Although WordCamp Wilmington’s Speaker and Session Schedule is only days away from publication, we’d like to make our first big speaker announcement …the KEYNOTE.
And now, without further ado…
We’re very excited to announce that this year’s keynote speaker is Jennifer Riehle McFarland, the Web Services Coordinator at NC State University. For over 10 years she has been an integral part of NC State’s Office of Information Technology (OIT). Jennifer and her A-team of IT professionals are knee-deep wading through the Herculean task of educating WordPress users, testing themes and plugins, and planning contingencies for the Gutenberg roll-out across NC State’s 10K+ WordPress websites.
From the time it was announced that Gutenberg will (very soon) be the default editor in WordPress, Jennifer’s team became our unsung heroes for testing software compatibility and cataloging common user reactions to Gutenberg. The research and guidance published by her group has been a source of incredible value for all who use WordPress (from beginners to administrators to developers). We expect Jennifer to present some great Gutenberg insight for the keynote.
Recently, Jennifer made global WordPress headlines when an article on her WordPress efforts was published in the official WordPress news source, WP Tavern.
A tidbit about our Gutenberg future…
2018 is a milestone year for WordPress and the WordPress community. Not only did WordPress turn 15-years old this year, but the new Gutenberg next-generation text editor is expected to be rolled out.
The integration of Gutenberg into WordPress is a really big deal. Many WordPress users are completely unaware that it will affect the functionality of their WordPress site and the workflow of publishing posts. Gutenberg is an unconventional text editor and will require some learning. At some point, it will completely replace the current TinyMCE text editor (also known as the WordPress word processor) on every single WordPress installation. If you’re not familiar with Gutenberg, then this year’s WordCamp Wilmington is a conference for you.
Jennifer’s bio in a nutshell…
Jennifer Riehle McFarland is the Web Services Coordinator and the Design & Web Services team lead for the central IT unit at NC State. McFarland is active in the WordPress community and helps coordinate the annual Raleigh-area WordCamp. Along with colleague Brian DeConinck she is a contributor to the monthly WPCampus podcast (go listen!).