Author Archives: Chris Reynolds

Why jazz?

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If you’ve been reading our speaker profiles in the blog, you may have noticed that in each one I list what the speaker’s favorite jazz artist is (if they have one). Why am I asking about jazz, you might ask, or why should you care?

Since WordPress 1.0, major releases have been named after jazz musicians. WordPress core developers — and co-founder Matt Mullenweg most notoriously — share a common love of jazz music. It made sense and seemed fun to see where our speakers fall into the spectrum of jazz appreciation.

Jazz is a unique style of music where the performers play off of each other and the written music doesn’t matter as much as making sure there is a nonverbal communication with the other players through the music. It’s a lot like WordPress itself — there are millions of people using WordPress worldwide, thousands of people developing for WordPress or participating in the forums or the community. While these people may never speak to each other directly, all of it together plays into what WordPress is, why it is unique from other platforms, and ultimately determines where WordPress is going.

Last year, Matt launched jazz-quotes.com, a repository of quotes from various jazz musicians. It started with quotes that Matt had collected over the years, but soon added a form to submit quotes by a specific performer. While many of the quotes are specifically about music or other jazz musicians, many of them are inspirational nuggets that transcend music and can be applied to anything. I encourage you to visit Jazz Quotes if you’re curious about jazz, the performers, who a particular artist that the latest WordPress version was named after was, or if you are looking for inspiration. I promise that you won’t be disappointed; there’s something for everyone.

What’s your favorite jazz quote or jazz musician? Let us know in the comments!

Chris Reynolds — WCSLC Speaker Profile

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Chris ReynoldsI am a project manager, developer and support monkey for the premium WordPress event management plugin, Event Espresso. I’m also a WordPress theme and plugin developer and I launched a web design studio in 2007 with my wife, called Arcane Palette Creative Design. In 2010 we debuted Museum Themes, a premium WordPress theme shop. I volunteered to help with the WCSLC preparations this year, and have been working on the web site, content, and the theme (which uses _s).

To the best of my knowledge, I started on WordPress 2.1. Before that I was using a software called Sblog, but I was frustrated by the lack of updates. Before that I maintained a web-log the old-fashioned way, with HTML and manual FTP updates. I used to say that my favorite part of WordPress was its ease-of-use, but lately my answer has changed to how easy it is to develop for it. A few years ago I would never have considered myself a developer. I have since dived into code — for custom themes, plugins, for Event Espresso, as well as plugins (and one theme) in the WordPress.org repositories — and am constantly amazed at the wealth of tools and documentation at my disposal.

When I’m not doing things related to WordPress, I’m an avid gamer. I love gaming on the computer, but even more than that, I love tabletop gaming. Castle Panic, Settlers of Catan, Munchkin and Forbidden Island are some of my current favorites.

A project I’m most proud of right now is the new Event Espresso website. I did a lot of little, back-end things, custom plugins, and a lot of the initial development for what’s now the product system. I’ve also done quite a bit with the bbPress forums which have received significant amount of hacking. The site is also using 2 of my plugins: WordPress Wiki That Doesn’t Suck (used for the Documentation pages) and my Progress Bar plugin (used on various pages on the site).

My presentation at this year’s WordCamp will build off of what I presented last year, which was an introduction to the idea of doing theme development and/or light theme modifications. This presentation is going to get into the nitty gritty of theme development and is largely informed by my own experience getting my theme, Museum Core, added to the WordPress.org repository, and what I learned through the theme review process.

While I don’t listen to jazz all the time, I do listen to some, and my favorite jazz musician is John Coltrane.

Brian Rogers — WCSLC Speaker Profile

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Brian RogersBrian spends his days playing Tetris on his work computer and eating Cheetos and his current aspiration is to remove one of his cubicle walls. Before taking a job at Bluehost in 2007, he was completely new to web hosting and development but he now loves how open WordPress is.

Brian built and writes on DitoForge and he’s most happy with making it look Android-themed. When he’s not working on WordPress, he likes doing “front-end stuff. That is evolving into a beast of its own.”

Brian’s presentation is on WordPress plugin development. “I like to try to simplify every day processes,” he says, and he’s hoping people will see plugin development “in a new light.”

Brian admits to not listening to much jazz, but his favorite jazz musician is Frank Sinatra.

Patrick Cox — WCSLC Speaker Profile

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Patrick CoxBy day Patrick is a UI developer for an enterprise event management software company, Active Network, where he customizes and brands mobile applications. By night (instead of sleeping) he spends his time working on freelance, consulting and personal web projects.

Patrick started working with WordPress in 2009 with WordPress 2.7. “I really just found WordPress online from design and development blogs. Everybody was talking about it and so I figured I’d give it a shot.” He started with a WordPress.com blog before discovering the power of WordPress.org. Before using WordPress he worked mostly with Drupal but dropped everything altogether with the release of Custom Post Types. He says his favorite part of WP is the simplicity and scalability of it. “It’s really only as complicated as you want to make it…A non-coding designer can easily build a very professional and functional website or a hard core developer can use it right out of the box without losing any power of flexibility.”

When Patrick isn’t coding or writing about coding, he enjoys spending time with his family and doing things outdoors like mountain biking, playing golf (horribly) and snowboarding, “all of it performed to a punk rock soundtrack” (though he admits to appreciating Frank Sinatra — if Sinatra can be considered jazz). He also loves pizza.

Patrick will be talking about tools that you can and should be using in WordPress development. “When I first started out I really didn’t know the best tools to use. I sort of discovered them over time through other developers or blogs.” He hopes that people can learn about some new ideas or resources that will help people develop more efficiently and effectively.

Jared Smith — WCSLC Speaker Profile

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Jared SmithJared gets paid to make the world a better place. No, really, his job is to give money and resources and time to open source communities. “It’s the best job in the world!”

Jared’s been using WordPress for so long he doesn’t remember when he first discovered it. He loves how easy it is for newcomers to get started and build a fantastic website in very little time.

Economic Impact of Open Source on Small BusinessJared will be speaking about the WordPress economy. “I want people to understand just how important WordPress is — and what an impact it’s made on the economy for small businesses across the country,” he says. He will be sharing some of the findings of a research paper recently published with O’Reilly Media on the economic impact of open source.

When he’s not saving the world, Jared likes to read, do programming and hike in Shenandoah National Park. He says he’s also really gotten into photography this year. His favorite jazz musician is John Coltrane, but that’s not what he listens to most of the time.

Matt Jones — WCSLC Speaker Profile

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Matt JonesMatt is the founder of Storefront Themes, a premium WordPress theme development shop that started on Themeforest before venturing out on its own. Storefront focuses on e-commerce and hooks into most of the major e-commerce WordPress plugins (WooCommerce, Jigoshop, WP e-Commerce). Lately, he’s been working on his new theme framework, Skematik, which is based on Twitter Bootstrap.

Storefront ThemesMatt first discovered WordPress around 2.1, after he had built his own content management system and was frustrated with it. His favorite part of WordPress is the ability to create custom functions and have them run whenever he wants in the system. The WordPress project he’s proudest of is (of course) the Storefront Themes site, which was built from scratch. He says he’s most happy with the responsive nature of the site and the members area to access their purchases.

When he’s not writing themes, Matt loves playing golf and basketball, and spending time with his family & friends. Matt is not a jazz fan, preferring, instead the music of Jason Mraz, Jack Johnson and 90’s R&B.

Matt’s presentation is based on his work on Storefront. He said he “feels the need to give back” because he had an employer who “basically paid me to learn this [e-commerce] stuff”. Matt would like to help people “achieve their dreams” by showing them how to set up their own e-commerce shops on WordPress.

Oh noes! Contact form fail!!

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The form on our Contact page was sending email to the wrong address for a couple of weeks. We’ve fixed it now and are responding to the emails that we missed, but if you sent something through the contact form recently and haven’t gotten a response, try again and we’ll be sure to reply this time. Sorry about that!

Information and levels for sponsors is now available!

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The Sponsors area of the site is now available with information about sponsoring WordCamp SLC. Sponsoring a WordCamp is a great way to expose other WordPress users to your unique product or service. It also helps us keep the cost of admission low, making it possible for just about anyone who wants to, to come out and participate. We especially love seeing local businesses as sponsors and learning about how local SLC businesses are using WordPress.

If you are interested in sponsoring either at one of the recommended levels, or in another context (by providing a service like Badges or t-shirts), please get in touch!

Early bird registration is now open for WCSLC 2012

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Registration is now open for WordCamp Salt Lake City 2012. Tickets are available for $17, so grab them now before they go up to $20 as we get closer to September. And if you’re interested in being a speaker or a volunteer, let us know!

September 22 is WordCamp SLC 2012

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The University of Utah will once again be host to a couple hundred bloggers, coders, WordPress evangelists and everyone and anyone in between on September 22nd.  We’re just starting to get things rolling, so we don’t have all parts of the site up just yet, but if you’re interested in speaking you can fill out our speaker submission form.  If you are interested in being a sponsor or have any other questions, let us know!  We’re working on the tickets and should be able to open early registration soon.  Stay tuned!