Brian is a designer, developer, photographer, educator and finder eradicator of bugs. I suspect he only addresses bugs in software but I’ve never asked him… he might also hunt live bugs. Let’s get to know him better.
What drives you to speak at WordCamps?
I love helping others be more effective and efficient in what they do.
What is your session about?
Adding testing and continuous integration to an every-day workflow
Where can people find more about you?
What would you like to see change about the WordPress platform in the next 5-10 years?
I would like to see better onboarding experiences become standard. I would also love to see less and simpler UI. Both of these are extremely difficult and have been the forefront focus of many people, so I believe we’ll get there and I’ve been excited to watch them with each minor breakthrough.
Who do you think is under represented in the WordPress community?
Non-English speaking users far outnumber all other user groups, but I think they are both underrepresented and underserved.
What was the most challenging WordPress project you’ve worked on?
I worked on a team that built an incredible blend of WordPress and Laravel used for managing hundreds of thousands of pieces of content and media, each with unique, cascading visibility rules. It was a project that took more than a year to build and nearly as long to plan and scope. The effort that the team put into the project was a serious sight to behold and the fruit of their labor is unlike any other WordPress project I’ve seen before or since.
What’s a problem you recently solved creatively using WordPress?
Most recently I helped build the functionality to surface nearby clubs groups for a university’s alumni on their new WordPress site. Each group has an address (most of them partial and incomplete) which is geocoded. The site then uses geolocation to locate the visitor and turn up group posts within the geofenced area. It was a lot of fun to build and gave me a reason to learn several new things along the way.