WordCamp Presentations

Maria was a Designer and Graphic Artist in the newspaper business for more than 25 years. She’s been a speaker at WordCamp Columbus for the last 3 years and is a member of the Columbus WordPress Meetup community.

She has experience in print, multimedia and the web and has worked at The Washington Post, MSNBC, Microsoft, The Columbus Dispatch, The Akron Beacon Journal and The Orlando Sentinel, as well as other media outlets. She’s been a Page Designer, Graphic Artist, Editor and Copy Editor, Web Producer, Photo Editor and IT Systems Analyst/Editor.

Maria can design and code, edit photos and video, as well as teach and create graphics and multimedia. Currently, she is a contractor and freelance web designer and developer, specializing in WordPress.

She lives in Columbus, Ohio, enjoys cooking and thrifting and is addicted to food trucks.

She has owned averion.com since 1995.

WordCamp Columbus:

2014: Typography and Web Fonts
2015: Photo Prep 101 for WordPress
2016: Widgets 101

Also, I have presented at various Journalism workshops and conventions, as well as participated in Panel Discussions. I taught and led discussions as a grad student at Ohio University.

Widgets 101

What exactly is a Widget and how do they work? I’ll go through and demo Widgets for beginners and give the basics. And if there is time, I’ll go through the 5 Widgets I can’t live without.

Photo Prep 101 for WordPress

How come when you upload your photos in WordPress, they are either too big or too small? I will do a session on basic photo editing for WordPress and I’ll demo my process for preparing images before I upload them and why I do it this way.

• How to prepare your photos for import
• Photo editing options if you don’t want to buy PhotoShop
• DPI, PX, Pica, PT, what the heck does all that mean?
• How to edit or fix your photos once you’ve uploaded them
• Plugins that help resize or optimize photos
• If there is time, I’ll briefly touch on copyright and where to get good photos

Presentation files

Typography and Web Fonts

How do you choose a font for your web site? Most people don’t know how to choose a font or why it makes a difference.

In my session, I’ll show some examples of sites that use fonts well and sites that don’t. You learn what the difference is between fonts and how to mix and match them.

Then we will discuss some good tools, plug-ins and sites to go to learn more.