Speakers Announcement – Round 1

The WordCamp Asia 2023 Organizing Team is pleased to announce the first round of speakers who will be joining us in February 2023.

  • Francesca Marano

    “I support developers who build the open web, and help others use it.”
    I am a second-generation woman in tech and I have been tinkering with computers since the age of 8.

    I am the Associate Director of Engineering at XWP, where we build a better web at enterprise scale. My focus is on the professional growth of our engineering team, made of over seventy people from around the world.
    I have been active in the WordPress.org open source project since 2015: I served as the Community Team and the Core Team global representative and I co-led the release of WordPress.org 5.3 and 5.4.

    One of the things I am most proud of is the blog I founded in 2013, C+B. With an editorial staff of more than one hundred authors, C+B has helped thousands of Italian creative female entrepreneurs find their path throughout the years.

    I believe in sharing knowledge with generosity. I am an accomplished educator, community leader, mentor, and international public speaker.

  • Isabel Brison

    Isabel is a front end engineer working at Automattic and has been a maintainer and full time sponsored contributor to WordPress for the past 3 years. When not coding, reviewing or otherwise wrangling software, she enjoys getting out in the sun, growing herbs and veggies, and working on art projects.

  • Jonathan Wold

    I love WordPress and I’m focused on helping the WordPress ecosystem grow. My intention with the topics I speak on is to provide anchors and reference points to support the WordPress ecosystem, especially extenders. I’ve had the privilege of being full-time in the WordPress ecosystem for 17+ years, including 18 months at Automattic, leading community for WooCommerce.

  • Kin Ko

    Writer. Instructor on blockchain. Blogging on ckxpress.com powered with WordPress for 15+ years. Published “The Sociology of Blockchain: Reimagining Money, Media and Democracy” and other 2 books. Member of Creative Commons and publish all works with open license.

    Fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

  • Okamoto Hidetaka

    Hide (ひで pronounced “Hee-Day”) is a Developer Advocate at Stripe, where he works on writing, coding, and teaching how to integrate online payments. He has organized several community conferences including WordCamp Kyoto and JP_Stripes Connect 2019, the first Stripe user conference in Japan. Prior to Stripe, Hide was a lead Software Engineer at DigitalCube, focused on building plugins, open source, and developing SaaS application dashboards. Hide lives in Hyogo, Japan with his family and two cats.

    WordPress Core contribution: 4.7, 5.0
    WordCamp Kyoto 2017 lead organizer
    Speaker at the WordCamp Singapore 2016, 2017 and several WordCamp in Japan.

  • Saif Hassan

    Where developers are focused on code, architecture, performance, and engineering, Saif focuses on the big picture of “what are we trying to do” and on the details of the user experience, the feature set, and the way the product will get used.

    He is currently working as the Lead Product Manager at weDevs, overseeing SaaS platforms, and WordPress products. Ex Product Manager at Poptin & Premio.

    Saif loves helping people and engaging with communities. He co-founded a Facebook community in Bangladesh with half a million members who help each other daily. He’s a passionate speaker; he often talks about WordPress, community, open-source projects, and human-centered designs.

    Saif possesses exceptional knowledge of Human-Computer Interaction and loves building products that users love to use. A longtime WordPress enthusiast, he believes that websites and the tools used to build them should be well crafted, intuitive, and accessible.

  • Shilpa Shah

    Erstwhile co-founder at Hummingbird Web Solutions (managed a portfolio of popular WordPress themes and plugins – CyberChimps, SlideDeck, WPeka and others). Just getting started with my new WordPress blog called WPCubicle.com.

  • Thijs de Valk

    I’m the CEO at Yoast. I have a Master’s degree in Pedagogical Sciences, which can be best understood as developmental psychology. As a behavioural scientist, I’m interested in how people interact with our products, services and how they view our brand as a whole.