Speakers
Our speakers are celebrated industry leaders and excited first-timers.
Year after year, they deliver the best value in our industry.
Claire Lew
Claire Lew is the CEO of Know Your Company, a software tool that helps business owners with 25 to 75 employees overcome company growing pains. The software was originally built by Basecamp. Since then, Know Your Company has helped over 10,000 people at companies like Airbnb and Kickstarter. Claire's mission in life is to help people become happier at work. Previously, she helped co-found The Starter League a beginner-focused software school in Chicago, and founded ClarityBox, a consulting practice for CEOs. Claire is also a proud Northwestern University alum. You can say hi to Claire on Twitter at @cjlew23.
Session : The Things Unsaid
Matt Stauffer
Matt is an accomplished developer, teacher, writer, and communicator. Since the late 90s, Matt has been thinking deeply about coding practices, while continuously refining his craft. He combines an aptitude for big-picture thinking with serious development chops, honed in his professional practice and through his continuous onslaught of side projects.
In recent years, Matt has become deeply involved in the Laravel community, and his blog at mattstauffer.co has become required reading for Laravel developers and responsive designers alike. Matt is a regular speaker at Laracon, and he is currently writing a book entitled Laravel: Up and Running, to be published by O’Reilly media in 2016.
As technical director, Matt provides leadership on every client project, directs and mentors our growing development team, and leads all of Tighten’s internal product development efforts. Matt is fiercely passionate about work and life, and he keeps Tighten and our clients on their toes at all times.
Session : Leveraging Laravel: Launching Side Projects Quickly With Laravel
Erik Reagan
Co-Founder, Operations Director – Focus Lab
Chances are, if you’ve spoken to Erik Reagan for any length of time, you’ve heard him talk about his family. His beautiful wife and kids are his world and it does not take long to discover that. He is a huge proponent of being intentional with time and keeping work at work. (His wife thinks that’s pretty cool.) Erik’s career has been an evolution from musician, to developer, to entrepreneur. He has a variety of interests these days, but what ties them all together is a hunger to learn how and why things work. What was once “How does this chord progression work?” turned into “How does a dependable website get built?” and eventually became “What does it take to build a great company?”
Session : The Realities of Failure
Erik Reagan
Co-Founder, Operations Director – Focus Lab
Chances are, if you’ve spoken to Erik Reagan for any length of time, you’ve heard him talk about his family. His beautiful wife and kids are his world and it does not take long to discover that. He is a huge proponent of being intentional with time and keeping work at work. (His wife thinks that’s pretty cool.) Erik’s career has been an evolution from musician, to developer, to entrepreneur. He has a variety of interests these days, but what ties them all together is a hunger to learn how and why things work. What was once “How does this chord progression work?” turned into “How does a dependable website get built?” and eventually became “What does it take to build a great company?”
Session : Doing More by Doing Less
Chris Quinn
Co-Founder, Operations Director – eHouse Studio
Chris is a Co-Founder and the Operations Director of eHouse Studio, a user experience design company based in Charleston, SC where making customers happier and businesses healthier is a passion. With a background in interior design, Chris has brought her design and organizational skills to the operations side of running eHouse Studio. Chris finds passion in creating a compelling work environment where people can be themselves while growing professionally and personally. After 10 years of agency experience, she has learned a lot about what works well and what doesn’t. She is a Co-Founder alongside her husband, Aaron and Father In Law, Rick.
When not multi-tasking at the office, Chris is a coffee drinking, chocolate eating, multi-tasking mother of two finding any spare moment to spend time at the beach.
Session : How Transparency Empowers Your Team to be More Productive
Amy Gebhardt
Amy is a Minneapolis-based Web Application Developer with a traditional Computer Science background and passion for technology, learning, and people. With a history of hybrid roles, she’s managed to avoid choosing between the front-end and the back-end allowing her to establish a skill-set in a variety of languages from C# to PHP to CSS to JavaScript. A 30 out of 30 on the Myers Briggs extroversion scale, Amy loves to get involved with local MeetUps, attend conferences, and lead the Minneapolis Girl Develop It chapter.
Session : Let’s Make JavaScript Great Again
Scott D. Epter
Dr. Epter has spent nearly 20 years on the vendor side of building, maintaining and restoring relationships between clients and vendors. He has served in a number of technical and business roles and has spent much of his career working with the Fortune 500. In his current role as VP Technology at Exago inc. he oversees several critical client functions. Prior to Exago Scott has also spent time at IBM, Credit Suisse and a few hip-and-trendy digital media agencies. A recurring theme throughout his career has been his strength in advancing relationships and rescuing troubled ones when needed. When not in the office, Scott can be found with his family, in the mountains, working on his house or large vegetable garden, or simply enjoying a glass of wine by the fire.
Session : Customer Patterns: Successful strategies for working with different types of customers
Marion Newlevant
Software Developer – Freelance
I'm Marion Newlevant (the 2nd most famous Newlevant) and I’m a software developer with a passion for writing clean code and over 25 years experience doing so. I’m a php programmer, and a whiz with Craft and CodeIgniter. I’m competent with mysql (and other databases), with a healthy respect for my limits. I currently work as a freelance web developer on Craft sites.
Session : Programming in Twig
Brett Burwell
Brett Burwell is an independent developer working under the name of Static Interactive. His development work has a reputation for being highly design-driven and differentiated by an uncommon attention to detail. Beyond building websites, he enjoys building relationships, and believes that the success of his projects is often driven by the close partnerships he has with the designers he collaborates with.
Session : The Benefits of Embracing Design (and How Doing so is Easier Than You Think)
Emily Stamey
Web Application Developer – NC State Univ
I am a developer. I enjoy music, games, and socializing. I'm a co-organizer of TrianglePHP in Raleigh, NC and an active volunteer with Girl Develop It. I really enjoy helping people share ideas and learn together, which has led me to conferences.
Session : Pulling up Your Legacy App by its Bootstraps!
Karl Sakas
Agency Consultant – Sakas & Company
Karl Sakas helps digital agencies grow, without the usual growing pains. He founded an online community with 1,200+ agencies in nearly 50 countries. As a consultant at Sakas & Company, Karl advises agencies worldwide about operations, strategy, and leadership. Karl is the author of "The In-Demand Marketing Agency" and has written 150+ articles on agency management. When he's not helping clients, Karl organizes the High Five Conference, serves as President-Elect for Triangle AMA, and volunteers as a bartender on a 1930s railroad car. He lives in Raleigh, NC.
Session : Don't Just 'Make the Logo Bigger': Creating Great Client Relationships
Sharon Steed
Sharon is a speaker and digital marketer specializing in content. She's worked with companies across the country on digital marketing projects with a heavy emphasis on identifying who a company's target audience is and how to speak to them. Her specialization is social media marketing and blogging; she has helped brands grow their social footprint from under 500 followers to close to 10,000 through targeted ads and honing in on the brand's ideal voice. She speaks about improving brand communication practices through empathy. You can learn more about her work at communilogue.com.
Session : Empathy marketing: why vulnerability is the greatest tool in your arsenal
JD Graffam
J.D. Graffam is a user experience expert and business owner. He founded his first business, Simple Focus, a digital product agency, in 2009. Since then, he has grown to own and manage three digital agencies and six SaaS businesses.
He is a published author who speaks about creative business leadership and user experience, and he serves on the Editorial Review Board for Smashing Magazine.
Session : The Network Effect of Creating One Job
Gregg Pollack
Gregg Pollack is the founder of Envy, a web consultancy, and Code School, an online programming school which was acquired in 2015 by Pluralsight for $36 million. Gregg is a big believer in building the Orlando startup and tech ecosystem. He’s done this by founding multiple meetup groups, the Orlando Tech Events Newsletter, BarCamp Orlando, and most recently Starter Studio, Orlando's first technical accelerator now in its fifth class.
Session : Team Craftsmanship: 20 Principles to Put People First
