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10up at WordCamp Birmingham, Y’all

on August 22, 2013

Another weekend, another WordCamp: WordCamp Birmingham – AKA #WC Y’all! — is August 24th-25th, in beautiful downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Interspersed across two full days of programming are presentations by myself and two other 10uppers.

On Saturday, Design Engineer Daniel Immke is presenting WordPress and the Command Line, a talk for theme developers hesitant to go anywhere near the terminal in support of their development process. My talk, 5 Things you should know about Responsive Web Design, covers strategies for building fluid layouts using techniques like media queries and JavaScript that make for a great experience across every device and screen size.

On Sunday, Senior Strategic Engineer Taylor Lovett Brings his popular What you Missed in Computer Science talk to the south, sharing computer science theories that make sites better and faster.

Daniel and I will also be volunteering at the Happiness Bar, so please be sure to stop by with your questions or just to say a quick hello. Hope to see you at WC Y’all!

Will Seyffer brings digital advertising and monetization strategy to 10up

on August 21, 2013

My name is Will Seyffer, and I’m 10up’s first Senior Monetization Strategist. I’m thrilled to announce the addition of strategic monetization to 10up’s core competencies; allow me to tell you a bit more.

I’ve spent the last five years guiding and managing operations for organizations that struggled to monetize online publishing, or simply needed support to maximize existing efforts. Advertiser management is the life blood of most online publications, and yet the required specialization has resulted in very few web agencies offering a meaningful understanding of those challenges, beyond superficial placement of ad calls within their designs. At 10up I’ll be collaborating with publishers, analyzing their web properties and providing strategic guidance and support that will maximize their profitability, all in harmony with the efforts of our first class design, strategy, and engineering teams.

As Senior Monetization Strategist, I’ll be collaborating with clients providing such services as:

Establishing robust advertising strategies and tools for the first time
Migrating away from ad networks to direct advertiser relationships
Analyzing and optimizing current advertising and partnership offerings
Critiquing, revising, and / or creating media kits
Creating entirely new monetization models to take advantage of new and unique opportunities
Configuration and troubleshooting of ad management platforms (e.g. DFP)
Complete management of monetization operations (DFP management, advertiser relationships, etc)

Our goal is to offer publishers a tightly managed, end-to-end solution that ensures success for their online properties. 10up began with a focus on superb software engineering and publishing strategy, empowering content creators by getting web publishing software out-of-the-way. Since our inception, we’ve extended our in-house breadth with services like beautiful creative design that keeps readers coming back and systems engineering that ensures high performance, reliable scaling for millions of visitors. Now, we’re in-housing specialized expertise to maximize the way these customers actually pay our bills: advertising strategy. I can’t wait to get started.

Coast to Coast WordCamps: Providence & Vancouver

Luke Gedeon on August 15, 2013

This weekend, 10up is sponsoring WordCamps on both North American coasts, as WordCamp Providence and WordCamp Vancouver host their annual conference. 10uppers are also busy preparing to play their part at both camps.

As an organizer for WordCamp Providence – an outgrowth of my organizer role at our local meet up – I have the honor of delivering opening remarks for Friday’s sessions and closing remarks for the entire camp on Saturday. Providence is close to our team’s heart. Our President started the meet up here back in 2010, and lived here for over 10 years. John Jacoby, our new Director of Web Engineering, lived in the city for two years, from late 2010 to early 2013, and helped organize last year’s WordCamp. Jess Jurick, Director of Web Strategy, started her career at 10up while living here. We couldn’t help but step up with a top-level, Anchor Sponsorship. The camp has a great line up, including a number of 10uppers.

Rachel Baker brings engineering expertise to 10up

Rachel Baker on August 14, 2013 • 4 Comments

Oh hey, I didn’t see you there. My name is Rachel Baker, and I am overjoyed to be joining 10up as the newest Senior Strategic Engineer. I am the third 10upper located in the Windy City of Chicago, IL.

My fascination with web development began in 1996, when I learned HTML and FTP from a unique writing course at the University of Illinois in Chicago. I began teaching myself anything I could from the college computer lab including computer networking and CGI scripting, and landed a job doing IT support for the failed Kozmo.com. I started using WordPress for a personal site using the timeless Kubrick theme in 2005, but focused on Drupal for my freelance client work. Through a strange twist of fate, a friend and fellow web engineer gave me his ticket to the first WordCamp Chicago in 2009. After surrounding myself with the amazing WordPress community I turned my full-time and attention to WordPress. Since than, I’ve worked in a few WordPress and BuddyPress core contributions, was a Dev Bootcamp mentor, spoke at a few WordCamps, and even released some popular plug-ins and themes.

Over the past 4 years, I have led engineering on WordPress projects for start-ups, small-business, non-profits, and large enterprise clients. My desire to be a polyglot has taken me to other back-end platforms such as Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Zend, CodeIgniter and Laravel; but I always come back to WordPress, largely because it’s just so friendly for the publishers and content managers that interact with the software every day. I am really looking forward to being a part of the great work being done here at 10up, and learning from my super smart co-workers.

10up Portland Open House

Taylor Dewey on August 7, 2013

Hey again, PDX! As you may know from our blog or some local publications, 10up opened its first brick & mortar office in Portland, Oregon. On the eve of WordCamp Portland 2013 – which we’re proud to sponsor – we’ll have a handful of 10uppers from out-of-town joining our 7 full-time local contingent. We think this is the perfect occasion for a grand opening, and we’d like to invite you to join us!

Kailey Lampert joins 10up

Kailey Lampert on August 5, 2013

Howdy! My name is Kailey Lampert (with a P, as in pterodactyl!), and if you spell my last name backwards you’ll get trepmal, which is how some of you might know me on the Internet. I’m really excited to be 10up’s newest Web Engineer, as I’ll be able to work more closely with some of the best talent working with WordPress.

I first got excited about web development 13 years ago during a short HTML course in middle school. It took a few more years for me to figure out what I was doing, even as I was having loads of fun. About 5 years ago I discovered about WordPress, and it opened my mind to bigger and better projects and opportunities.

What started with some basic theme customization turned into building plugins, and eventually contributing back to WordPress core (even if started by fixing a few typos at first). A big part of the software’s success is the active and enthusiastic community supporting it, so when I’m not working on code, I like to attend, and sometimes speak at, WordCamps.

More than just collaborating with my fellow 10uppers, I’m really excited to start learning from them!

John James Jacoby brings Alliteration to 10up

on August 1, 2013 • 15 Comments

Howdy. My name is John James Jacoby, and I’m really excited to be joining the crew at 10up as the Director of Web Engineering. Some people know me as J-trip or JJJ, or that guy will not stop talking about BuddyPress and bbPress. Other people know me as that nice young man that walks his tiny dog around the block a few times every day. Everyone else just thinks I’m tall.

From 2010 to 2013 I was the Master of Alliteration at Automattic (most popular for running WordPress.com.) During my time there, I worked on some fun projects: Post Likes, Reblogs, Jetpack Comments, and most recently WordPress.com VIP, where I brought my passion for writing secure, performant, easy-to-read code into their network of partners and in-house client teams.

Before finding WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress in 2007, I spent a few years working on a fork of phpBB 2 that was the canonical solution for hierarchical categories. That project has long since been retired but was an enormous amount of fun, and taught me a lot about PHP scaling and performance. Going back to the late 90’s, I was the lead in-house Visual Basic developer for a multi-million dollar tool & die operation, tasked with creating their entire inventory and sales system from scratch. In this role, I learned a lot about database schemas, caching, user interface, and user experience.

10up at WordCamp San Francisco 2013

Jake Goldman on July 23, 2013

WordCamp San Francisco was the first ever WordCamp, organized by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg back in 2006. It has since grown into one of the largest WordCamps in the United States, and is considered WordPress’s canonical annual community event. I’m excited to reveal that we’ll have eight 10uppers in attendance, four of whom will be presenting.

One of our newest employees, Grant Landram, will be attending WordCamp San Francisco for the first time. Grant is excited to experience the WordCamp that started this international phenomena and meet WordCampers from around the world. As a WordCamp organizer in Seattle, he’s eager to learn from the organizing team and bring that knowledge back home. Grant’s presentation explores collaboration with non-technical stakeholders, and offers an anecdotal overview of the pitfalls technical personnel may encounter when working with non-technical stakeholders. He’ll cover techniques for identifying and understanding a stakeholders’ true knowledge, and actions that help non-technical participants follow technical conversations. Grant is also volunteering at the Happiness Bar on Friday, so stop by to chat with him if you’re going!

Eric Mann will also be attending WordCamp San Francisco for the first time, and is eager to connect with online collaborators he’s engaged on Twitter and IRC. Eric will be giving a short talk on Saturday morning, highlighting ways developers can automate their coding process using Grunt. Like his presentation in Seattle earlier this year, this version will focus on the goals of automation and practical tools, along with a live demo. At 10up, we’ve built two fantastic tools that leverage Grunt for WordPress development: a template that builds the foundation for a new plugin and one that builds the foundation for a new theme. Eric also built out a template that builds a new theme based on Automattic’s _s (Underscores) starter theme. Attendees will walk out with access to plenty of tools to kick-start, simplify, and improve their development processes.

Jason Clarke brings 8 years with WordPress to 10up

Jason Clarke on July 23, 2013

I’m Jason Clarke, 10up’s newest Senior Web Strategist, and the first 10upper from Maine, a beautiful neighbor that, for many of you, is up and to your right.

My love for making websites started as a college student experimenting with services like GeoCities and Homestead. Since my first paying web developer gig 13 years ago (a whopping $100 fee for a whole site), I’ve been a blogger, freelancer, and corporate web developer. For the past eight years, I’ve been a project manager working with a small team of experts to plan, build, and support sites of all sizes for small businesses and educational organizations. Along the way, I wrote a best selling book, and even had the opportunity to be the founding developer and a board member for the Media Bloggers Association, the first national organization providing community support to bloggers.

When it comes to WordPress, I’ve been on board since version 1.5 back in 2005, after retiring my homegrown CMS for my personal blog, jasonclarke.org. In the WordPress community, I’ve contributed to the late great WP Daily, released a starter theme, and am currently a volunteer with the WordPress Theme Review Team.

JSConf: JavaScript, NodeBots & yayQuery

on July 16, 2013

Back in June, I attended JSConf, a three-day JavaScript Conference, where I participated in the Yammer and SpringSource track. JSConf is one of the best JavaScript conferences in the world; every talk was enlightening, every speaker was inspiring, and all the content was exceptional. I can’t even choose a favorite speaker!

The highlight of the event was the Bitovi NodeBots event on the second day. The event kicked off at 9:00 AM with an introductory course in NodeBots and how they can help us. Rick Waldron provided examples and connected us to the Johnny-Five Library to get us started.