Final Speakers List Announcement

WordCamp Kota Kinabalu 2019 is just days away! Are you excited yet? We have finalized our speakers list! *Drum Rolls* Meet our speakers!

Sanjay Willie

Topic Title :
10 First Steps To Secure Your WP Assets (With demos)
In this talk, Sanjay would like to share what are the essential ten tips and tricks, from plugins to bare metal OS to secure any modern WordPress site. These tips could help ensure your sites gain trust, confidence and even positively enhance your search engine ranking. He will also share how to assess your current site and what to do if you do get compromised and how to recover from it quickly.

Sanjay has over 20 years in experience with enterprise software solutions. He has pulled cables under desks, designed security solutions for central banks, governments, businesses and NGOs on cybersecurity. He is a member of our government’s Open Source strategy, OSDeC (a division under MAMPU).

Sanjay is a proud Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Security for his work in the community and was given the recognition by Microsoft since 2009. He is also a frequent public speaker in conferences, user groups and seminars on the related products, technologies and IR4 strategies. He currently runs several open source companies providing reliable, simplified and affordable solutions for the clients to empower them and their businesses

Niels Lange

Topic Title:
WP-CLI Hacks
The WP-CLI is a very powerful tool. During his presentation, Niels points out some very helpful WP-CLI hacks such as cleaning up post revisions, creating dummy content and run performance tests.

Niels works as Happiness Engineer for Automattic where he provides support for WordPress.com customers. Outside work he organises WordCamps and WordPress Meetups both in Europe and Asia.

After his study in computer science in Germany, he moved to the Netherlands, where he worked for several companies as a web developer and a business analyst. Since mid-2014 he’s been travelling through South-East Asia where he fights bugs between palm trees and rice fields.

Sam Suresh

Topic Title:
10 WordPress Design Trends of 2019
Web development is changing every second and 2019 will be no different. User expectations are growing and it is more important than ever to build digital experiences  that are engaging, fun, and intuitive. Content needs to be accessible everywhere, in real-time, and, of course, on mobile devices. In order to keep up with what is happening, He wants to show you the top 10 WordPress web development trends that are happening right now!

Sam Suresh is the founder of MU DOT MY PLT, a tech development & training company based in Kuala Lumpur. He contributes to open source projects in his free time. Formerly, Sam served Joomla! CMS Project as leadership team member.

Sam has spoken at regional WordCamps and was the lead organiser of WordCamp KL 2017. He also contributes to Malaysian Website Awards as Expert Judge.

Sam is an active open water swimmer and completed his 5KM open water swimming in 2018! He often travel around the world to attend conferences and workshops. More information about Sam can be found on his website at samsuresh.net. Follow Sam on Facebook or Twitter. 

Muhammad Johar Jaafar

Topic Title:
Aku Buntu! Perlu Design Baru Tapi Bagaimana?

As a designer or developer. You may or you may not encounter design inspiration problem. But it does happen in our daily life as Web Developer who use WordPress. This sharing session shared on how to get on path and acquire design inspiration, as well copy technique of getting similar website that we want.

Muhammad Johar Jaafar or also known as Ryu Watanabe or Najoe is an adventurer and cosfoodgrammer who does a lot of study and hands-on the things he wants.

He has been involved in various IT fields for over a decade, before he decided to form Next Wonder House. He only tackles Web & Mobile Development with intention to help the transformation of
businesses to the digital world.

Lawrence Chau

Topic Title :
How to Build A Website with WordPress (For Beginners)
Learn how to build website with WordPress – Learn how to choose hosting and setup – Learn how to create pages and posts – Learn how to use themes and plugins – Learn how to customize theme – Learn how to create menus and widgets

Lawrence started to be a web developer since year 2011, and became a WordPress web developer and support since year 2014, He has been helping businesses to design and manage their websites and web hosting in WordPress until now.

He co-leads WordPress Kota Kinabalu community since early 2017, with the help and collaboration with Kinabalu Coders (or known as Sabah Programmers and ICT Builders Association) – a coalition of leads, organisers, and volunteers from tech and maker related communities and local industries.

Lawrence likes tech and business. He often travels for his business, and he believes that he can become a digital nomad himself so that he can keep traveling and working for his business. He wish that one day he can share his experience and knowledge on how to utilize the internet to do business and have the freedom to travel.

Vince Aggrippino

Topic Title:
Can I Make Money with WordPress?
An in-depth discussion exploring the pros and cons of several options for earning an income with WordPress… – Blogging with ads & affiliate marketing – Theme design – A regular job… What’s that? – “Traditional” Freelancing – Upwork et al… Freelancing with help – Fiverr … a slightly different take – Other ways… Are there other ways

An industry veteran with over 30 years of software development experience including hobbyist, military, corporate, freelance, and gig economy roles.

Vince is a lifelong software and technology enthusiast with over 30 years of experience covering support, systems’ administration, database administration, software engineering, and web development. Although he hasn’t always been focused or well organized, he’s seldom been far from a computer. He wrote his first lines of code at about age 12, but once he discovered Web Development, he never looked back.

His primary motivation is to make a better life for his family, but he’s also driven to grow the tech community and improve the tech ecosystem in Sabah.

Always up for a new adventure, Vince has lived and worked in four different countries, but makes his home in Sabah with his wife, daughter, and extended Kadazan family.

James Hunt

Topic Title:
The Location Independent Developer
A talk about going remote, digital nomads, and being location independent. Where to find remote work, how to convince your boss to go remote. What is a digital nomad and why be location independent. Tips tricks and lessons learnt after 5 years of being a digital nomad.

WordPress developer, digital nomad, and entrepreneur.

James is a freelance WordPress developer and entrepreneur from London, England.

After years of working in sales, marketing and managing businesses, James found his passion in writing code, and loves making high quality, fast and SEO-focused websites with WordPress.

James is location independent, and travels the world while working remotely from anywhere with good internet. As an advocate of the “digital nomad lifestyle”, James blogs at locationindependent.co.uk and moderates several  digital nomad Facebook groups with a combined reach of 125,000+ people. He has been featured in publications such as Fast Company, Huffington Post, and The Bangkok Post talking about life as a digital nomad.

Matt Jaworski

Topic Title:
The Future Is Now – The Importance Of Upgrading to PHP 7
In this talk Matt explains the life cycle of PHP versions and how the recent major events (the end of life of PHP 5.x.x and 7.0.x) are impacting the industry. He will walk you through the benefits of upgrading to the newest, fastest version of PHP and the risks of staying behind and using unsupported PHP versions that might pose a security risk.

Matt is a professional nerd with over a decade of experience in the field of Open Source web development. Before PeepSo he was a contractor and have helped build successful businesses around the world.

Stepping up from the role of contractor to business owner, he became PeepSo founder and Chief Technology Officer. He strives to build beautiful, fast and functional software that empowers the users to build their own digital tribes with full autonomy and freedom often not available on the mainstream social networking media.

As a location independent digital nomad Matt travels almost constantly, although over the past four years he has spent most of his time in Indonesia and Malaysia. When not in front of his laptop he usually have fun with his beautiful fiancée Olivia: traveling, riding motorbikes, trying new foods and doing (acro)yoga.