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Catch PushUp and 10up at WordCamp Chicago 2014

Aaron Holbrook on June 11, 2014

Jun 13

WordCamp Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

Attending Speaking Sponsoring

10up will be brewing up a storm in the Windy City this upcoming weekend at WordCamp Chicago, with wall to wall speakers supported by a John Hancock Sponsorship under the PushUp Notifications product brand.

Our rundown of speakers starts with Dustin Filippini presenting a Comprehensive Dashboard Walkthrough on Foundation Friday. On Saturday, Kelly Dwan kicks things off with A Walk Around the Loop, a study of the post loop from an advanced developer’s perspective. Alison Barrett takes the stage for a lightning talk at noon with Knowing What You Don’t Know followed by James Barrett on Wireframing Essentials.

On Sunday I’ll pause from organizer duties for an Introduction to IDEs and Debugging, which makes the case for IDEs by showing off the amazing powers they bestow. John James Jacoby will dive into Multisite and Multi-network, emphasizing the lesser used multi-network feature. Wrapping up the day on Sunday, Rachel Baker demonstrates how developers can Put Your Content to REST With WP-API, a look at the exciting new JSON REST API (WP API).

In addition to our speakers, you’ll also find 10uppers Kara Buffardi and Gus Gerhardt at our PushUp sponsor table, showing off our website push notifications product. We’ll be on hand to demo the product, answer questions, and provision new customers as they sign up – and we’re offering a 99¢ sign up code (discounted from $14.99) for anyone who registers on the spot!

I’ll also be leading the Networking lunch activity at noon on Saturday; stop by and say hello!

WordCamps and 10up everywhere: Orlando, Denver, and Edmonton

Aaron Holbrook on November 15, 2013

This coming weekend I’ll be traveling to sunny Orlando, Florida to speak at WordCamp Orlando, along with my friend and coworker, Carl Danley. Meanwhile, Grant Landram and Luke Woodward will be speaking at WordCamp Denver, led by our own Drew Jaynes, while Vasken Hauri speaks at WordCamp Edmonton.

Carl and I will be giving back to back talks on Saturday morning in Orlando, so make sure to wake up early and get the best seats. I’ll be opining on the joys of interactive debugging, which should be a core part of a developer’s tool set. If your go-to debugging tool starts with var and ends with dump(), this talk is for you! Senior Engineer Carl Danley will be covering sensible approaches to JavaScript. In his own words: “More often than not, as WordPress developers, we focus on PHP and often overlook the important aspects of JavaScript. In this presentation, I’ll reveal a series of steps that will help you rock your next JavaScript application by taking it the next level.” On Sunday, Carl and I will help lead the Contributor session along with Mark Jaquith, Andrew Nacin and Pippin Williamson – sure to be a good time!

WordCamp Orlando is also sponsored by seoslides, a WordPress presentation creation and sharing solution built and partly owned by 10up.

Westward in Denver, local Web Engineer Drew Jaynes is leading WordCamp Denver, where he’ll also lead a session on WordPress contribution. Senior Strategist Grant Landram is dropping in to take part in a panel exploring the importance of user experience. Senior Strategic Engineer Luke Woodward continues the quest to kill classic MAMP / WAMP developer environments in favor of the popular Varying Vagrants project seeded by 10up.

Finally, up north in Edmonton, our Vice President of Strategic Engineering, Vasken Hauri, will cover both theory and practical tools for automating code scanning and maintaining code quality. As a former adjunct Computer Science professor, Vasken is no stranger to tackling complex subjects.

Aaron Holbrook on June 27, 2013

WordCamp Chicago starts this Friday, and runs until Sunday, June 30. I had the pleasure of organizing this camp, before starting at 10up. Even before I joined the team, I was eager to invite some of the experts at 10up, and was thrilled to welcome both Senior Web Engineer Carl Danley and Director of Web Engineering Jeremy Felt as speakers. Jeremy will discuss the benefits of using Vagrant as a local development platform; Carl will present JavaScript performance techniques. In addition to organizing, I’ll be co-teaching the HTML & CSS Foundations class and participating in a couple of panels. Hope to see you there!

Aaron Holbrook joins 10up

Aaron Holbrook on June 13, 2013 • 2 Comments

I’m Aaron Holbrook, and I’m incredibly excited to be 10up’s newest Web Engineer, claiming the mantle as the first Chicago 10upper!

I’ve crafted websites since 1998, when I was convinced my GeoCities site would light the world on fire. Since resetting my expectations, I found a passion for HTML, CSS and PHP and even built my own content management system in 2004, only to stumble upon WordPress shortly thereafter.

After earning a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Augustana College, I became the full-time “webmaster” for a hospital. After spending 5 years managing content, I realized that my passion was building, not just managing, websites. Before leaving in 2011, I rebuilt the entire hospital website on WordPress.