Speakers

A selection of our great speakers, who will be sharing their knowledge on Saturday

Luca Sartoni

Luca Sartoni is a media professional with more than a decade of technical and marketing expertise. Thanks to his extensive experience in business environments ranging from SMEs to large corporate projects, Luca helps companies scale up by implementing data-driven strategies. He does not believe in Santa Claus, magic spells and everything not backed by facts. Luca is Protector of Asynchronicity at Automattic. In addition to his consulting background, Luca is a well-renowned blogger and a speaker in the online communications industry.

WordCamp Europe 2017 co-organiser, blogger at luca.blog, photographer at luca.pics, Growth Engineer at WordPress.com.

Marieke van de Rakt

Marieke van de Rakt is co-owner, blogger, researcher and manager at Yoast.com. Her expertises are content SEO and SEO copywriting. Marieke also runs Yoast Academy (with eBooks and online courses).

Denise VanDeCruze

Denise Van De Cruze has been building Web Sites for over 20 years and is passionate about empowering people through technology. She loves coffee and travel and lives in Vienna. Through her travels, she has visited and learned from many thriving WordPress communities around the world.

Denise is an organizer of WordCamp Vienna and builds WordPress sites through her company, Girlbot.

Thorsten Frommen

Thorsten is a certified PHP engineer, web development professional and tester. He is working in the web since 2000, and with (and on) WordPress since 2005. Currently, Thorsten is a WordPress engineer and technical project lead at Inpsyde, Germany’s biggest WordPress agency. He is part of Inpsyde’s QA team, and leads the development of MultilingualPress, the multisite-based free open source plugin for your multilingual websites.

Thorsten also maintains WP REST Starter, a Composer package for working with the WordPress REST API in an object-oriented fashion.

Martin Mucha

Martin Mucha was born in Vienna, has an email address since 1985, has done his first web-project in 1995 for an international organization, and works with PHP-based Open-Source Contentmanagement Systems since 1999. He experimented with Midgard, b2/cafelog – an ancestor of WordPress –, Typo3, and WordPress. Martin was one of the founders of the “Electronic-Business Experts” and the “Open-Source Experts” in the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. Martin is a Certified Projectmanager (IMPA/Level C, Scrum) and Trainer. He is specialized in Intranets (Collaboration Systems) and Internet projects – and he loves WordPress!

Veselin Nikolov

Veselin has 17 years of experience as a Software Engineer. He joined Automattic in 2011 and for the last 6 years has been working on the WordPress.com Store.

He’s also been part of the org. team for WordCamp Europe and WordCamp Sofia.

Manuela van Prooijen

Manuela van Prooijen (The Netherlands) started Weblish (WordPress and online marketing training) in 2011. She organizes every three months the WordPress Meetup Utrecht. As a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach she advises small business owners about the possibilities of using low-budget/creative marketing strategies. And WordPress is the perfect vehicle for this.

She loves oldskool loud punkrock and rock music and bagels. Her first WordCamp talk was during WordCamp Netherlands October 2016. Her second talk was during WordCamp Geneva in November 2016

Thomas Kräftner

Thomas Kräftner is an interactive developer with a degree in Information Design. While having a clear focus on web development, he always keeps his mind open and has a good understanding of a lot of surrounding fields. With 9 years of professional experience as a freelancer his topmost goal is to present his clients content in exciting, effective and aesthetically appealing ways.

Apart from online presences he is also interested in concise information-visualizations and interesting generative design. He is an active member of the WordPress Development Community on Stackexchange and has been co-organizing the WPVienna Meetup since 2014 as well as WordCamp Vienna 2015.

Heinz Duschanek

Heinz Duschanek was fascinated by the internet and its colourful ways of
usage since 1994. At that time playing with HTML was a hobby for him, but
soon he turned it into a profession. The creation of the website of the
Austrian radio station Ö3 was the first outcome. After working for internet
service providers the launch of his own agency “Online-Marketing Agentur
E-Werkstatt” was a logical next step.

Encounters with Typo3 and Joomla consolidated his love of WordPress. Other main professional pillars are the optimization of AdWords and Facebook campaigns, as well as holding courses at WIFI Wien and working as lecturer at the WU Executive Academy. Privately you find him in boxing gyms as well as in Tango Argentino milongas and Lindy Hop socials. Please ask him yourself about what this is.

Tania Kocher

Tania Kocher – Die AdWords-Queen in Wien. Zugereist aus Salzburg Stadt studierte sie Publizistik und BWL und sprang 2009 auf den Zug der Online-Marketing-Branche. Nach Stationen in Agenturen und bei Google Österreich, gründete sie 2012 ihr eigenes Unternehmen Content Cook und fokussierte auf Suchmaschinenmarketing für namhafte Kunden in den Branchen Tourismus, Pharma und E-Commerce. Außerdem hält sie seit 5 Jahren regelmäßig und leidenschaftlich gerne Trainings und Workshops.

Thiemo Sammern

20+ years of software development experience; managing partner at METHIS worked on topics like database management, application development and data privacy for and with clients like BMW Group, Accenture, SAP, Ricoh, …

Andres Cifuentes

Colombian front-end developer currently living in Sevilla after working in Paris for five years. I am a WordPress enthusiast working at OnTheGoSystems in support, training and lately as a Community Events leader.

I am a Colombian coffee addict, a traveler and an eternal languages student.

Stefan Krajczar

Stefan Krajczar likes eCommerce and WordPress. (…and ice cream.) He is the founder of “SK Beratung”, a consulting company for eCommerce and Web. In the year 2000 he made his first Website, after the millennial crash didn’t happen. The WordPress spirit got him in 2013.

Before launching a company he was in sales and project management. In 2015 he was one of the co-founders of Appvelox GmbH, a growing career platform.

Stefan is MBA Student at the Donau Universität Krems, E-Commerce Manager and Google AdWords Partner. He is Austrian citizen, lives in Vienna and speaks German & English.

Thomas Macdonald

I have been a fervent user of Open Source and Linux for a very long time, having installed my first Suse distribution at the age of 16. These days I use Gentoo, Debian or NixOS.
After freelancing for 4 years here in beautiful Vienna, Austria, I became the lead dev at yelster digital GmbH, running the Site Privilège platform – about 3000 websites and growing, all running on a WordPress multisite installation.

Franz Wieser

Entwickler im Internetbereich seit 1991 Aktiv in Linuxcommnunity, Anwender Training, Web und Datenbankentwicklungen, Serverorganisation, usw.

Thorsten Weber

Thorsten Weber ist DJ, Podcaster, Blogger, Webmaster und virtueller DJ-Mentor.

Seit mehreren Jahren schreibt Thorsten über das Auflegen auf seiner DJ-Webseite http://www.rewerb.com/.

Unter seinem Künstlernamen DJ Rewerb legt er am Wochenende als Discjockey auf. Als Resident-DJ begeistert er regelmäßig das Publikum im Terminal90 in Nürnberg. Außerdem ist er als Booking-DJ in Süddeutschland sowie bis nach Graz und Ibiza unterwegs. Ein paar Mal spielte DJ Rewerb sogar während der Winter Music Conference in Miami.

Mit dem Podcasting begann Thorsten im Jahr 2013. Seine DJ-Mix-Show Houseschuh erreicht mehr als 2.500 Hörer. Vor zwei Jahren gründete Thorsten als Co-Moderator den Hochzeits-DJ-Akademie Podcast.

Für alle Webseiten und Podcasts nutzt Thorsten einen E-Mail-Verteiler im Online-Marketing-Mix.

Viktoria Egger

Viktoria Egger found her passion for blogging & online marketing after her master degree in business administration . She worked for a US company as a online Marketing Specialist and built her own lifestyle blog in 2009. Afterwards she created her own online marketing Agency “August” that today is specialized in influencer marketing & influencer Management. Beside that, Viktoria created the Austrian Lifestyleblogger Community in which Bloggers can network, are able to attend workshops and more.

Manuel Matuzovic

Manuel is a front-end developer from Vienna who’s specialised in HTML, CSS and frontend performance. Recently he started to learn as much as possible about web accessibility in order to make the websites he develops more usable and accessible.

He works as a frontend developer for different clients and teaches HTML and CSS. Manuel is also one of the organizers of the webclerks meetup in Vienna. You can see what he’s currently up to on his Medium page or on Twitter.

Brigitte Schüch

I started to write HTML&CSS nearly 20 years ago, fascinated by all these possibilities, what you can do, and how fast this World Wide Web was (and still is) growing. And I always supported the accessibility. This means creating web pages that everyone can use, regardless of hardware, software, or any sensory or physical impairment. Two good reasons to love WordPress! It is very easy to change the code and usually the themes are accessible for all people.

Aleksander Kuczek

CEO Perfect Dashboard. VP of Joomla. OpenSource CMS aficionado. Joomla Extension Directory team member, and WordPress Directory aspiring team member. Speaks at WordCamps and Joomla Days in Europe, USA & India.

He advises website makers & plugin developers on growing their income. Foodie & computer games freak. Loves Kaiserschmarrn.

Thomas Kloos

Thomas Kloos has been working in the field of online communication and search engine optimization since 2001. In 2010, he founded the company .kloos – SEO, Webdesign, Internet Marketing e.U. His strengths lie in the analysis and development of successful SEO and AdWords strategies. He has worked with clients from a dozen different countries, on large and small projects from every possible field. Thomas combines years of experience with the latest knowledge and findings the industry has to offer.

Ritchie Pettauer

I am a lecturer at the University of Vienna, an online marketing consultant and (suprise!) a WordPress Blogger since 2006.

My blog datenschmutz.net features tutorials and news about online marketing, social media and corporate blogging.

Jacqueline Rinnhofer and Jakub Polomsky

Jacqueline and Jakub are both experienced software developers working for the Graz-based payment service provider Wirecard CEE. They are responsible for developing payment plugins for e-commerce platforms.

Passionate about structured programming, Jacqueline works mainly with PHP and open-source based systems.

Jakub, highly interested in innovative trends and technologies, is always looking for exciting tools available on the market. But these tools never meet his high expectations, and so he writes his own software for further developments.

Bruce Jackson

Bruce is an Australian who’s been living in Austria for the last 22 years. He’s an SEO specialist and Website Security Specialist based in Niederösterreich with over 15 years experience with Search Engine Optimisation and Web Application design. He has been using WordPress for the last 5 years and has learnt lots of shortcuts and tricks that he loves passing on to others. Clarifying SEO and online marketing for business owners is his passion. He is an active member of Vienna WordPress Meetup where he presented “how to rank first in Google” and presented at Wordcamp Vienna 2015 and volunteered at WordCamp Europe 2016.