Brian Hoke

I run a small web consultancy in Syracuse, NY, USA, with core areas of expertise including WordPress, Ruby on Rails development, and web design, marketing, and project management.

I delivered presentations in 2013 at WordCamps in Montreal and in Toronto. I’ve recently authored online courses on Ruby on Rails, SASS, CSS, and other topics.

Speaking session

Sass and WordPress in the Designer track

About your presentation

Sass is a CSS preprocessor library that adds “power and elegance to the basic language.” Sass features (like variables, nesting, mixins) make CSS much easier to write; thoughtful use of Sass makes CSS much easier to maintain.

What do you want people to learn from your presentation?

In particular, how to use Sass as an organizational tool for writing, maintaining, and updating CSS. The variables, mixins, and other features are great, but using Sass to organize CSS is what grabs me. I’ll also share some ways not to use Sass – some bad habits to avoid.

Why did you decide to speak?

Presenting forces me to take time to think through the work I do: does Sass really make sense as a tool for me? What are the benefits? And presenting to a smart, engaged audience means that I get to hear feedback on how I might do things better.

What attracted you to WordPress in the first place?

WordPress’s community – thriving online support, WordCamps!, open-source improvement to the core framework year after year – first attracted me to it, and keeps me coming back.

What is your favourite plugin or theme, and why?

Gravity Forms is a favorite plugin: the ease of use and power of it – and how well it is written – just blows me away.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

I’m most looking forward to mingling with a knowledgeable, friendly community and hearing from some great speakers.