Sisters Kirstie (left) and Aisling (right) are the brains behind one of Ireland’s most popular and widely read blogs, Beaut.ie.
Blogging has allowed them to parlay a passion for all things cosmetic into full time jobs.
Aisling’s book, The Beaut.ie Guide to Gorgeous, is now in the shops and Kirstie has a regular column in the Evening Herald.
Session: A Bit of a Blather with Beaut.ie
For many bloggers, the story of Beaut.ie is a fairytale dream come true; Kirstie and Aisling McDermott have built a blog with humble beginnings into one of the most powerful online properties in the country and two full-time jobs. Rosemary Mac Cabe sits down with the gals from Beaut.ie to talk about the history of one of Ireland’s most popular sites, the growth of their business, how they manage their active community, and what blogging has meant to them in a wider context.
Jason Roe is an Internet consultant who specialises in web development, search engine optimisation and social media. He was involved in a projects such as CRO.ie, Independent.ie, Herald.ie and more recently in Wordpress powered innovations by Enterprise Ireland. Jason was elected to the board of the Irish Internet Association (IIA) in late 2009.
Session: Making Money with WordPress
Making Money with WordPress will provide you with answers to the question “How do I monetise my blog?” and look at a variety of ways to make money online using WordPress through AdSense, direct advertising, affiliate schemes and more. The session will include real world examples and guide you through extending WordPress capabilities using templates, plugins and a bit of common sense!
Jane is the user experience lead for WordPress, and has worked in the web industry for 10 years.
Though her apartment is in the East Village, she spends much of her time traveling to WordCamps and meeting WordPress users to incorporate their feedback into each new version.
WordCamp Ireland 2010
Presentation | Video | Notes
Session: Keynote
Jane will be delivering the keynote speech at WordCamp Ireland at 12pm on Saturday.
Alastair McDermott is Technical Director of WebsiteDoctor.com, a consultancy and training business focused on online marketing. Alastair specialises in the technical side of online marketing, particularly search engine optimisation and web programming.
Alastair often speaks at business and technology events about online marketing, technology, online communities and related topics.
Session: 10 Must-Have Word Press Plugins
From spam protection to mobile versions, SEO tools to Twitter functionality, Alastair McDermott will take you on a tour of essential plugins for WordPress, their Use Case Scenarios and their installation.
Hailing from the sunny Sunshine Coast, Australia, Heidi has been professionally active in the web industry for a decade. She got the taste for web development back in the bad old days of tables and inline styling and has since sunk her teeth into flash app development, games, project management and her big loves of website design and front end dev. Late 2008 she formed Cookie Web Consulting with Orla Duncan and together they’ve been on a mission to develop beautiful, functional and affordable websites – almost all of them on the beloved and most wondrous of platforms… WordPress.
Session: WordPress Use Case Scenarios
After complaining that I never heard about stuff happenning in my adopted home town (a common woe of many a blow-in) I decided to build a community website to showcase events, local news and comment and promote the town of Kilcock in general. I did it on practically no budget and little spare time – using a free WordPress template, some wonderful plugins and some hard slog. It’s been up since June 09 and coupled with a very active Facebook page it does very well in visitors, interaction and even selling ad space to cover basic costs of hosting and promotions. I have gained 2 excellent writers to help with post diversity and am always looking for more articles from local ‘knowledge experts’. I’ll share my story on the WordPress User Case Scenarios panel and pass on how you might be able to setup something similar in your community using the peerless, open source platform – WordPress.
Luisella is a Search Quality Senior Analyst who joined Google in 2005 to support search quality efforts in the European languages. She is also a Google Guide on the Italian webmaster help group. Luisella has a degree in Technology of Computing from the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland and a degree in Foreign Languages (French, Spanish and Catalan) from the University of Bologna, Italy.
Session: Google and Your WordPress Website
What you need to know about Google and your website. In this session we’ll learn more about Google Search and some tips and tools to improve your WordPress site’s visibility, security and accessibility in Google search results.
Andrea is a mobile internet expert who started his suffering in the emerging mobile market in 1999 when only emulators of WAP were available. He’s been working hard to make the mobile Web a success since then, helping both small companies trying to create their presence and large carriers deploying innovative services.
Co-owner of WURFL for five years, he’s recently relocated to Dublin to work for dotMobi as a Director, and is currently creating DeviceAtlas and helping creating a great community around mobiForge as well as creating plugins and content with Open Source projects such as WordPress and Drupal.
WordCamp Ireland 2010
Presentation | Video | Notes
Session: WordPress on Mobile
An introduction to the mobile context and the importance of guiding users to an appropriate experience, with a deep look at how you can make the most of WordPress for mobile users. We’ll look at how the mobile space is growing, why this is of interest to bloggers, and ways of using WordPress to optimise the mobile experience with existing modules and best practices in general.
Alexis is a digital creative director and designer. His speciality is developing creative concepts and strategies for marketing campaigns and seeing them through to design and development.
Until recently he held the role of joint-Creative Director and Studio Manager in Cybercom, working for global brands such as Guinness, Powerade and Vodafone. He is now enjoying a mini-sabbatical, sharing his time between freelance work, watching box-sets and planning his next motorbike trip.
WordCamp Ireland 2010
Presentation | Video | Notes
Session: WordPress Use Case Scenarios
Alexis will be presenting fundraising campaign ‘My Everset Challenge’ to showcase how WordPress can be used to develop successful and cost-effective charity websites as part of the WordPress Use Case Scenarios panel.
Ian has been lead developer with ChoiceCuts since jumping at the chance to combine his two greatest passions: web development and music. Having spent too many years working on purely practical data-driven sites he now revels in the increasingly multi-media space that is the internet.
Always on the look out for more effective ways to get things done, a chance encounter with WordPress several years ago made a big impression. A few hours and a full site migration has made WordPress the centre of things ever since. When not hacking under the WordPress hood, he also enjoys developing multiple personalities with which to torture his work colleagues and digging through record stores in search of the next musical gem.
Session: Multi-Media Mojo
Multi-Media Mojo will look at ways to simplify image handling when using WordPress as a publishing platform. Generating content can often be a very time consuming process, a process which can be equally enriched and prolonged by the inclusion of images. Bottlenecks that arise in the editorial process are not always technical.
The latest WordPress media manager features and the CC_ImageJuggler Plugin can be combined to assist the publishing of impressive content without the added editorial overhead. The aim is to illustrate that any good solution is as much technical implementation as smart thinking and better work flow.
Una Coleman is an international strategy and marketing consultant with over 20 years experience in strategic marketing and international operations both in the US and Europe. She has worked in organisations ranging from technology start-ups and fast-paced direct marketing agencies to large corporates. She is a member of the Enterprise Ireland Mentor Panel and the Irish Internet Association’s International Strategy Working Group, and recently chaired the IIA conference on Winning International Business with the Web.
Session: Blogging for International Markets
Blogging for International Markets focuses on the role of blogging in your overall international marketing strategy – on and offline – and covers objectives, frequency, measurement, commitment, interaction and online reputation management. It will focus on issues particularly relevant to international markets, including localization, voice, and culture gaps, with a look at some case studies from the international blogging arena.