Speaker Spotlight: Adii Pienaar

We are happy to welcome Adii Pienaar of WooThemes as an official speaker at WordCamp Cape Town 2011. Adii will host a session on the Developer track. We caught up with him online and asked him to tell us a bit more about his talk and his thoughts on WordPress.

Tell us a bit about yourself

I’m an ex-designer & developer, current entrepreneur & the co-founder at WooThemes, along with a few other projects that I’m involved with in various capacities.

Why WordPress?

I first started using WordPress back in 2006 when I wanted to have a blog and I decided to create my own (instead of using a hosted solution). WordPress – even back then – seemed to find a great balance between the learning curve of picking it up and the ultimate reward of applying one’s learnings.

To this day, I think WordPress is an incredibly flexible and well-developed CMS, which can be used for a wide variety of different projects.

What are your thoughts on the WordPress community as a whole? And the South African WP community?

I see the WordPress community more as an ecosystem of users, providers, buyers etc. And that ecosystem is absolutely thriving.

I think South Africa have been a bit slow in joining this ecosystem and specifically see a shortage of quality, local WP designers / developers that are working hard to persuade & educate SA clients about the benefits of WordPress.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Cape Town?

I’ve learnt a lot about WordPress & the ecosystem over the years and I hope that others can benefit from that experience.

What is your talk going to be about?

WordPress has grown into a very diverse ecosystem, where its users have cultivated multiple different opportunities to create & build a business. Commercial themes have been the most obvious / mainstream success, but beyond theming there’s still so many untapped opportunities. This session briefly explores some of the more untapped opportunities.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Cape Town?

I’ve not connected with as many local WP peeps as I would’ve liked recently. So I’m keen to catch up with a few “old” friends & make a couple of new one’s.

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

Hopefully I can inspire a couple of talented individuals to pursue some WP ideas and build a business around those.

What is your favourite WordPress theme and/or plugin, and why?

Would I be biased if I said the WooFramework? 🙂 Whilst I don’t do much development these days, I always miss the WooFramework & its bundled functions when I’m working on a website that is not powered by it.

Share one WP tip

Keep plugins to an absolute minimum. Mo’ plugins, mo’ problems.

What is the most exciting feature/addition/improvement to WordPress that you have noticed in the last year?

Menu’s (being biased again) & post formats / types.

Where do you see WordPress 2 years from now?

Not much different to what it is now. I think WP will always be a great publishing platform, with the open option to use it as a fully-fledged CMS.