WordCamp Atlanta was a great time. We loved the energy that all the attendees brought with them. Check out our recap from some of the people we ran into while we were there.
A Message From the Organizer
In a word, WOW! WordCamp Atlanta 2016 surpassed my expectations. It was community driven. It was fast paced. It was heart warming. It was life changing.
Our organizing team spent countless hours preparing for 650 attendees, yet the success of the event rests squarely on the shoulders of volunteers and the WordPress Community.
No event of this size can succeed without sponsorship. We’re pretty sure we have the best sponsors of any technology conference around. They don’t just give with dollars. They share expertise, experience and time, which are hot commodities. Questions were answered, we even had sponsors doing stints in the Happiness Bar. You went above and beyond and we can’t even begin to express our appreciation
Next year? My brain hasn’t recovered enough – nor have I had enough sleep – to plan anything beyond a weekend in March 2017.
-Kathy Drewien
Meet a Plugin Author
My name is Michael Torbert, I am the CEO and Lead Developer at Semper Fi Web Design, a WordPress development company based in Durham, North Carolina. We’re the developers of All in One SEO Pack. 9 years in development, it’s the #1 most downloaded SEO plugin for WordPress (almost 30 million downloads) with over 4.5 million users.
All in One SEO Pack is a very powerful toolkit for managing all aspects of SEO on a WordPress site. Whether you have a simple blog or a complex enterprise business site, we all want to be found on search engines and we all want to rank highly, this plugin helps you achieve that. AIOSEOP can be used by anyone from beginners to experienced SEO consultants. It does a lot for you without too much configuration but it also has a lot of settings which can be finely tuned to influence how search engines see your site. In addition to helping with search engine optimization, it also helps with optimization for social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
I’ve been using and contributing to WordPress for over 11 years. In addition to developing plugins and themes for WordPress I also organize the local WordPress Meetup group and WordCamp Raleigh. I saw from very early on just how powerful a solution WordPress could be. When I started using and developing for WordPress, it was considered purely a blogging platform used by a small community. Now of course we know WordPress to be the most popular CMS available but 11 years ago nobody but a small handful of enthusiasts like me could see that potential. I’m still a huge WordPress enthusiast and I can still see enormous potential for WordPress beyond just being a CMS.
My goal is to continue to grow WordPress and introduce more people to it and push the boundaries of what can be done with WordPress.
Meet an Attendee
I discovered WordPress in 2004 when I needed a new site for own business. I was hooked when I realized it had the ability to change the world by making publishing accessible to all. . Eight years ago in my mid-fifties, I started a boutique Web Design Agency in Atlanta by the name of New Tricks. It has allowed me to do work that I love, weaving together my interests in psychology, design and technology and helping companies to grow their businesses.
WordPress has turned into a family affair. My son has worked at New Tricks, as a web designer for five years. My daughter’s experience using WordPress in restaurant marketing helped her to later land a job as a brand manager at a major corporation. And my husband launched a side business, Last Chance fitness, with a WordPress site. How great is that?
I think the best thing about WordPress is the huge open source community. This is a manifesto that everyone receives when they come to work for Automattic, the company that Matt built that powers WordPress.com. I think the entire WordPress Open Source Community embraces these ideas, which makes it what it is.
- I will never stop learning.
- I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me.
- I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers.
- I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything.
- I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.
- I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company.
- I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day.
