Speakers

Peteris Jurcenko

Pēteris Jurčenko is a UX designer, with a working knowledge of frontend development, and an accessibility enthusiast. He is a co-founder and CEO of the IT company “Turn“. He is experienced in leading the information architecture for various large projects, including multiple universities. He has also led the adapting of frontend methodologies in his company.

At WordCamp Riga he will be speaking about accessibility, more precisely his topic will be “Why Accessibility is Important and How WordPress Can Help”.

You can connect with Peteris un LinkedIn and make sure to follow him on Twitter.

Edgars Kebbe

Edgars ir a project manager at Kebbe IT and he has more than 15 years of experience in IT industry as computer technician, network administrator, web developer, UX designer, project manager and salesman at the moment. Managed voluntary team to develop WordPress based information publishing platform for Latvians living in Norway, designed Information Architecture and did platform development.

At WordCamp Riga Edgars topic will be “Street Smart Experience – How to Sell and Manage Web Projects”.

Jonathan Howard

jonathan-howardJonathan Howard is an award-winning advertising strategist, trainer and mentor, chief creative instructor of Saatchi & Saatchi Europe, improvisational theatre director and teacher. Trained actors, writers, directors, business people, startups, politicians and young offenders. Spent many years in advertising, and also in TV and theatre. Created the world’s first live interactive improvised TV drama for the BBC.

And as Jonathan himself says: “WordPress is the best, because it is the Web’s original method of propagating itself: always evolving, always growing and always learning. ”

At WordCamp Riga Jonathan’s topic will be “The Nightmare of the Blank Screen: How to Get Over Writer’s Block and Open Up the Imagination”.

Dmitry Ivanov

Dmitry Ivanov has worked in the largest IT companies in Latvia as server side Java, oracle developer. Participates in international projects onsure. Changed career path in one day, from stabile work to unknown world as ceo of web development company. Combine in one role: CEO, sales person, project manager, developer, and many other. Developed a lot of web projects from simple one to Latvian ministries projects.

At WordCamp Riga Dmitry will be speaking about security. His topic for the event is “Do Not Expect Security Issues Will Ever Be Gone”.

Inguna Gudareva

Inguna Gudareva is a freshly baked User Experience designer and at WordCamp Riga she will be speaking about UX methods. Her topic title is “Getting from User Personas to a Content Model”.

Inguna uses her skills as UX designer to help achieve best results in website development and she believes that WordPress is the best, because it’s versatile and has a strong community behind it. As well as it has Morten supporting it.

Karlis Upitis

Karlis Upitis is a passionate Frontend developer with a passion for Design Systems who enjoys being out of the comfort zone. When in retirement he would love to play piano at random places, drink Italian espresso and tell his “fishermen stories” to his grandchildren.

What does it take to integrate Pattern Library in your WordPress project? Starting from general principles to the tools and technologies, Karlis Upitis talk will cover how using Pattern Library helps to improve project development speed and how important is the role of the whole team when implementing Pattern Library in project. At WordCamp Riga his topic title will be “Pattern Library in WordPress Project”.

Petya Raykovska

Petya Raykovska is a Senior Project Manager at Human Made where she helps large projects across big publishers and enterprise succeed. She is a huge WordPress enthusiast, active member of the WordPress community and is one of the WordPress Polyglots team leads supporting the people who translate WordPress to more than 160 languages. Petya helped organise WordCamp Europe 2014 and WordCamp Europe 2015 and lead the team that organised WordCamp Europe 2016 in Vienna.

At WordCamp Riga Petya will be the keynote speaker ar her topic will be “The Open Source Agency and the Future of Work”.

Petya loves WordPress because of it’s core values and the amazing community. Make sure to check out her website petya.in.

Kirils Solovjovs

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Mg. sc. comp. Kirils Solovjovs is an IT security expert and researcher. His professional experience includes working for NATO CCDCOE as an intern and the Ministry of Defence as a senior expert, where he drafted the Regulation No 442 and was representing Latvia as the National Expert to the European Council on the NIS Directive.

Kirils has an extensive experience in network flow analysis, reverse engineering, social engineering, penetration testing, security incident investigation, and the legal dimension of cyber security and cyber defence. He has a history of contributions aimed at improving security of both Latvian and international information systems.

At WordCamp Riga, Kirils will be speaking about security or more precisely about “Security Audit Process of a WordPress Instance”.

Kirils is very active on Twitter, so make sure to follow him there.

Kaspars Buliņš

Kaspars Buliņš is a web developer who’s been in business for more than ten years. He enjoys working with WordPress, because it’s built for end users, but hasn’t forgotten about the developers who have the power to extend WordPress functionality.

At WordCamp Riga Kaspars topic will be “Using WordPress for a Large News Portal”.

Arūnas Liuiza

Some say, Arūnas builds WordPress plugins with character. He is an experienced WordPress plugin developer, who’s been working with WordPress since version 2.6.3, and has developed a number of free, premium and custom plugins. Arūnas has 12 years of experience in Web development and he’s been teaching at Kaunas College for 7 years.

Arūnas has been very active in WordPress community in Lithuania – he’s a WordPress Core Contributor, WordPress Kaunas Meetup co-organizer, WordCamp Lithuania speaker and one of the editors of the Lithuanian WordPress translation team.

At WordCamp Riga his topic will be “Captain Hook – The Right Way to Extend WordPress”. To a question “why WordPress is the best”, Arūnas says: “Huge and awesome community + flexibility and extensibilty provided by the hook system”.

Make sure to check out Arūnas website http://arunas.co/

Didzis Gruznovs

Didzis is a Web Designer and Frontend enthusiast who enjoys WordPress because it’s easy to understand even for designers. At the moment he works as a UX/UI Designer at Ubiquiti Networks in Riga, Latvia.

At WordCamp Riga he will speak about “WordPress Theme from A to X by One Person” and yes, just from A to X. Why he will explain at the event so don’t miss that.

Didzis is very friendly and you can connect with him on LinkedIn.

Raivis Dejus

Raivis Dejus is a developer who’s been working with WordPress for ten years. He thinks that WordPress is the best, because it’s easy to get a lot done.

At WordCamp Riga his topic will be “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Translations”. How to create them, how to share them, how to use translations and how not to use them as well as what to do when nothing seems to work.

Raivis will also be leading our Contributor’s Day, so if you’re interested in participating make sure to get in touch with him via raivis@turn.lv

You can also follow Raivis on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Thord D. Hedengren

Thord is the author of several tech books, such as Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, as well as some fiction. CEO and founder of the Odd Alice (http://oddalice.com) agency, co-founder of BlankPage, and overall serial entrepreneur. Occasional columnist, designer, and publicist, as well as analog game designer.

His Topic for WordCamp Riga will be “Publishing with WordPress: From Past to Present, and Onwards”.

Make sure to check out his website!

Raitis Sevelis

Raitis Sevelis is product manager, UI/UX designer and consultant.

Raitis is a product manager for Visual Composer WordPress page builder with a comprehensive experience in UI/UX design. He is a past lecturer of E-Commerce in Riga Technical University and author of several publications.

Raitis has consulted several successful WordPress plugins on monetization and online marketing.

His topic will be “How to Start Earning with Plugins”.

You can follow Raitis on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.