By 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.