I 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.