MC’s: Derick Watts & The Sunday Blues
Derick Watts & The Sunday Blues have made waves both locally & internationally with their unique brand of comedy, using YouTube as their platform of choice. Known for their tongue-in- cheek parody music videos (“Braaiday”, “The Car Guard Song”, “Movember Song”) as well as their original animated series (“Chat Sandwich”, “Hippo & Croc”), their work has been featured on sites such as TIME Magazine, Huffington Post, The Telegraph and Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die.They were also adjudged by Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee as winners of the international Movember video competition in 2012, beating out hundreds of entrants worldwide.
The duo, consisting of Nicholas Smal & Gareth Allison, recently signed with Los Angeles-based network The Collective, and have worked with local favourites Ard Matthews, Dr. Michael Mol, Rob van Vuuren & even Derek Watts himself on some of their videos.
They are currently stealing the hubcaps off your car as you are reading this.
Matty Cohen
Matty is the Chief Product Officer at WooThemes. A passionate WordPress and web developer, avid musician and (occasional) blogger, he enjoys showcasing the value that is created when connecting products, as well as how developers and business owners can add value to their products and services.
Dave Perel
Co-founder of Obox Design and SalesGenius. Specialises in design + front end development and is head of product at Obox Themes.
Gavin Mannion
Gavin is a 35 year old software developer who has spent most of his working life in the corporate world while never really fitting in. Father of two and husband of one he decided a few years ago to start trying to earn R1 billion online where he has spent most of his life. Through many failures has risen Lazygamer.net which while not a billion Rand entity (yet) has enabled Gavin to spend more time tinkering in WordPress and PHP while seeing a lot more of this wonderful world we live in.
Marlon Parker
Marlon is an activist of using Social Media and Mobile Technology for Social Good. He is the founder of RLabs a social enterprise using technology and innovation for change. RLabs is currently in 21 countries and have equipped thousands of people in challenging communities to leverage the power of WordPress to share stories of hope.
Rian van der Merwe
Rian is passionate about designing and building software that people love to use. After spending several years working in Silicon Valley, he is currently Director of User Experience at consultancy Flow Interactive in South Africa. He also writes regularly about design, technology, and software development for Smashing Magazine and his own site, Elezea.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema is the Vice President of Software Engineering at Emphasys Software, where he manages innovation, new product development and high performers. He’s also a public speaker, writer, and blogger. In his spare time he helps organizations leverage WordPress and helps WordPress organizations find leverage.
Maria Scarpello
Maria Scarpello is the Internal Community Manager at WooThemes and also a fulltime traveler.
Maria is the first lady to join the WooThemes Ninjas Support team. Originally from Lawrence, Kansas, Maria has spent the last three years living in her RV traveling the US. As a part of her travels she frequents craft breweries and writes about it @TheRoamingPint. It has always been her dream to travel the world and now thanks to WordPress the dream life has become a reality.
Rob Hope
Renowned throughout Cape Town’s southern suburbs, Rob is an avid surfer, hiker and music fan who’s often seen paddling around the False Bay. He recently quit the web development game to focus full time on his niche passion project, One Page Love – an online resource of beautiful one page websites and templates.
Brian Krogsgard
Brian is a WordPress Developer from Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the editor of Post Status, a WordPress news and links resource. You can find Brian on Twitter @krogsgard.
Adii Pienaar
Adii Pienaar is the ex-CEO & Founder of WooThemes (leading WordPress theme and plugin provider with tons of free and commercial products available to jumpstart website creation). He has a passion for helping other entrepreneurs, making new mistakes (of his own) and as such is working on his new startup, PublicBeta. He is also a new dad, ex-rockstar and wannabe angel investor.