2010 WordCamp MSP Speakers

Arik Hanson

Arik Hanson is the principal of ACH Communications, a digital communications consultancy focused on fostering meaningful online interactions, driving digital relevance and building measurable growth through social channels. Arik’s blog, Communications Conversations has received numerous accolades organizations and sites like PRWeek (“Required Reading”) and PRWeb (Top 25 blogs to follow). With more than 14 years of experience in marketing, communications and PR, Arik has played a lead role in many social projects and initiatives online–both locally and nationally–over the last few years, including: Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO) and the first-ever Minnesota Blogger Conference. Arik’s also a regular contributor to the PR Breakfast Club, Ragan.com, PR Daily and MinnPost.

Brad Marsh

Brad has been a full time web developer for the past 5 years, almost three of which he was also a Sales Manager for a website development company in Indiana. Currently he is the website specialist for Treasure Island Resort and Casino as well as a User Experience Designer and Developr for U.S. Bank. Brad also does a number of free lance projects, most of which are based upon WordPress. In his spare time he enjoys playing guitar, rock climbing and writing, for which he developed a side project called LitLift, which recently was highlighted in the Rochester Post-Bulletin newspaper. He also organizes the Twin Cities Hacker News Meetups.

Carl Bliss

Carl Bliss is the web producer for Northwestern Media in Saint Paul. He works with a network of radio station websites, built on WordPress, and built ICanHelpTwinCities.com; a web application built to connect non-profit organizations, with volunteers.
He helps with web development and community management at his church, and he is currently collaborating with his wife on the raising of 3 beautiful girls in the Stillwater area.

Carrie Rocha

Carrie Rocha and her family got out of $50,000 in debt in 2 1/2 years. In March 2009 she launched PocketYourDollars.com to help teach others to do the same. Within 10 months of her blog’s launch it became successful enough that it is the sole financial support for her family of four (and they aren’t broke). Her personal finance advice and family’s story have been featured on Wall Street Journal Radio, Yahoo! Finance, Bankrate.com, Woman’s Day Magazine, Woman’s World Magazine and she is a regular consumer correspondent to FOX 9, KARE 11, KSTP 5 and KTIS 98.5 FM in Minneapolis.

Dan Huynh

Dan Huynh is currently an information technology trainer with the Office for Business and Community Economic Development at the University of Minnesota. Dan is also a freelance web developer, and has been involved with a variety of WordPress projects ranging from online housing classifieds sites to comprehensive websites for small businesses.
Dan is a graduate of the University of Saint Thomas where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Entrepreneurial Management.

Dave Buchanan

Dave has been a web developer since 1999 which was when he learned Flash Actionscript and HTML. Over the past 11 years he has been involved in large and small scale projects working for three local companies, ImageTrend, Weber Shandwick, and the Dolan Company, where he is currently employed. During the past 3+ years at Dolan, Dave has led the conversion to WordPress for the company’s 25+ newspaper websites. They have built up their own custom plugins, widgets, and themes along the way to use WordPress as their content management system for all editorials.

David Hedrick Skarjune

David Hedrick Skarjune has worked with the web for 15 years and with content management systems for a decade. He’s an Electronic Document Professional (EDP) with Xplor International and has worked a variety of roles including webmaster, web designer, web developer, information technology consultant, college instructor, and online community builder. He champions open standards and utilizes open source solutions for creative and technical projects.

Erik Hare

Erik Hare first gained ARPAnet access in 1985 and has been blogging off and on since 1998.  In all that time he’s seen a lot of new technologies come and go, but what remains solid is the relationship between people as they create new communities, redefining their lives and connections.  Since 2007 Erik has been consulting with nonprofits and small businesses to understand this and build strategies that effectively use new tools, focusing on the interaction that makes relationships solid.  WordPress has become a critical tool for his clients because it integrates various tools into the winning strategy that focuses busy professionals on do what they do best, which is serve their customers and build community

Genevieve Ruebel

Genevieve works for ipHouse (ISP and hosting provider) in Downtown Minneapolis. She is a recent graduate and new to the whole blogging community. When she asked more questions about blogging and social media, she found herself taking on ipHouse’s social media presence. Still a newbie, she is discovering what it takes to find your way and make a mark.

Griff Wigley

Griff coaches business, non-profit, government and civic leaders on the art of leadership blogging and the use of other social media technologies. He also works with organizations interested in developing hyper-local, citizen media projects, and produces online events, primarily on public policy issues for government and non-profit organizations. Plus he’s a co-host, chief blogger and moderator for Locally Grown, a radio show/podcast and public affairs blog in his hometown of Northfield.

Griff has pretty much made his living online since 1986, primarily building online communities, both topic- and geographic-based. He was project director for MIX, the McGraw-Hill Information Exchange for Teachers and Schools (1986-90) and Utne Reader magazine’s Cafe Utne (1995-97) which won a Webby Award for community in May, 2000. He co-founded Northfield Citizens Online and the Northfield.org community portal (1995-2006), and launched their citizen journalism/civic blogosphere project in 2004. He’s been a co-host of Locally Grown since 2005.

Joe Leyba

Joe Leyba is a self-trained search engine optimizer with an MBA in marketing. He started building websites in 1998 and eventually decided that there wasn’t a point unless the site could be found online. He has diverse experience as an in-house SEO in the real estate and legal industries, as well as a thriving freelance practice working with a variety of businesses. Joe is also a noted soccer hooligan and roller derby coach. Find him online at www.joeleyba.com or on Twitter at @joeleyba.

John Havlik

John Havlik is a hobbyist web programmer with a passion for sharing his knowledge with others. First introduced to WordPress in 2005, John has been an avid WordPress user, theme creator, and plugin author ever since. Among his various plugins is the popular breadcrumb plugin for WordPress, Breadcrumb NavXT. When not working on his own projects, John helps support the small, 100 user WordPress community at Weblogs.us. You can find him online at mtekk.us.

John Hawkins

John has been working in the web development field for more than a decade. He started his first blog back in 2003, moved to WordPress a short time later and hasn’t looked back. John has been active in all aspects of the WordPress Universe. He’s customized themes, released plugins to the WordPress repository, hosted WordCamp: Las Vegas, and presented at WordCamp events all over the United States. John currently creates custom WordPress solutions for his clients at 9seeds.com.

Josh Byers

Josh Byers is a graphic designer and web developer who lives by a beautiful lake and some golden cornfields in Polk City, Iowa. It’s not heaven, but it’s still a pretty cool place to live and work. For the past 13 years Josh has run his own design and development firm Red Letters Studio. He has had the privilege to create web sites, logos and other media for institutions like Michigan State and Iowa State University, many small businesses, and churches and even for a-list movie star Rachel McAdams. Josh has been exclusively developing on WordPress since 2005 and has developed many commercial themes and open source plugins.

Josh Leuze

Josh Leuze is a web designer who specializes in WordPress development. He has been building websites for several years and has a background in graphic design and multimedia production. Josh is the author of the Meteor Slides plugin and is currently working on releasing his first theme for WordPress. He can be found online at JLeuze.com. When not online, Josh can be found in his garden or biking around town with his kids.

Julie Kosbab

Julie Kosbab has more than 10 years’ experience in SEO and online communications, working for some of the Twin Cities largest companies, and with small businesses across the country. Her industry experience includes high tech, legal, real estate, retail, and pharmaceuticals. She holds a master’s degree in communications. In her spare time, Julie is also a certified bicycling skills instructor, bicycle event director and cycling advocate. Find her online at www.rideboldly.org or on Twitter at @betweenstations.

Justin Sainton

Justin Sainton is the founder of Zao Web Design, LLC, a web stuff firm based in Portland, Oregon USA. Working exclusively with WordPress and an array of other open-source technologies, Justin and Zao have provided creative and effective solutions for a wide variety of companies and associations ranging from Pitney Bowes to the National Education Association to HTC. Lately, Justin has been working as one of the lead developers on the 3.8 release of the WordPress E-Commerce Plugin. When not managing Zao or enjoying his beautiful wife and lovely 9-month old daughter, Justin can be found enjoying the finest coffee Oregon has to offer.

Kate-Madonna Hindes

Kate-Madonna Hindes is an industry leader and national speaker on emotional integrity and the incredible power of authenticity in today’s market. Her recent credits include bookings at the Masters Forum 2010 Series, MCAD, Social Media Breakfast in Imation Headquarters, 2009 and 2010 National Cancer Conference in Chicago and recent on-air appearances with WCCO and International Radio. She’s been blogging for over 7 years at www.girlmeetsgeek.com and is a columnist at Brazen Careerist and the Star Tribune. She loves the written word almost as much as iced coffee and her preschooler, (not in that order.)

Kay Roseland

Kay completed her MBA in marketing at the University of St. Thomas in May, 2008, just in time for the Recession/Depression. She began exploring social media and launched her blog, Shareology in July of 2009. Recently, she has served as social media strategist for www.gistr.com, a new web site listing marketing communication events in the Twin Cities. Creating social media strategy for gistr.com allowed @KayLoire to combine her passions for social media, marketing and networking. Follow her at @GistrMN and @KayLoire or Shareology at http://kayroseland.wordpress.com/

Kiko Doran

Kiko Doran is one of the founders of InGroup Consulting. InGroup is company based in the design and entertainment industries. We represent several top performers in the Twin Cities. Kiko is primarily a technology and business consultant that tends to rely on WordPress and Apple products. When Kiko is not sitting at a computer he is probably on stage playing guitar or bass. You can follow Kiko on twitter (@kikodoran) or see what he has been working on at www.ingroupdesign.com.

Mert Sahinoglu

Mert Sahinoglu is a Chicago based Integrated Marketing agency veteran of 7 years. He has worked with over 100 clients including well-known brands such as Allstate, CDW, Pampered Chef, Rustoleum, CBOE, Rush and University of Southern California. He also has plenty of small business experience as the marketing partner at Falcon Living Real Estate (family owned) in Chicago Illinois. Mert also has an MBA in international marketing. You can read more about him at his WordPress blog at http://mertsahinoglu.com and @mertsahinoglu on Twitter.

Mitchell Hislop

Growing up in a technology oriented household, Mitchell loves all things relating to tech, the web, and social. He has diverse knowledge in strategy, web development, SEO, analytics, social, advertising, and also works on how to leverage web interactions for users. Mitchell spends his time developing new strategies for clients, innovating ideas for web applications, and thinking about how users can interact with the internet, companies, and connecting them to the web. He writes about alternative ways at looking at things on the web at the SMCpros Blog, or at his own blog. When not hunched in front of his beloved MacBook, Mitchell can be found out skiing, mountain biking, or playing his guitar.

Mykl Roventine

Mykl Roventine has been designing engaging web experiences for over a decade (and all kinds of other things since he was old enough to hold a crayon). He works as a freelancer and with various Twin Cites web agencies and is currently a Senior Web Designer at Taymark. He is skilled in creating social media strategies, functional web design and effective online communication. He has a special passion for the social aspects of the web, online communities and the potential of the internet to educate and inspire. In his free time, he is co-coordinator of Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul, co-founder/organizer of Ignite Minneapolis and UnSummit, and runs the local chapter of TechKaraoke Minneapolis.

Ptah Dunbar

Ptah is a core contributor of WordPress, BuddyPress developer and co-founder of DevPress.com. Since 2006, Ptah has been involved in WordPress creating themes and plugins as well as pioneering new development best practices. He is best known for his work contributing in WordPress 3.0 as well as authoring WP Framework, a rapid theme development framework. Ptah frequently travels and currently lives in Miami, FL doing WordPress consulting full-time. You can find Ptah online at ptahdunbar.com, or on Twitter (@ptahdunbar).

Rick Mahn

Rick Mahn is the founder and director of Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis. He consults on social media for organizations of all sizes, and is widely acknowledged as an expert in personal branding. Rick began blogging in 2002, discovered WordPress in 2005 and continues to find new uses for the platform as it continues to expand and grow. A national speaker and sought-after thought leader in social media, Rick specializes in connecting people through events and social media.

Robert Dempsey

Taking all out massive action, Robert Dempsey let’s nothing get in his way as he fuels independence through knowledge and understanding at Life Of The Freelancer, while helping people build products with his web development company Atlantic Dominion Solutions. In addition he’s a husband, a father, and a walker of his dog Lilo

Ryan Imel

Ryan Imel is a freelance web designer/developer and entrepreneur from Fort Wayne, IN. He has been building websites using WordPress for five years, and runs a popular WordPress community blog called WPCandy. Imel loves coffee, jazz, and hates job titles.

Sam Parsons

Sam is a web developer at Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College. He has a background in mathematics and really enjoys programming — particularly API’s and building beautiful user interfaces.

Steve Borsch

Since 2005 I’ve been the CEO of Marketing Directions, Inc., a trend forecasting, consulting and publishing firm in Minnesota. Prior to that I was Vice President, Strategic Alliances at Lawson Software in St. Paul. Today, I’m focusing my efforts on our trend consulting and outside publishing business (specifically the “Innov8Press” practice), working with clients in the small business, non-profit, startup and entrepreneurial areas.

Susan Maus

More than 25 years of experience in marketing and advertising directs how Susan and her team execute new and traditional marketing campaigns to produce measurable results. Winner of numerous state and national awards for her work in marketing and communications, Susan shares her “Word of Maus” approach through consulting, speaking and one-to-one work with select clients. Her focus is producing measurable business results.

Teresa Boardman

Teresa Boardman – Realtor/Broker St. Paul Home Realty. Boardman is a Realtor and a prolific serial blogger. She started StPaulRealEstateBlog in 2005 and is considered an early adapter and blogging pioneer by her peers in the real estate industry. Her blog has gotten both national and local recognition, and now has more than 1800 posts and thousands of photos and is her primary source of new real estate clients. She is also the author of StPaulPhotos.com and an experimental mobile blog. Boardman is a full time Realtor, avid photographer and weekly columnist for Inman News where she writes to the real estate industry on a wide range of topics. Boardman was named one of the top 50 influential bloggers in the real estate industry in 2007, 2008 and 2009 by Inman News.

Tim Elliot

Tim Elliott is a marketer, blogger, podcaster and entrepreneur based in the Twin Cities. After a 20 year career in technology marketing, Tim founded Acan Media in 2006 to help wineries and technology companies integrate social marketing into their business. He also created Winecast, the first wine podcast, in 2004.

Tim Schoffelman

Tim Schoffelman, professional tinkerer and skilled WordPress developer, has made a career out of wrestling with all aspects of the programming experience – from PHP to SVN to SSH to all of that HTML and CSS stuff. With several years of working on WordPress projects for companies like Microsoft, TDK, Chevrolet, American Express, Kohler, Dell, and Intel, he has become Blend Interactive’s resident WordPress scholar. His most recent project is Microsoft’s ExecTweets (www.exectweets.com), which allows users to find and follow top business execs on Twitter. And, he spouts off about random things on Twitter, himself: @silentgap. When not delivering WordPress knowledge, Tim rocks out to Pandora and builds decks.

Toby Cryns

Toby Cryns is a full-time WordPress designer and developer with The Mighty Mo! Design Co. He has 13 years of website-designing and building experience, dating back to pre-WYSIWYG days of Geocities. Since becoming enamored with the web back in 1996, he has built up formidable skills in CSS, Flash, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. The web has changed a lot since Toby began building websites in the mid-1990’s, but his dedication to creating beautiful online experiences has remained steady. Through a proven design process and development process, Toby helps clients make the most of the Internet. Toby is co-founder of the Minneapolis-St. Paul WordPress User Group. He is also an avid blogger, Twitter’r, and singer-songwriter. His goals include being active in the local WordPress community and helping people and companies communicate on a more personal level online. He is the author of the Simple Pull Quote WordPress plugin and The Mighty Moo! WordPress theme.

Todd J. List

As The Geek Who Speaks People, Todd J. List has a passion for getting computers to cooperate. He is equally enthusiastic about helping people. He discovered WordPress in 2009 and found a way to merge his strengths. Now he builds websites that small businesses can manage themselves.