WordCamp Montreal 2010 was our second annual event and was by all measurements a huge success. We had about 200 people attend the 2-day conference, they enjoyed our 21 presentations about all aspects of wordpress, catered lunches both days, random but awesome raffle prizes and afterparty the first night.
WordCamp Montreal 2010 was organized by Shannon Smith, Brendan Sera-Sriar and Jeremy Clarke, with help from all the speakers, volunteers, sponsors and participants. Thanks for making it a success!
This page is an archive of information about the 2010 event and its schedule for historical purposes.
Table of Contents
Sponsors of WordCamp Montreal 2010
Micro-sponsors: Jeremy Clarke, Kathryn Presner/Zoonini Web Services, Joachim Kudish, Claude Malaison.
Schedule
Every year WordCamp Montréal strives to bring you educational, interesting and relevant talks about all aspects of using, developing and deploying WordPress for your online publishing needs.
The event was organized similarly to WordCamp 2009, with two days of content broken into 1-hour chunks each with a 45 minute presentation followed by time for questions and a short break.
The full schedule including talk descriptions and links to presenter websites can be found below, but without the formatting they had on our old site. If you just want a sense of what the talks were like check out these printed schedules we handed out at the event: Saturday’s Schedule, Sunday’s Schedule.
Saturday Aug 28, 2010
Sunday August 29, 2010
| Time | Agora | Chaufferie |
|---|---|---|
| 9:45 AM | Coffee and Hangovers from the party last night. | |
| 10:00 | WordPress pour un organisme à but non lucratif: faire plus avec moins Marc-André Léger |
Tweaking plugins to be 3.0 Network-Compatible Ron Rennick |
| 11:00 AM | Multiple Sites in 3.0 Andrea Rennick View Slides |
|
| 12:00 PM | Lunch hour. Lots of nearby restaurants to choose from. | |
| 1:00 PM | Bilinguisme et WordPress : plugins et astuces Yannick Carrière View Slides |
Planning, preparing and publishing content with WordPress and Open Source tools Geoffroy Bélanger View Slides |
| 2:00 PM | Widgetize everything: building smarter themes with widgets and sidebars. Jeremy Clarke View Slides |
Infiltrating Academia with BuddyPress? Alexandre Enkerli View Slides |
| 3:00 PM | Twenty Ten: the last theme you’ll ever need? (Franglais) Alexandre Simard View Slides |
Presenting WordPress to business people Guillaume Drolet-Paré |
| 4:00 PM | Brief closing remarks and raffle prizes. | |
WordCamp 2010 Speakers / Présentations prévues pour 2010
Unleashing WordPress: Building web applications using the WordPress Platform.
Carl Alexander · EquiSoft
Description: WordPress can sometimes be perceived as a simple CMS to manage a blog or website. However, we will see that not only can you build complex websites like CBC, CNN or BBC, but you can do so while preserving the platforms integrity. This talk will illustrate some of the challenges and solutions that we have found from our experience developing feature rich sites, and is aimed at people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty with some advanced programming topics.
Bio: Carl Alexander is the PHP Team Lead at EquiSoft. His team specializes in building large custom web applications for the media industry.
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Developing WordPress Themes for Fun and Profit
c.bavota · bavotasan.com
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Description: There are currently over 1,200 free themes available from WordPress.org, with more added everyday. Certain standards are required when submitting a theme to the WordPress Free Themes directory, and these standards should be followed even when developing Premium Themes. Luckily, there are tons of great resources available to point you in the right direction, and I will show you exactly what a developer needs to start creating themes that work with the latest release of WordPress.
Bio: c.bavota has been involved with the WordPress community since 2006. He recently helped with the release of WordPress 3.0 and is one of the theme reviewers on WordPress.org. His first theme, Magazine Basic, has been downloaded over 120,000 times and is currently one of the top ten most popular themes available on WordPress.org. His Web site, http://bavotasan.com provides articles, tutorials and tons of information on WordPress and Web development and you can check out his Premium themes on http://themes.bavotasan.com.
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Developing for the Web and WordPress with Microsoft WebMatrix
Christian Beauclair · Microsoft Canadian Developer Connection
Description: Microsoft WebMatrix provides an easy way to get started with Web development. With an integrated code editor, database editor, Web site and server management, search optimization, FTP publishing and more, WebMatrix provides a fresh, new Web development experience that seamlessly bridges all the key components you need in order to create, run, and deploy a Web site. Free and popular open-source Web applications are just a click away. Simply select an application like WordPress, and WebMatrix handles downloading, installing, and configuring it for you.
In this session, we’ll show you the whole experience from end to end, to demonstrate how easy it is to deploy a blog site based on WordPress using WebMatrix. This will be based on our current beta, which you can download here.
Bio: As a senior developer advisor at Microsoft Christian shares his passion for software development and its different facet with the Canadian ICT community. He has coded in Modula-2, xBase, VB, VB.NET and now C#. His passion also extends to games and various collectibles. He was also one of the major contributors to the creation of the Ottawa .NET user community and still sits on its steering committee.
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Planning, preparing and publishing content with WordPress and Open Source tools
Geoffroy Bélanger · Ensemble Web
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Description: A no non-sense approach to publishing efficient multimedia content on a regular basis. Tips on how to prepare text, audio, video, pictures and even site/blog structure using Open source and free software, as well as integrating your new multimedia content into your wordpress blog with plugins. After this talk you should be on your way to turning your WordPress site into a multimedia powerhouse.
Bio: Geoffroy Bélanger has been working in the field of multimedia since 2004. He is the co-owner of Ensemble Web and Studio Zodyo, resulting in an extensive background in hands-on professional media production and teaching. He fell in love with WordPress back in 2007, trying to convert as many as he can ever since.
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WordPress pour Entreprises: Possibilités Infinies?
Diane Bourque · Diane Bourque
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Description: WordPress n’est pas un blogue. C’est un outil extraordinaire qui permet aux Entreprises de créer des outils puissants de communication, de commerce en ligne, de magazine, de journal, de blogue interne ou privé et plus. Le but de ma présentation sera de démontrer les différentes facettes de WordPress en démontrant des cas réels d’Entreprises qui utilisent WordPress pour différentes fins. Je parlerai également des sites multilingues avec WordPress. Finalement, j’engagerai une discussion sur les possibilités futures de WordPress. Sont-elles infinies?
Bio: Diane a été Pianiste, Juriste et maintenant elle se proclame Spécialiste du Web. Native du Nouveau-Brunswick, elle vit à Montréal depuis 1993. Elle a oeuvré 20 ans dans le domaine judiciaire (1986-2006) et a décidé en 2006 de poursuivre sa passion – le Web. Elle travaille depuis à son propre compte et se spécialise dans WordPress, les Réseaux Sociaux et la Formation Web pour Professionnels et Entreprises. Diane a créé son premier site Web en 1995 et a par la suite géré différents projets Web. Elle encourage, forme, et guide les Professionnels et Entreprises à prendre un place sur le Web qui est transparente, pertinente et dynamique en utilisant les outils du Web 2.0, soit WordPress et les Réseaux Sociaux.
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Bilinguisme et WordPress : plugins et astuces
Yannick Carrière · QuiboWeb
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Description: Créer des sites web bilingues au Québec est une réalité omniprésente et l’utilisation d’une plateforme comme WordPress dans le développement d’un site peut compliquer cette tâche. Il existe plusieurs extensions et techniques pour y parvenir et il peut devenir vite difficile de s’y retrouver. Dans cette présentation, nous discuterons de ces différentes solutions et extensions en présentant les avantages et inconvénients selon le contexte.
Bio: Analyste-Programmeur chez QuiboWeb gradué de l’Académie du design et de l’Université de Montréal, Yannick se spécialise en programmation Web utilisant les plateformes WordPress et Drupal.
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Widgetize everything: building smarter themes with widgets and sidebars.
Jeremy Clarke · Simian Uprising
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Description: We all know the value of using widgets to customize “the sidebar” of WordPress themes, but the underlying system is rarely used to its full potential. By creating many specialized and contextual sidebars any part of a theme can quickly be made customizable and extensible. This talk will cover all aspects of widgetizing themes, including how to register sidebars, problems to watch out for and tons of ideas for how to make the most of them. Theming and PHP/HTML knowledge definitely a plus, but not necessarily required.
Bio: Jeremy Clarke is a PHP, HTML, CSS and WordPress hacker from Montreal. He loves his job working on the nonprofit citizen media site Global Voices, where he manages dozens of WordPress sites, blogs, plugins, themes and a couple of bitchy Linux servers. He has a communications degree from Concordia University, but is mostly a self-taught web developer.
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Presenting WordPress to business people
Guillaume Drolet-Paré · Logikdev.ca
Description: Let’s face it: software is very abstract to most non-technical people. The interface IS the software to them. How do you think this affects their decision to work with you? How cool would it be if your potential clients understood why using WordPress helps them achieve their business objectives faster? In this session, I’ll help you refine your customer approach to highlight open-source software in general, and WordPress specifically, in a way your customers will understand and value.
Bio: For over the past 10 years, i have developped my customer service experience in specialty retail markets such as road and mountain biking, skiing, high-end consumer audio equipment and imaging software. Initially coming to the web on the technical side developping my own CMS systems, the increaslingly social aspect of the web caught my interest. Today, I concentrate my efforts around the WordPress platform as an effective means to get SMBs on the web. I offer strategic planning on both the marketing and technical sides of the equation.
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Infiltrating Academia with BuddyPress?
Alexandre Enkerli · Learning 2.0 / Apprentissage 2.0
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Description: BuddyPress, the social network based on WordPress, is becomming more and more common in academic environments where it is used for organization, communication and learning. In this discussion we will go beyond the practical and into the human side of things to consider what effects social software might be having in the world of academia. Can we use our tools to get people to think differently? Does the use of open tools help bring openness to the context where they are used? Are BuddyPress and WordPress the best tools for the job? This talk will take the form of a guided discussion including the entire audience.
Bio: Informal ethnographer with a formal background in ethnographic disciplines. WordPress user looking into becoming something like a freelance WordPress/BuddyPress “community manager.”
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Plugin Development Best Practices and Troubleshooting User Issues
Yannick Lefebvre · Yannick’s Corner
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Description: WordPress’ open nature makes it very easy to create plugins to provide a large variety of capabilities to a site. However, developers don’t always think to follow best practices as they are writing up their code. Will their code break other plugins? Will the resulting site become very slow? Will users be able to understand how to get the most out of the extension? All of these questions will be discussed using concrete examples from four WordPress plugins developed over the past five years.
Bio: A tech enthusiast working in the modeling and simulation software industry, I have been blogging since 2003, started using WordPress in 2004 and published my first plugin, Link Library, in March 2005. Since then, I released three other plugins, Tune Library, Weekly Schedule and Modal Dialog, and am currently working on a fifth one. I absolutely love using WordPress to develop web sites and find PHP to be a most liberating language compared to more traditional languages such as C/C++.
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WordPress pour un organisme à but non lucratif: faire plus avec moins
Marc-André Léger · Léger Recherche
Description: Toutes les organisations peuvent bénéficier de l’utilisation d’un blogue. Mais pour un organisme à but non lucratif (OBNL) c’est un choix incontournable aujourd’hui. Fort de nos expériences, qui incluent l’organisation d’une exposition réussie en 2009 et le lancement du premier musée de la micro-informatique en septembre, cette allocution explique comment un OBNL peut bénéficier de WP, de feuilles de styles adaptées et de certains plug-ins bien choisis, pour obtenir une grande visibilité à peu de frais tout en mobilisant ses bénévoles et partenaires.
Bio: Enseignant et chercheur en technologies de l’information, Marc-André a plus de 30 ans d’expérience dans les NTIC. Il a fondé un OBNL et une Université Populaire dans Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. En plus d’utiliser WordPress afin de gérer son site web principal, communiquer avec ses étudiants et collaborer sur des projets de recherche, il assiste des organismes communautaires dans la mise en oeuvre et la gestion de sites web, WordPress, Drupal, WebTV et autres.
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Optimizing WordPress for Search & Social
CT Moore · NVI
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Description: In this session, we will explore how you can optimize WordPress for both Search and Social Media. First we will look at the fundamentals of onsite SEO, and what themes and plugins can help you fulfill them. Then we’ll consider what social media functions a blog should have, and some plugins that can help integrate those features. This module will include social news sites, as well as Facebook Connect. After this session, audience members will (1) have a firm grasp on the fundamentals of onsite SEO, (2) possess an understanding of the advantages of social media integration, and (3) what themes and plugins can help them implement these SEO and social features.
Bio: CT Moore is an accomplished blogger, journalist, podcaster, and speaker whose work has spanned a print, online, radio, and television. He has worked with multi-national brands such as American Apparel, Yellow Pages, and Microsoft, and has consulted for a number of start-ups, including WatchMojo.com. Currently, CT Moore is an Account Strategist at NVI, where he manages clients’ SEO, PPC, and social media needs. He also sits as a Staff Editor for Revenews.com.
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SEO pour WordPress : Vos clients potentiels trouvent-ils votre blogue?
Adrien O’Leary · B-Unique
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Description: Vous avez un blogue ou site sous WordPress. Vous y publiez au moins un article par mois. Je vous invite à découvrir différentes techniques pour mieux tirer partie de WordPress pour que le contenu que vous publiez soit davantage trouvé. Dans les engins de recherche et sur les médias sociaux. Ma présentation s’appuiera sur des exemples de blogues québécois. La mise en place de certaines techniques nécessitera l’installation de plugins spécifiques ou de thèmes particuliers.
Bio: Adrien O’Leary est blogueur depuis 2004. Il travaille comme conseiller Internet à son compte depuis bientôt 2 ans. Il aide ainsi au quotidien des PME à ce que leurs sites Web et leurs blogues soient davantage trouvés. Son blogue sur le marketing Web et son site professionnel sont propulsés par une même installation de WordPress depuis 2008. 25 % de son activité provient d’entrées en relation suite à des recherches sur les moteurs.
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Raise and measure your blog’s influence with Twitter and Facebook
Jerome Paradis · Jerome’s TOTs
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Description: Learn the top tips on how to integrate Facebook and Twitter with a WordPress site. More importantly, discover the secrets of:
- Integrating Facebook and Twitter to WordPress comments and login
- The Facebook Open Graph and what it means for you
- How, when (and when not) to use shortlinks
- How to build new relationships through your blog
- How to track your blog’s influence
Bio: Jerome began programming at 7 years old before the PC revolution started. He hasn’t stopped coding yet. He founded Paradivision in 1989 and has been his own boss full-time since 1995. At the turn of the millennia, after many years designing and developing multi-channel CRM systems, he realigned his focus on e-commerce and Web applications. For the last 5 years, he developed collaborative and social Web applications. Since Facebook launched their API, Jerome has been helping startups and ad agencies understand and develop Facebook applications while developing numerous WordPress sites and applications. In 2010, he co-founded Shwowp for which he’s CTO and became technical advisor to Media Sidekick, a Paradivision spinoff managed by his blogger wife, Kim Vallée.
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Multiple Sites in 3.0
Andrea Rennick · WPMU Tutorials
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Description: In 3.0, “the merge” happened between what was WordPress MU and regular WordPress. Now you can have multiple sites in one installation called a Network. Users will learn how to create a network, get it up and running smoothly, and all the little hints and tricks you’ll need to know to run one successfully. We’ll also cover how to give each site it’s own full domain. No more running a half a dozen separate installs on one server!
Bio: Andrea Rennick discovered WordPress MU by accident. Since then, she has written extensive tutorials to help others, developed a couple themes and plugins, contributed to WP 3.0 help text, and acts as a moderator on the official support forums. This year, she is also co-authoring the WordPress All-In-One Desk Reference with Lisa Sabin-Wilson and others.
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Tweaking plugins to be 3.0 Network-Compatible
Ron Rennick · Ron & Andrea
Description: With the release of WordPress 3.0 the old “MU” functionality is now merged into WordPress core, a WordPress install with multiple sites is called a Network. In this talk core WP developer Ron Rennick will walk you through the process of converting an existing plugin to take advantage of the APIs available for WP Networks. Devs will learn how to make their plugins work better on a site by site basis and make their settings configurable at a network or individual site level. This is also a perfect opportunity to pick the brain of someone who did a huge amount of work on merging the two WordPress codebases!
Bio: I’m a contributing developer for WordPress. In WordPress 3.0 I worked primarily on the merge of the WordPress and WordPress MU codebases. Andrea & I work together at home with WordPress & BuddyPress. We live in Rural New Brunswick in an old farmhouse which we bought to repair/renovate while we lived in it. At my last day job I was a lead developer/project manager for client/server & web applications.
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WordPress as a CMS: Advice for taking it to the next level
Brian Rotsztein · Uniseo
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Description: More than ever, clients are asking to have control of their websites through the use of a content management system (CMS). WordPress excels at satisfying this need. In this talk, we will consider the advantages, pitfalls and decisions involved in running customized dynamic websites with WordPress at their core. Whether you’re a freelancer or full service web design company, you can benefit from this workshop.
Bio: Brian Rotsztein is CEO of Uniseo, a full service web design, search engine optimization (SEO) and Internet marketing company. A proven expert in SEO, his work has been featured in WebProNews, Promotion World, Inside SEM, The Financial Post, and other notable publications. Already building websites in 1997, he went on to found a website development company (www.RedstoneX.com) in 1999, and launched Uniseo (www.Uniseo.com) in 2004. During that time, he also completed two Master’s degrees. Brian has taught his own classes to high acclaim at McGill University and Boston College and continues to lecture and run workshops internationally. His companies have been customizing WordPress-based websites since version 1.6.
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WordPress & E-Commerce – Beyond the basics
Justin Sainton · Zao Web Design
Description: The brilliance of the WordPress E-Commerce plugin is that anyone can set it up and have it running in about 5 minutes. Learn how to utilize WPEC to it’s fullest extent, implementing suggestions based on time-tested e-commerce analytics and data, enabling your WordPress website to catalyze your business toward increased profitability. My hope is to present a session to Users/Business Owners who desire to utilize WP to build their business and take their e-commerce experience to the next level.
Bio: Justin Sainton is the founder of Zao Web Design, LLC, a web stuff firm based in Portland, Oregon USA. Working exclusively with WordPress and a limited array of other open-source technologies, Justin and Zao have provided creative and effective solutions for a wide variety of companies and associations ranging from Pitney Bowes to the National Education Association to HTC. Lately, Justin has been working as one of the lead developers on the 3.8 release of the WordPress E-Commerce Plugin. When not managing Zao or enjoying his beautiful wife and lovely newborn daughter, Justin can be found enjoying the finest coffee Oregon has to offer.
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Adding Vanilla to WordPress
Brendan Sera-Shriar and Mark O’Sullivan · Vanilla Forums
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Description: This presentation will discuss the benefits of adding a Vanilla Forum to your WordPress site/blog. We will walk through the basics of Vanilla Connect (Single Sign On) in order to manage users across both platforms. We will also demonstrate the ease of theming and integrating Vanilla with WordPress.
Bio: Brendan Sera-Shriar A.K.A. digibomb is the Social Media Manager at Vanilla Forums and has been an interactive designer, developer, author and teacher for over 10 years. Brendan has taught web design at Long Island University Brooklyn campus, and has been a professor at Seneca College in the School of Communication Arts for over 7 years. He is also the founder of PHUG, an open source community for designers and developers with currently over 4000 members. Brendan has contributed to many open source projects including papervision3D, red5, Firefox, WordPress, and Drupal, just to name a few.
Mark O’Sullivan is the founder of Vanilla, open-source community software that powers discussions on over 350,000 sites around the world. Vanilla is the simple way to grow online communities, allowing you to join & manage the discussions taking place around your product, brand, or business.
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Twenty Ten: the last theme you’ll ever need? (Franglais)
Alexandre Simard · Broche à foin (.BIZ)
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Description: [fr] Twenty Ten est le nouveau thème par défaut offert avec WordPress 3.0. Il met en valeur les nouvelles fonctionnalités de 3.0 et incorpore les meilleures pratiques glanées de “theme frameworks” développés par la communauté. Je vais vous expliquer pourquoi vous devriez dès maintenant l’utiliser pour la plupart de (tous?) vos sites WordPress. Puis je vous montrerai comment le faire. Si tout va bien, je répondrai même à vos demandes spécifiques, devant vos yeux ébahis.
[en] Twenty Ten is the new default theme in WordPress 3.0. It showcases all the new features in 3.0 and incorporates best practices learned from theme frameworks developed by the community. I’ll tell you why you should be using it for most (all?) your WordPress sites, starting right now. Then I’ll show you how to do it. If I’m feeling lucky, I may even field feature requests, on the spot.
La présentation will be in franglais.
Bio: Alexandre Simard offre ses services de consultation sous la bannière Brocheafoin.biz. Sa devise: on peut toujours le faire pour moins cher. Il a installé WordPress pour la première fois en 2004, pour le site officiel et le blog de son frère, l’auteur Matthieu Simard. Depuis il a travaillé sur pas mal d’installations WordPress. Il devrait probablement en mettre une à jour en ce moment.
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A beginner’s guide to WordPress
Shannon Smith and Kathryn Presner
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Description: This introductory session is geared for bloggers, web designers and programmers who are new to WordPress. Even those who don’t know a Codex from a Cadillac will feel comfortable here. Delving into WordPress from a beginner’s point of view, we use unintimidating plain language to explain the fundamental concepts of WordPress, from themes, to widgets, to plug-ins. We go spelunking in the admin panel and show real-world examples of what WordPress can do. Questions are welcome, and no query is too basic, so don’t be shy!
Bio: Shannon Smith is the founder of Café Noir Design Inc. a small boutique web design company in the Montreal area specializing in bilingual web design. She supports web standards, semantic markup, microformats, open source products, and sustainable business practices. Shannon works with a number of PHP/MySQL content management systems to create clean, minimalist designs, that adhere to W3C standards.
Kathryn Presner of Zoonini Web Services does a lot more than simply create attractive websites – she delivers custom-designed solutions tailored to her clients’ goals. Coming from a communications background, Kathryn takes a holistic approach to web design and development, building unique sites that work well, look fabulous, and are easily found in search-engine results. She is passionate about helping people avoid common website pitfalls and enjoys speaking to entrepreneurs on the topic.