Jackie Dana

Jackie Dana built her first website from scratch in 1995. She now considers herself to be a WordPress evangelist, believing that WordPress allows people to have a beautiful website or blog regardless of their technical background or financial situation. She values the principles of universal design and usability, and encourages all web sites to support good design practices and thoughtful organization. She also follows the latest trends in social media marketing and strongly advocates the use of technologies such as Facebook and Twitter, in tandem with traditional marketing, to promote both online and brick and mortar businesses.

She is a leader of WordPress Austin, and serves on UT Austin’s Refresh Project, a campus-wide committee that redesigned the University’s homepage. As a supporter of web accessibility, she volunteers for the local organization Knowbility and participates in AIR Austin competitions to build accessible websites for artists and nonprofit organizations.

Jackie owns Getting Dirty Designs, providing WordPress training, consulting and web design. She also blogs about technical topics at Bending the Web to my Will.

President & CIO, Pleiades Publishing Services, Co.

Nicholas R. Batik

My passion is Information design — the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used efficiently and effectively. As lead designer with Pleiades Publishing Services, I focus on the development of information graphics – the diagramming and display of quantitative information to communicate ideas and information. My underlying philosophy of graphic design, ideography, graphic symbolology, photography, and digital art is to display information so it is both useful, and attractive.

Since founding Pleiades Publishing Services in 1992, I have been involved with both print, and electronic media design. As a web developer I have content, design and the technology experience in major web site design and implementation, including Project Manager/ Senior Designer and programmer of a 2,400 page, 2,500+ image, 18,000+ link database-driven web site created back in 1994. My work with Pleiades Publishing Services reflects my passion for elegant and effective information design and is dedicated to using design technology to communicate, and manage Information in a way that is beneficial to our clients and our clients’ customers. As principle information architect I focus on the science of information acquisition, interpretation and processing. I am responsible for publication design – assuring the message content and language are clear, unambiguous and understandable. As lead designer for Pleiades Publishing services I have focused on our clients; need for multimedia information design in the form of, electronic publishing projects, as well as scriptwriting and audio/ video production.

Over my 30-years as an information designer I have researched and used a number of publishing platforms. Since 2006, I have used WordPress exclusively as my website development tool. It’s functionality, confirmation to web standards and ease of use for both the designer and the end user, facilitate and support elegant information design. I act as trainer and support for all of my clients. WordPress is the first tool that truly allows the web owner to control the content as well as the look and feel of the site.

I have written numerous training courses, articles and seminars on design, and publishing. I conduct one-on-one training, and have lectured at publishing conferences and in-house seminars in over 100 cities across the US, England, and Scandinavia.

I write extensively and have both management and technical articles published, and have authored white papers on technical project management.

H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik

H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik’s insights and expertise with all levels of business start-up and development, as well as her experience in the public, corporate and small business environments, uniquely qualify her as an internet marketing and on-line business consultant.  She has conducted over 300 seminars and workshops and has been a featured speaker at numerous national and international publishing conferences. Sandra has earned a reputation for taking highly complex subjects and presenting them in easily understood modules.  Her informal approach helps put attendees at ease and ready to tackle unfamiliar material.

Sandra is a research analyst and web content developer as well as a partner in Pleiades Publishing Services.  As a professional researcher and information technologist, she studies technical data, conducts client-sponsored research, develops feasibility studies, competition and market analyses; and provides reports, white papers, articles, press releases, training materials as well as Search Engine Optimized web content, including, newsletters, blogs, and e-books.

Tracking through statistical data, and oblique cross-references to find the relevant connections that help  clients solve a problem, or take action on a business venture is her passion.  As a web content developer, Sandra’s reward is when a client reports that their site is bringing in customers and making them money.

Lindsey Allen

Lindsey Allen  teaches or has taught HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Beginning Programming, PHP, MySQL, ASP, at the academic level (University of Texas, Austin Community College), governmental (Texas State Government), and corporate level (Cadence Systems). Many of his classes were taught online.

Lindsey  is the Chief Exploring Officer (CEO) of Exploring New Media.  He learns most of what he knows by continually examining new topics, discarding what doesn’t work or no longer interests him, hones and fine tunes those that do.  He is a retired Air Force officer, a college level instructor, founder and leader of multiple meetups, web developer, and game player. He currently leads the Austin Podcast meetup group and co-leads the Austin WordPress meetup group.

Principal, slash25 code & Co-founder, Cospace

Pat Ramsey

Pat is the Design Chief & Accessibility Guru Extraordinaire for slash25 code. Specializing in standards-based design, Pat believes in making code that works… beautifully. He leads the Austin WordPress meetup group and is active in Refresh Austin, a group of Web professionals “refreshing” the creative, technical, and professional aspects of their trade. Pat serves as both an adviser and trainer for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies. He’s been a speaker on the topics of accessibility and web standards at events around the country.