I get on stage to teach senior practitioners what the WordPress, edu-tech, and public-web stack actually does once you’ve shipped on it for two decades.
Speaking context: Building websites since 1996, WordPress since 2007, training delivery since 2004. MA in Learning & Technology, Royal Roads, 2025. Booking paid keynotes, workshops, panels, and firesides.
This page is for people booking a speaker: WordCamp organisers, corporate L&D leads, association programme committees, and edu-tech or gov-tech event runners. The discovery call is twenty minutes and free; if you already know what you need, skip ahead and email directly.
Who this is for
- Fit. WordCamps, WordPress flagship events, and adjacent CMS and devops conferences that want a senior practitioner on stage rather than another vendor pitch.
- Fit. Corporate L&D and internal events at media, education, and public-sector organisations: keynote on a quarterly all-hands, half-day workshop for the digital team, lunch-and-learn for the marketing org.
- Fit. Associations and professional bodies in publishing, higher ed, instructional design, accessibility, and government digital. Annual conferences, regional chapters, and member webinars.
- Not fit. Pay-to-pitch slots dressed up as keynotes, or events whose business model is selling the speaker list to the audience. I’ll invest in a strong room — travel, prep, supporting materials — but I keep speaker fees and ticket sales separate.
What you can book
- Keynote · 30 to 60 minutes. Single-track or main-stage talk on one of the topics below, calibrated to your audience. Custom slide deck, original examples, no recycled “as seen at” decks.
- Workshop · half-day or full-day. Hands-on session for 12 to 40 practitioners. Pre-event survey, custom exercises against your stack, post-event reference materials the team can keep using. Best for L&D, internal upskilling, and pre-conference workshop tracks.
- Panel · 45 to 90 minutes. Substantive participation, not filler. I read the other panellists’ published work in advance, prepare specific questions, and disagree on stage when the disagreement is honest.
- Fireside or armchair · 45 to 60 minutes. One interviewer, prepared arc, audience Q&A in the back third. Useful for association events and corporate town halls that want depth over slideware.
Past talks
- Blogosphere Blitz Live · WordCamp Buffalo · May 2024
- AI in WordPress Workflows · Rochester WordCamp · September 2023
- Make a Living Giving It Away · WordCamp Buffalo · May 2023
- The Secret Art of WordPress · WordCamp Ottawa · July 2017
- Designers and Developers: Bridging the Gap · WordCamp Ottawa · July 2017
- Membership Site for $30 · WordCamp Ottawa · June 2016
Each talk links through to the event page with the abstract, slides, and recording where the venue published one. The full speaking archive lives at training and events. If you want a private reel for a programme committee, ask on the discovery call.
Topics I speak on
- WordPress at publishing scale. What changes when you cross 1,000 posts, multiple authors, and an editorial governance layer. Performance, schema, structured content, and the editorial UX decisions that decide whether the platform survives the next redesign — including the question of when a CMS finally stops fighting the people writing in it.
- Accessible and secure WordPress for the public sector. WCAG 2.2, AODA, Section 508, and the security posture government delivery actually requires. Drawn from CS-03-era public-sector work and current municipal projects.
- LMS and SCORM in the real world. LearnDash, Moodle, and the integration tax of running a learning platform alongside a marketing site. Where SCORM helps, where it hurts, and how to choose.
- Designing learning that adults actually finish. Twenty-two years of training delivery and a 2025 MA in Learning & Technology, applied to corporate and higher-ed contexts. Course architecture, assessment design, and the difference between content and instruction.
Investment
Final number is set on the discovery call once the audience, format, and prep scope are clear.
- WordCamps and community events: by invitation, two per year. Talks are unpaid; the value is the talk video, the room of senior practitioners, and the speaker-page citation. I take community speaking when the room contains decision-makers in media, education, or government, and when the recording will be public.
- Industry conferences (WPCampus, agency-owner events, CMS / devops conferences): keynotes typically CAD 5,000; half-day workshops typically CAD 7,500; full-day workshops typically CAD 12,000; panels typically CAD 1,500.
- Corporate, association, and L&D bookings: keynotes typically CAD 12,500; half-day workshops typically CAD 15,000; full-day workshops typically CAD 24,000; fireside or executive briefing typically CAD 9,000.
- Government and higher-ed in-house (sole-source thresholds in mind): keynotes and invited lectures typically CAD 6,500; half-day workshops typically CAD 8,500; full-day workshops typically CAD 14,000.
- Virtual or remote delivery: 70% of the in-person figure for the same audience class. Same prep, same custom deck, no travel.
Travel and accommodation billed at cost outside a 100km radius of Fort Erie, Ontario, with receipts. Long-haul flights (more than four hours) require business class for daytime-of-talk arrivals so the keynote isn’t delivered jet-lagged. Bookings hold on a 50% deposit; balance due on delivery. Cancellations inside thirty days retain the full fee.
What’s included
- A prep call before the event. Thirty minutes with the organiser to confirm audience, calibrate examples, and lock the abstract. If your audience is government accessibility leads, the deck reads differently than for newsroom CMS engineers; the prep call is what makes that possible.
- A custom slide deck. Built for your event, not adapted from someone else’s. Slides are mine to keep but the deck is yours to share with attendees afterwards.
- Original examples and code. Real client work, anonymised where required, with the receipts. No stock-photo case studies.
- Recording and clip rights. You get full recording rights for your archive and member channels. I retain the right to use short clips on my own channels and in future talks; we agree the boundaries in writing before the event.
- Post-event materials. A reference page on This Is My URL with the slides, references, and any code samples; linked from your event page so attendees have somewhere to send their colleagues.
Trust cues
- Building websites since 1996. WordPress since 2007. Training delivery since 2004.
- MA in Learning & Technology, Royal Roads University, 2025. Active WordPress.org contributor profile.
- Past employers and clients include Corel, Yorkville University (Director of Corporate Technology), Government of Canada delivery at the CS-03 level, Postmedia network properties, and Sherwin-Williams brand sites.
- Reachable referees on request: prior conference organisers, corporate L&D leads, and university programme staff.
If your team needs more than a keynote, the team training engagement is where the workshop becomes a program.