mean that anything is wrong. Themes grow and change as WordPress grows and change 🙂

Come meet Christina at WordCamp Los Angeles 2016 where she’ll be presenting on How to Pick a WordPress Theme for Beginners.

Speaker Interview: Carl Alexander

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Get to know Carl Alexander, a PHP developer all the way from Montréal, Canada.

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A bit more about Carl in his own words:

I live and breath advanced programming topics (and memes). I share a lot of my passion for those topics on my website where I publish articles on a regular basis.

It’s my way to help you with these hard-to-learn topics. That’s also why I’m excited to speak at WordCamp Los Angeles. It’s another way for me to help you.

Besides that, I’ve been a WordPress Montréal organizer since 2010. I also help organize other WordPress events during the year.

 

What should we know about you that you haven’t included in your brief, third-person, professional biography?

Though question! It’s hard to know what’s relevant to someone else. So I’ll go with one relevant fact and a random one!

Relevant: I’ve been programming since the 3rd grade. Did my first robotics project in the 5th grade.
Random: I lived in a living room from May 2012 to May 2016.

 

What’s the best programming meme available for the amusement of WordPress theme and plugin architects?

Two great resources for endless amusement. First, there’s “dev practices” that Tom McFarlin created. (Well, I think he did lol) The other great one is “Commit Logs From Last Night” which is a hilarious take on “Texts From Last Night“.
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Imagine you’re allowed to link to or briefly pitch something, what do imagine?

I’ll assume you mean pitch something by me! [Editors Note: Carl assumed correctly] I write a lot on my personal site about object-oriented programming and WordPress. I also offer a free email course to help you start using it.

 

For the rest of your life, you’re only allowed either indexed arrays or associative arrays, not both. You can’t mix them and you can’t change later, which do you choose any why?

Associative arrays for sure! You can pretty much mimic an indexed array with an associative array, but not the other way around. This might be considered cheating on the question! 😛

 

Without spilling the secret sauce of the presentation, what’s one simple piece of array advice we can start implementing today?

You don’t need to do an isset check before doing an empty check. (e.g. if (isset($vars[1]) AND !empty($vars[1])) { ) The isset check is redundant here. The empty check also checks if the value is set before doing its own tests.

At WCLAX 2016 Carl will be presenting on Use PHP arrays like a boss.