WordCamp Las Vegas 2014 - John Hawkins

Speaker Spotlight: John Hawkins

WordCamp Las Vegas 2014 - John HawkinsSession: Business Principles for WordPress Project Success
Track: Designer / Developer
Time: Saturday, December 13, 10:00 AM

John was an early adopter of WordPress. He moved his blog to the brand new platform a few short months after it was released and never looked back. After doing countless updates to his own site and those of a few dozen friends, John co-founded 9seeds.com to focus full time on WordPress development. In his spare time, John is the lead organizer of the Las Vegas WordPress meetup, blogs at vegasgeek.com and recently became addicted to CrossFit.

About John’s Session:
In this session Dre Armeda and John will talk about key areas they like to focus on that lead to successful projects. The two well known and respected WordPress entrepreneurs will share with you several of the things they’ve learned along the way. Hopefully one or two of them will save you from having to learn the same lessons at the school of hard knocks.

Your Company: 9seeds.com

Your Website: vegasgeek.com

What do you love most about WordPress?
Two things, really. I love how easy it is to set up a quick site for some silly side project that you want to test out. I also like being able to put the power of publishing in to the hands of the site owner without requiring a developer on a daily basis.

What are some of your favorite WordPress plugins?
Gravity Forms is always a crowd pleaser, but lately I’ve been using WP Migrate DB Pro a lot and it saves our company a ton of time! Oh, and I can’t forget Restrict Content Pro. Badass membership plugin!

What should everyone know about WordPress?
We all love to say that it’s “easy to use”, but, just like anything, it has a learning curve. And, if you don’t use it on a regular basis, it’s probably always going to require a little more time to do something than you might expect.

Where is your favorite place to visit in the world?
I really enjoyed my family’s trip to Alaska and would love to do that again. I don’t have a specific place. I just like traveling to hang out with friends.

What do you love about Las Vegas?
I like the weather (I hate being cold), I like that it’s a 24 hour town. If I want a steak at 3am, damn it, I’m having a steak at 3am!

Favorite movie in 2014 and why:
Lego Movie? That song is so damn catchy!

Favorite non-WordPress activity?
Right now I’m addicted to CrossFit. Getting in shape has been a lot of fun these past 6 months!

To register, please visit vegas.wordcamp.org/2014/registration