The Loss of One of Our Own

It is with a broken heart that we write that the WordPress Community lost one of its own today. Jesse Petersen, a Genesis Preferred Developer, theme and plugin developer, and so much more lost his fight with Cystic Fibrosis today. Jesse was a valued contributor to the WordPress community and will be greatly missed by those who knew him. He was a WordPress user since 2005, a developer since 2008 and a friend to many.

Jesse is most known as being a Genesis Preferred Developer. As a Genesis-preferred developer since 2009, StudioPress trusted Jesse with their customers to assist with custom sites  and he was often personally recommended by the StudioPress founder, Brian Gardner for work. He was dedicated to his profession and to his clients to build products that they can be proud to use on their website. You can find some of his newest themes at GenesisThe.me.

Jesse was also a plugin developer. His newest plugin was GenesisThe.me After Entry Widget Pro that added a widget after a post.  He also has 5 plugins in the WordPress repository including Genesis Latest Tweets and Stealth Login Page. His last commit was only 5 days ago.

Jesse enjoyed being a WordCamp Speaker. He spoke at WordCamp Tampa and WordCamp Orlando in 2015 to name a few. Some of his talks  can be found at WordPress.tv. He enjoyed being a part of the WordPress Community and sharing his knowledge of WordPress.

Also, Jesse was a member of The WP Crowd and was on many of their podcasts. He was also a Treehouse instructor. His lessons include  Modern WordPress Workflow and Genesis Theme Development, which was released in August 2015

Jesse’s personal life was as full as his professional life. He was a family man with a beautiful wife and two adorable boys. Both of his boys came to them as foster children and then they became a forever family. You may remember his “surprise adoption” story of when they adopted their youngest son, Parker back in January, 2016. Jesse and his wife, Kristin, were foster parents up until they decided to take a pause from accepting anymore foster children. He was dedicated to his family and friends. He had a heart bigger than WordPress. 

Cystic Fibrosis had other ideas for Jesse. CF is a genetic disease that affects the ability of chloride to pass through cellular walls. This results in a lack of water balance in cells. Lack of water balance results in a thickened mucus that creates a problem in CFers’ respiratory tract (including sinuses), pancreas, liver, skin, and digestive tract. The life expectancy for CF is about 37 years. Jesse was 38.

Jesse leaves behind a wife and two precious boys who will be going through a lot in the upcoming days. They also could use all the help they can get for last expenses and going forward. Ben Meredith has setup a Give fundraiser to help with the last expenses and for the family going forward.

If you would like to read his story about his past few months of waiting for a lung transplant, please see New Lungs For Me . His older blog about Cystic Fibrosis can be found at Cystic Fibrosis Fatboy.

Jesse said just two days before his passing on TwitterCan you look over your life and say you’d be leaving those connected to you better off having known you? If not, start today.” I think we can all safely say, we are better off for knowing you Jesse Petersen.

 

Images used from Jesse’s blogs.

Call for Speakers

Update: Speaker submissions are now closed. Thanks to everyone who submitted a talk! We’ll get back to everyone as soon as possible.

We’re thrilled to announce that WordCamp US 2017 is officially accepting speaker applications!

The 3rd annual WordCamp US will be held December 1-3, 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee. We are excited to bring together WordPress enthusiasts from around the globe to participate in this fantastic event that celebrates all things WordPress. We appreciate the varied talents and perspectives that developers, content creators, designers, etc.  bring to the WordPress community. We’re looking to build a program packed with amazing presentations which reflects this incredible diversity of the WordPress community, and we want you to be a part of it!

Photo credit: Seth Goldstein.

What We’re Looking For

WordCamp US showcases the best of WordPress and the WordPress Community. We’re particularly interested in hearing from those who have used WordPress in interesting, innovative, and significant ways. Whether the open source software was used to deliver something technically amazing, or whether WordPress was the foundation for creating something meaningful in the community, we want to know about it. We’re also looking for dynamic and versatile speakers to talk about how they use WordPress to grow their business, develop advanced plugins, tell their stories, and much much more. Everybody has a unique WordPress story to tell, and we want to hear yours.

There’s much we can learn from others who haven’t traditionally spoken to our community. Your voice is welcome here.  If you work on other Open Source projects or web design and development in general, and think the WordPress community could benefit from your story, we want it told at WCUS.

Looking for more inspiration? Check out presentations from last year’s event.

Photo credit: Seth Goldstein.

Apply Today!

Please use the application website below to share your ideas with us. We encourage potential speakers to upload more than one pitch, but no more than three submissions will be accepted from an applicant. If you choose to submit more than three, the first three will be the only pitches considered.  If you run into problems submitting your application, please contact us.

Apply to speak at https://wcus-speakers.org

All applications must be submitted by June 23, 2017 at 11:59 EST (-5 GMT).

WordCamp US 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!