We’re pleased to announce that Jeff Matson will be speaking at WordCamp Raleigh 2014. Jeff’s session will be on the Power Users track and is titled Stop Eating Resources and Optimize Your WordPress Site.

Jeff Matson is a technical content writer and SEO for InMotion Hosting, specializing in WordPress-related tutorials and news. His content reaches millions of users and has been featured on sites such as Post Status and WP Tavern. In his off time, he hosts the WordPress After Hours Google Hangout on Friday nights with Jeff Chandler for uncensored, unrecorded, WordPress shenanigans.

We’re very happy to announce that Melodie Laylor will be joining us again this year to speak at WordCamp Raleigh 2014. A veteran of WordCamp Raleigh, Melodie will be speaking to the Beginners and her session will cover More (Mis)adventures in Nonprofit Web Design, a follow up to her talk from two years ago.

Melodie discovered her inner geek working part-time in the computer lab while pursuing a music degree in college. She’s been working with computers and Internet technology ever since. She married a geek guy and they went into business troubleshooting and repairing computers. Along the way they had four geektastic kids. Melodie discovered WordPress in 2007, fell in love with it and never looked back. She launched out as a freelance web designer in 2010, and has been an organizer of the WordPress Hampton Roads Meetup since 2011. Melodie and her husband are now partners in PajamaWeb, a web design venture.

We’re happy to announce that Jordan Cauley will be joining us as a speaker for WordCamp Raleigh 2014. Jordan’s session is for the developers and will be about Getting Started with Gulp.js.

Jordan leads the development team at Cuberis, bringing to the table a wealth of knowledge in both coding and strategic communications. Prior to Cuberis, Jordan worked in a multitude of industries as a freelance developer and has a portfolio that includes more than 70 websites. When Jordan isn’t elbow-deep in code, he’s sharing his knowledge on the magic of the Internet and mobile applications with the rest of the team.

We’re happy to announce that Dee Teal will be speaking at WordCamp Raleigh 2014. Dee will be speaking about Responsible [digital] Home Ownership on the Power Users track.

In Dee’s words:
I’m a Genesis WordPress web developer, community organiser, trainer, blogger and all round WordPress enthusiast who is passionate about imparting that same enthusiasm to community members, clients and trainees. I have graduated from USYD with a Masters Degree in Digital Communication and Culture and have been working with WordPress full time since 2009 (and with other technologies for some time before that).

I’m the girl behind WordChicks, Melbourne’s all-women WordPress meet-up (and made it onto this list with other awesome WordPress Women), and one half of the team who put together PressJam, a WordPress for good ‘rapid build’ event in 2013. I’ve also been the proud leader of amazing teams who made the awesome WordCamps Melbourne 2013 and Sydney 2012. I’m also a WP Tuts author – and if that wasn’t enough WordPress for you, I’m training beginning (and advanced) WordPress users for City Desktop and elsewhere as people need.

Come to WordCamp Raleigh to meet Dee and learn how to keep your WordPress site secure and healthy.

We’re pleased to announce that Eddie Burroughs will be speaking at WordCamp Raleigh 2014. Eddie’s session will be on the Beginners track and will be about Building a Real Estate Website.

Eddie Burroughs is the lead web developer for a Wake Forest, NC marketing and design company Right Foot Forward. He has been building websites since 1999. In 2004 he began working on finding a CMS that he could devote his attention to and build from there. Eddie tried many of the popular systems but ultimately landed on WordPress. Eddie has built many websites for several design agencies before joining the Right Foot Forward Team. Eddie has for several years been actively and passionately involved in Real Estate. So much of his work has been in the real estate industry. In 2006 Eddie became a Realtor in NC. He worked for RE/MAX Point East in Rocky Mount. Along with being a real estate professional Eddie has also served on the board of the Triangle Real Estate Investors Association (TREIA). Eddie knows and understands the real estate market.

We’re happy to announce that Justin Sternberg will be speaking at this year’s WordCamp Raleigh. Justin’s session will be for the Developers track and will be about CMB2: The Metabox Strikes Back.

Justin Sternberg is an established “designeveloper”, a term he coined when he began transitioning from a designer to a… developer. He loves building custom hand-crafted solutions with WordPress. CPTs, custom taxonomies, and APIs FTW! He is one of the Developer Leads at WebDevStudios, and is having a blast!

Join us at WordCamp Raleigh to meet Justin and learn about using custom metaboxes, fields and forms for your WordPress site!

We’re happy to announce that Evan Volgas will be speaking at WordCamp Raleigh this year. Evan’s session will cover Things you should know about WordPress (but were always afraid to ask) and will be on the Power Users track.

Licensed Caffeine Therapist and Data Geek. Huge lover of dogs, tea, coffee, and cantaloupe. Wanders on purpose. Gets lost a lot while driving. Used to tap dance and do ballet. Now, messes around with Scala, Python, Cassandra, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Hadoop/Hive/Spark/Sqoop/etc, WordPress, and R.

This talk is aimed at designers and new developers who maybe have a few PHP tricks up their sleeves, but still don’t really see how all of this stuff comes together. If you’ve never edited functions.php and don’t know what it is, this probably isn’t a good talk for you just yet. If you’ve written a plugin or modified several .php files in your WordPress themes, this will probably be a bit too basic for you. If you’ve set up a child theme before and know what functions.php is, even if you haven’t really used it all that much, or even at all…. you’re probably the exact person who will get a lot out of this talk. If that’s you and you come to this talk, you should be familiar and comfortable with most of the behind-the-scenes mechanics of WordPress by the time we’re done.

We’re excited to announce that Melissa Eggleston will be speaking at WordCamp Raleigh 2014. Melissa will be speaking about What We Know About Website Users and this session will be on the Beginners Track.

Melissa Eggleston is a multimedia specialist who loves economics and business. In 1996, she wrote her first online stories about soccer for a sports marketing firm and surely violated all best practices we now know about writing for the web.

After working as a financial planner and living in San Francisco, San Diego, Costa Rica, and Mexico, Melissa returned to her home state of North Carolina to attend graduate school in 2007. She was formally trained in both written and visual communication at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Melissa gained further experience at Bloomberg News and Duke University before deciding to freelance. She now helps small businesses and non-profits “tell their stories” with clear and engaging communication on user-friendly websites. Melissa has written stories, shot photos, created graphics, and developed websites for clients throughout the U.S. She is equally happy to call both neighborhood businesses and notable people, such as a 2012 Nobel Laureate, her clients.

Melissa is currently working on a book on communication strategy with a Professor at Elon University. She regularly speaks on topics such as usability, content strategy, and multimedia.

We’re happy to announce that Julien Melissas will be returning as a speaker for this year’s WordCamp Raleigh. Julien’s session will be about Roots: the starter theme that will make you a better developer.

Julien Melissas is a 21-year old web developer from Asheville, NC, with a passion for clean, efficient code, and re-doing things until they’re just right. Julien loves to learn about new technologies and development workflows and prides himself on his knowledge as a front-end developer. He has been working with WordPress for almost 4 years now and has grown quite fond of it. Julien now works as a freelancer and independent contractor for a few local companies, where he builds custom WordPress themes and solutions tailored to the client’s needs. He was an organizer of the 2014 WordCamp in Asheville, NC. Julien loves custom post types, the Roots framework, the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, and Responsive Web Design – specifically using the Twitter Bootstrap framework, which he has presented on in the past. When Julien is not in front of the screen working on websites or that next big startup/webapp, you can find him making music, cooking, or out in the yard gardening with his girlfriend, Hana, and their dog, Dina.

Get your ticket for WordCamp Raleigh 2014 to learn more about Roots and theme development with WordPress!

We’re pleased to announce that Jake Aull will be speaking at WordCamp Raleigh 2014. Jake’s session is on the Power Users track and will cover SEO Strategy for WordPress Sites & Blogs.

In Jake’s words:
I am principal of Zen Fires; an SEO, web designer, branding digital strategist & good guy if I say so myself. I write digital marketing books for Prentice Hall, including WordPress SEO Success. I teach social media marketing/SEO at Georgia State University part-time, am a panelist and speaker in the industry, have been cited in Atlanta Business Chronicle & was co-founder and Chair for Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association Social Media SIG.

To hear Jake’s session and learn from his experience join us at WordCamp Raleigh!