{"id":810,"date":"2011-08-30T17:15:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T15:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2011.capetown.wordcamp.org\/?p=810"},"modified":"2013-01-21T20:17:45","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:17:45","slug":"speaker-spotlight-dan-milward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/speaker-spotlight-dan-milward\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Spotlight: Dan Milward"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dan<\/a>We are very happy to announce\u00a0Dan Milward<\/a>, founder and owner of Instinct Entertainment<\/a> as a speaker at WordCamp Cape Town. Dan will be hosting a Tech\/Development track session on the WP e-Commerce plugin<\/a> and the Open Source community.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tell us a bit about yourself<\/h3>\n

I’m an entrepreneur from New Zealand. I’m into writing, technology, and computer games. I got into WordPress way back in the day before it was even called WordPress, a group of friends and I ran a technology blog on B2 which eventually became WordPress, ever since then I have used WordPress for various projects.<\/p>\n

Why WordPress?<\/h3>\n

Because its the best framework to build a business on and it has a kick ass community.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the WordPress community as a whole? And the South African WP community?<\/h3>\n

I’ve been a part of the WordPress community for over 8 years and I’ve come to love it – its full of technically savvy and fun individuals.<\/p>\n

My experience with the South African WP community is mixed, I’ve worked with innovating companies like LightSpeed WordPress Development<\/a> that are amazing, and then I’ve worked with some not so innovative companies, I guess it varies. For the most part the WP community knows no boundaries – I work with people all over the world, maybe its just luck that some of the best I’ve worked with are from your part of the world.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Cape Town?<\/h3>\n

Because I’m an advocate for our WP e-Commerce Plugin and I want to network with as many of you as possible. We’re building an ecosystem and we want your people to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

What is your talk going to be about?<\/h3>\n

I’m going to show people a few of the things we’re working on at the moment. Then I’m going to talk about running a WordPress business and selling your own Premium Plugins online.<\/p>\n

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Cape Town?<\/h3>\n

Has to be the opportunity to meet with and collaborate with Ashley and his team, Ash and his team have been supporters of the WP e-Commerce Plugin for a long time now and its about time we met in person.<\/p>\n

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?<\/h3>\n

That the WP e-Commerce Plugin is the only truly innovative and retail ready e-Commerce Plugin in the world, proof of this is that the competition are not doing anything particularly ground breaking and are basically copying in our footsteps, I honestly believe we’re literally years ahead of the pack.<\/p>\n

We’re committed to innovating in the e-Commerce space, both in terms of new themes and new features. We’re not going away and we’re here to support our community.<\/p>\n

What is your favourite WordPress theme and\/or plugin, and why?<\/h3>\n

The WP e-Commerce Plugin of course.<\/p>\n

Share one WP tip<\/h3>\n

If you’re a developer looking to get into WordPress then buy the book:
\nhttp:\/\/justintadlock.com\/plugindevbook<\/p>\n

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?<\/h3>\n

John James Jacoby inspires me and I follow him. He’s a top chap with good morals and he’s a great coder.<\/p>\n

What is the most exciting improvement to WordPress that you have noticed in the last year?<\/h3>\n

The bbPress template engine. It allows you to activate Child Themes for Plugins – Plugins have always needed a better “official” system for handling the HTML and CSS. John and Co have cracked that with bbPress.<\/p>\n

Where do you see WordPress 2 years from now?<\/h3>\n

Faster with rock solid functionality around the media management. The Nux not Sux stuff is cool – its something we’re going to integrate with WPEC, and it actually ties into Game Theory which is something I’m quite passionate about.<\/p>\n

One of the things that people talk about with Game Theory is UI and creating “Game Like” interface that rewards people and hints people in the right direction to ensure a positive and productive user experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are very happy to announce\u00a0Dan Milward, founder and owner of Instinct Entertainment as a speaker at WordCamp Cape Town. Dan will be hosting a Tech\/Development track session on the WP e-Commerce plugin and the Open Source community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7694169,"featured_media":932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,9463],"tags":[9503,9481,9482],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcement","category-speaker-spotlight","tag-dan-milward","tag-international-speakers","tag-techdevelopment-track"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/files\/2011\/08\/dan-milward.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1wS7r-d4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7694169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3201,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/3201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}