I am a designer and a developer. I spend my time creating new and exciting things with WordPress and am a Core Contributor. Since I was 8 years old I have been obsessed with design and programming. I worked in advertising from the age of 15 to 22 and since then I have shifted my focus to the world wide web and am working at WP Engine to make WordPress more awesome!

Hometown: Austin, Texas

Contact: antpb.com | @antpb

Session: Helping Core

This talk will highlight the many different ways to give back to Core WordPress. At a high level I will go over the core trac ticketing system and how to talk within tickets. I will even be diving into Vagrant and show how to set up a development environment and create a patch. This talk will take some of the ambiguity out of contributing to Core and focus mainly on teaching how to do the little things that lead to bigger impacts.

WordCamp Omaha 2015 is happening Oct. 10-11 at Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha Campus. Get tickets today!

Josh Collinsworth is a graphic designer and WordPress developer from Omaha, Nebraska. In his free time he serves as Director of Communication and Marketing on the board of AIGA Nebraska, dabbles in illustration, and blogs on design-related topics on his website. Josh’s outside passions include iced coffee, craft beer, local food and growing a beard — so in order to avoid being mistaken for a hipster, he listens to pop music on a regular basis.

Hometown: Omaha, Neb.

Contact: joshcollinsworth.com | @jjcollinsworth

Session: Be Classless: Optimizing Your CSS for WordPress

It’s easy to get caught up adding HTML classes (and IDs) to each and every element we want to style, but the fact is, WordPress helps us out with specific targeting by adding its own classes and IDs to certain elements on every page and post. Cleverly utilizing WordPress’s default page build along with CSS’s pseudo classes and combinators makes it possible to be highly specific with our targeted styles while leaving the original HTML completely alone. In short, if we look for ways, we can often avoid adding more classes and wrapping text in spans to have WordPress and CSS do the work for us.

WordCamp Omaha 2015 is happening Oct. 10-11 at Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha Campus. Get tickets today!

Michelle Schulp is an independent graphic designer in Minneapolis (formerly Chicago). Her formal education is in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the WordPress community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and events around the country.

Hometown: Minneapolis, Minn.

Contact: marktimemedia.com | @marktimemedia

Session: Discovering Design: Break It Before You Build

Whether you have experience with design, development, or are ready to build your first theme, there is a lot of planning to be done before you open your favorite design program or code editor. WordPress themes are designed for two audiences: the end user (in the browser), and the site administrator (in the Dashboard), and it’s our job to account for both sets of needs. We will explore some workflows in the design and discovery process, including content mapping, wireframes and general WordPress logic. Whether you’re building a theme for yourself, for your client, or for sale, you can use these methods to build a map for your project before you begin.

WordCamp Omaha 2015 is happening Oct. 10-11 at Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha Campus. Get tickets today!

Frankie Jarrett is a full-stack developer from St. Joseph, Missouri who has been building PHP web applications and WordPress products since 2007. He is Senior WordPress Product Engineer at GoDaddy and loves the fact that he gets to work with WordPress every single day.

From launching his own theme shop in 2011, to building large-scale enterprise websites, authoring dozens of plugins, and now creating amazing product experiences on GoDaddy’s managed hosting platform – WordPress has always been at the center of Frankie’s career, and he plans to keep it that way!

Outside of work, Frankie is the director of music and worship at his local church. He enjoys being a new dad to his newborn son, Rivers, traveling with his wife, Gracie, smoking his own BBQ and yelling at the TV during sports games.

Hometown: St. Joseph, Mo.

Contact: frankiejarrett.com | @fjarrett

Session: WP-CLI: A Practical Guide For The Rest of Us

All too often designers and developers alike wince at the phrase “command line interface”. In this talk I’m going to prove that you don’t need a neckbeard to use the terminal. If you like the idea of getting more work done in less time, or if you’re just down right curious about what this WP-CLI stuff is all about, then this session is for you!

WordCamp Omaha 2015 is happening Oct. 10-11 at Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha Campus. Get tickets today!

Julie Kuehl is a freelance WordPress developer and owns straightFORWARD Web Solutions where she builds kick-ass websites for awesome people.

Hometown: Moorhead, Minn.

Contact: juliekuehl.com | @JulieKuehl

Session: Beg, Borrow, or Steal? Where to Begin When Building a Theme

Child themes, theme frameworks, starter themes … there are so many choices when beginning to build a custom theme. How do you decide where to begin? We’ll talk about how to find a good place to start depending on your skills, comfort level, and the project budget.

WordCamp Omaha 2015 is happening Oct. 10-11 at Metropolitan Community College’s Fort Omaha Campus. Get tickets today!