You should already have received your post by owl announcing that tickets are now on sale for your classes at the Magical Ministry of WordPress. Now that we are accepting new WordPress wizards and witches, we are ready to reveal the first round of your WordPress Professors!
Jeffrey De Wit
Just a humble guy that spends time making the web better, one website at a time.
Front-end developer/developer lead at Highforge and primarily focused on building accessible websites.
I’ve built government websites under the strict Dutch web guidelines for three years before moving to Florida and finding employment with a digital agency that uses WordPress, Django, and Shopify to build websites.
Brian Jessee
I am an independent developer and work with Modern Tribe doing support and development on the Events Calendar, where in the last year I personally supported over seven thousand (7,000) inquiries. Since 2012, I have I supported and developed my own plugin, the Coupon Creator. Because of these roles, I have gained extensive experience supporting WordPress plugins.
Bess Auer
Bess Auer is the founder of the Florida Blogger & Social Media Conference (FLBlogCon), a one-day gathering of the state’s biggest bloggers and social media pros. Bess is dedicated to helping bloggers grow and monetize their websites through her annual conference and through her website GottaGetBlogging.com. In her other life, she’s owner of FloridaSwimNetwork.com, a WordPress Multisite that covers competitive swimming through blogging, video, and live streaming, including broadcasting for the University of Florida, the SEC Network, and ESPN.
Brian Richards
Brian is the creator of WPSessions.com and a Senior Solutions Specialist with Crowd Favorite. He has been using WordPress since 2007 (version 2.3). Over these last several years Brian has had the opportunity to work with many amazing WordPress experts and agencies and help develop sites for Microsoft, Disney, TIME, YMCA, and numerous others. Brian has an affinity for self-directed learning and helping others develop skills and workflows to better solve important and complicated problems.
Taylor McCaslin
Taylor McCaslin is a Technical Product Manager living in Austin, Texas. He currently works at WP Engine, a managed hosting platform for websites and apps built with WordPress. WordPress has been Taylor’s platform of choice for over 5 years. He even paid his way through college by freelancing as a WordPress developer!
Since then, Taylor has created custom WordPress themes and plugins for a large range of clients from SMBs to multinational corporations. Previously, Taylor helped people find jobs as an Interaction Designer at the world’s largest job search engine, Indeed.com. Before that, he worked as a Product Design Intern at Bazaarvoice. Taylor graduated from UT Austin in 2013, where he studied business, digital art and media, theatre, and computer science.
When not pushing pixels or coding, Taylor can be found geeking out with the latest tech gadget or experiencing the rich Austin, Texas art scene. You can learn more about Taylor at taylormccaslin.com or by following him @Taylor4484.
Josh Pollock
Josh, is the owner of, and a developer for CalderaWP, makers of fine WordPress plugins including Caldera Forms, a drag and drop, responsive form builder and URL Builder, the visual editor for WordPress permalinks. He also writes about WordPress for many sites and listens to a lot of heavy metal, and is trying very hard not to become a coffee snob.
We will announce more Professors in a few days. In the meantime, grab your admission tickets now for a weekend of magical learning! Also keep your eyes peeled for another owl with post regarding special lessons on Friday – limited to only a small number of witches and wizards! And our House Elves are working on a special event for our little WordPress wizards and witches in training – details to come soon!