Aaron Rutley - Au

Aaron will talk in depth talk for fellow WordPress theme developers to help us build better WordPress sites for our clients.

Aaron is based in Melbourne where is  front end / WordPress theme developer. This presentation is part of the Sunday Tech meetup for deveopers.

I’ll cover the plugins & techniques I use in custom themes to achieve all kinds of complicated layouts & to ensure WordPress (as a CMS) is easy for the client to use.

I completed a similar presentation (that I’d like to update and expand on) at the October 2011 Melbourne WordPress meetup slides:

I’m a huge WordPress fan – I’ve attended two WordCamps and bunch of WordPress meetups.

“Eleven Media was founded in November of 2008 by graphic designer Blaz Robar and web developer Aaron Rutley (that’s us!). It was only a few months earlier that we were working separately as freelancers, but after collaborating on a number of projects together we saw the amazing potential in joining forces.

It was this humble beginning at a small Clyde Road office, that would set the foundation for our business, which today, has serviced over 300 clients!”

Twitter:@aaronrutley    Aaron is also co-founder of Eleven Themes

Full title is “Build Your WordPress Business on Your Terms for Devs” by Troy Dean will be on Sunday morning for developers and advanced tech users.

Troy’s  presentation is designed to help WordPress developers leverage WordPress to deliver better user experiences in less time so they can make more money and reclaim their social life.

And who doesn’t want to do that ? Any WordPress developer who wants to grow their small business on their terms benefit from this talk. This presentation (or variations of it) was given at WordCamp Melbourne and WordCamp Gold Coast 2011.

Troy is Director of Geeky Stuff at Tonto Digital, a digital marketing and coaching company based in Melbourne, Australia.

We have clients all over the world including Jessica Watson, the 16 year old Aussie girl who sailed solo, unassisted and non-stop around the world. We looooove building websites on WordPress. I wrote my first E-Book (which was 6000 words) in less than 24 hours and have recorded countless hours of training videos for clients.

I am the co-founder of Video User Manuals, a company that makes a video tutorial plugin for WordPress that teaches small businesses how to use WordPress, saving developers hours of training time per project. We also have clients all over the world.

I lecture in E-Business at JMC Academy in Melbourne, teaching our future entertainment industry leaders that Facebook is not just for organising parties (although knowing how to do that that can be helpful if you work in marketing).”

Check out Video User Manuals for more Twitter: @troydean

Alex Shiels – Akismet – Au

Alex is Reverse Engineer at Automattic where he has worked since  2007 as lead at Akismet ”. Based in Melbourne, Alex will give us a bit of a showcase on WordPress itself such as general stats about global WordPress usage, the number of sites running WP, version distribution, where they’re hosted, that sort of thing.*

He will also explain briefly how we’re collecting that info, and what we’d like to do next. (*As much as he is allowed to say that is.)

If you use WordPress you probably use Akismet.

“Akismet filters out your comment and track-back spam for you, so you can focus on more important things.”

Previously we’ve asked Alex to talk about Akismet but for sensible reasons there is not much he is allowed to say although we do know “24,322,830 spams got stopped today so clearly the team is very busy.

Blog: Flight Path
Automattic’s first Australian, first Alex, and first vegetarian. Melbourne born and raised, Alex writes code and fights crime. He has two inventive young children, and roasts his own coffee.

We could have used an academic lecture theatre but lets face it no one ever goes to a uni (in NZ anyway) for the food or the coffee and those lectures theatres can get a bit stale and isolated so High St it is.

So we were delighted when the new Johnny Wray’s Coffee kiosk opened on the square. The coffee is roasted by the top team at Karajoz led by Derek Townsend and so we will have special wordcampnz coffee deals on the day at Johnny Wray’s.

There are other coffee places nearby on High St, Vulcan Lane and Chancery Square but we think this one has the best roast.  Also plenty of great food around the square such as Wishbone in Vulcan Lane.

After we finish on Saturday we have booked space at Cassette 9 from 6-9pm and all wordcampnz attendees are invited to that. Cassette 9 is legendary for pizzas, the “sick disco” and other music. Upstairs on Vulcan Lane is easy to find. See you on Sat 21st of April.

This year we are delighted to have experienced journo Bill Bennett asking the questions of Vaughan Rowsell, Simone McCallum, Giapo Grazioli and maybe some others to do more of the same.

The general theme of questions are the changes and impacts of online business including all online activities that the panel gets asked about.

Giapo Grazioli - Italy / NZ

Simone McCallum NZ

Vaughan Rowsell NZ

Bill Bennett - NZ

Many of us know Giapo from his organic gelato’s but really his business is so much more than 20 new flavours a week. Innovation and a genuine love for people drives the Giapo business and nothing less than reinvention of the whole world of ice cream is his game.

Vaughan Rowsell rode a bike from Bluff to Cape Reinga but you should know him because VendHQ is transforming the point of sale business globally – a giant killer business and a magnificent moustache.

Simone McCallum is everywhere online. Storify, pinterest and 5 other social media platforms you may not have heard of. More innovation and more going where the customer is and working out how best to surpass expectations online. Just back from SXSW where she was a Fin Tech Rockstar.

Bill Bennett…is a freelance journalist. Contributes to ITJourno and NZ Business. Writes about technology and business. Lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Wrote a best-seller for children.Reads about 80 books a year.

Perfect. We have a panel of game changers / online innovators and a ringmaster. What other questions should we ask? Comments below please. Please join the circus.

Dan Hesson - NZ

Impress your clients with a visual interpretation of your websites analytics. Trust me this will be cool!

Do you really know what to do with those analytics graphs and reports you get each week. Dan does and he will show us how to make better sense of them in lightening fashion.

Daniel David Joseph Hesson founded a tv production company called freq TV, produced, directed and presented 5 series on local telly.

Co-founded freq records producing a CD via SONY music and 3 E.Ps consisting of Australia and New Zealand dance music. Wrote for REMIX magazine.

Did a radio show on George FM and 95bFM and my love for radio started…. Went to ad school and did a diploma in Advertising. Produced an ad that made it in TIME magazine.

And yes that is an elephant trunk in the photo…

Websites:http://www.freq.co.nz and Www.danhesson.com