Who is Oliver Whitham?
Oliver Whitham is an Online Marketer by trade, a pursuer of random projects by night.
Based in Austin, he spends his time running the cities largest remote co-working group, and providing a portal connecting technology professionals in Austin with events to help them progress in the technology scene. During the day he sits with his head buried in spreadsheets figuring out whether a 94% confidence is good enough.
Bringing a Digital Marketer Growth Driver Leader Team Builder Educator to your business
Matching the Personality with Your Team is as Important as Matching Skillset with Role
If you’ve made it to this page, you’re wanting to know more about who I am, not just what I do. Prepare for the textual equivalent of holiday slides.
I grew up in a small town outside of York, England. I lived here for the majority of my early years, before eventually moving in to the City of York itself. There I lived in an old (550ish years) house before making the move across the Atlantic to the music capital of the world – Austin, TX.
I’ve always been at home around computers, and when I stumbled upon the Internet I quickly realized this was where my future lay.
At the age of 15 I already had a series of websites up and running, starting on Geocities before moving on to real hosting providers and utilizing early CMS’s such as Greymatter to build out more advanced websites.
Like many new website builders, I was obsessed with my hit counter, and spent my days figuring out how to generate more traffic. It wasn’t much longer before I started looking at monetization, and that is when my love for online marketing really kicked in. Not only driving traffic but optimizing for clicks and sales drove me to a whole new level.
In the early days I switched from Geocities to Greymatter pretty quickly, until PHP CMS’s came around, including PHP Nuke, PHPBB, and of course WordPress.
The first online community I built was on PHPBB, a social forum for York Locals, this went well for a while, generating a strong community before a new breed community platform (Facebook) came along, however it’s still one of my greatest successes. From that community I saw four marriages, and dozens of life long friendships form.
On the WordPress side I built up a portfolio of WordPress properties, and learned a huge amount about analyzing keywords for potential opportunities, and spinning up SEO focused niche sites which provided a nice supplemental income for a blossoming marketing services business.
Now at 36 I have done a whole lot, including running my own business, running my own projects for fun and for profit, and helping dozens of companies grow their marketing abilities. Most recently I accelerated both my business acumen and leadership skills in my role at WP Engine where I have led SEO and SEM efforts, and in the early days, display, re-marketing, and advising on email and social efforts.
Originally from England, I moved to Austin, Texas in 2009. I instantly fell in love with a city which somehow managed to perfectly combine a laid back atmosphere with a huge variety of events, restaurants, bars, and a growing exciting tech scene.
You’ll often find me working from local coffee shops, trying out local breweries, and attending technology events around town.
While in Austin I reinvigorated my love for building communities, and founded the Austin Marketers group, with a monthly happy hour, and Austin Virtual Workers, providing coffee shop co-working events. Both are currently on hiatus during COVID19, but I’m looking forward to bringing them back online when things become safer, especially with the new drive towards the remote working style.
At home I live over on the East side of Austin with my Wife Jess Moss and our dog Tina Turner (who’s namesake she resembles), and a future baby boy (Roland). I’m currently experimenting with being a (very) amateur gardener, and managed to keep at least some plants alive in the Texas heat.
In my spare time I love to travel, smoke up a brisket, try out local breweries and I’m an avid RTS gamer. On the give back side I’ve worked on web projects (including the Thinkery website) and helped participate in local tech groups, as well as working on short term mentorship programs for budding marketers.
Want to know more?
Contact me, or stop by one of the Austin Marketing Happy Hours, I’d be happy to chat!