WordCamp PDX 2015 has an amazing round-up of speakers on the schedule. If you are a developer and determined to take WordPress to the next level under the hood and through the front end, here are some speakers that should be catching your eye on Saturday.

WordPress Themes

Alex Mansfield will be presenting on Building Extensible Themes With Hooks And Filters, ideal for the intermediate to advanced WordPress user and developer. Alex will take you to the middle ground in WordPress theme development using hooks and filters along with page template files to build a quick and easy framework for WordPress Themes, modified on a per-use basis for flexibility. With almost a decade of WordPress experience to share, bring plenty of questions and be ready to learn.

He warns that familiarity with WordPress Theme development and PHP are essential to be able to walk out of the talk with a smile on your face and future plans already in motion in your head.

WordPress Security

Ben Martin is a Security Analyst and Remediation Lead at Sucuri. His presentation is Why Security Matters, guaranteed to shake up your thinking about an issue confronting all of us on the web today. He will be talking about the how and why WordPress sites are attacked and how to improve the security of your WordPress site. He spends his day playing with malware to make the Internet a safer place and helping others keep their sites safe.

Security isn’t something you can just wish away or assume happens to the other guys. Every site on the web is assaulted daily, and you are a click away from something nasty on the web, so get this talk on your schedule to feel a little safer when you walk home after WordCamp in the…dark.

WordPress Theme Customizer

Weston Ruter is a WordPress developer with over 10 years experience. Director of Technology at XWP, he recently became a core committer for WordPress and specializes in the WordPress Customizer, the WYSIWIG interface that allows for WordPress Theme customization.

His presentation, “The Impact Of The Customizer,” will explore the freedom to experiment and explore without worry on WordPress Themes, and how it has not only changed WordPress but the user experience. While the topic is one of great debate in the WordPress Community, developing WordPress to improve the site management experience is a key direction in which WordPress is moving, continuing to democratize the web so everyone can have their say and share their passion by lowering the technical bar.

WordPress Beta Testing

Drew Jaynes started contributing to WordPress by participating in a beta test, changing his life forever as he realized that each contribution he makes to the WordPress core and community improves WordPress for millions of users every day.

He will be looking into the WordPress crystal ball with “Trying Out Tomorrow’s WordPress Today,” and getting everyone charged up and ready to help other WordPress users through beta testing the next versions of WordPress. Calling what he does “dogfooding WordPress for a living,” he will share the lessons learned in beta testing WordPress.

WordPress Usability and Design for a Cure

Doug Yuen has been designing and developing for the web for over 18 years and brings that expertise to WordPress, specializing in WordPress MS, Genesis, and site speed optimization with his company EfficientWP. He also takes time out to co-host WPcast.fm, known as The Professional WordPress Podcast.

He will be speaking about Improving Web Usability In The Search For A Cure, sharing his experience designing and developing WordPress sites for companies researching and treating neurological diseases and cancer. Many companies are so dedicated to the work, a web presence is seen as important but not critical. Experts like Doug are brought in to help them understand the value of usability, responsive design, and security issues. He will be covering user experience, common usability mistakes, content organization, best practices, and techniques that apply to WordPress sites beyond medical and scientific purposes, applicable to all site designs. He says, “Too often the client is too close to the content and can’t look at it from an outsider’s perspective. If you’re a web designer, consider it your responsibility to suggest what’s best for your client.”

Community Management and Communication

Jeremy Felt brings us Powering Higher Ed Through Community. A senior WordPress engineer with Washington State University and their University Communications department, he runs a WordPress Multi-Site, and considers himself an Open Source Student. He will be talking about how to run a multi-site in WordPress and the Open Source Community, focusing on the concept of the open web with community interactions, communications, and helping change happen in a community, much like happens in any team or community project including the WordPress Community. It takes a village, and WordPress serves communities well.

Brain Games for Programmers

Alena Holligan will shake things up with “Exploiting The Brain For Fun & Profit,” a topic she greets with passion as a WordPress and PHP developer and trainer at Treehouse. If there is anything that Alena enjoys more than solving puzzles, she hasn’t found it yet. WordPress offers her myriad problem and puzzle solving opportunities and she will help us learn how to embrace our inner Sherlock Holmes.

Her presentation will help you learn how to tap into your brain’s “features” to improve your problem-solving and coding skills. She describes it as a journey of “some of the most amusing bugs and exploits that allow you to play with the interface between our brains and the world.”

WordCamp PDX 2015 is thrilled to have these speakers dive into the deeper and more challenging aspects of WordPress design and development, and we know you will enjoy their presentations as well.

The only problem is deciding which ones.