If you’ve been to a WordCamp, chances are you’ve met John Hawkins before. This self-proclaimed WordCamp addict has attended, spoken, and sponsored more than 20 of them across the US. We’re willing to bet the number is much, much higher than that, but after so many, it’s easy to lose count.

John is the founder of 9seeds, a WordPress development team based on Las Vegas, NV. He runs the Las Vegas WordPress meetup group and is the lead organizer for WordCamp Las Vegas. Most recently, John launched the Hawk Talk Podcast where interviews guests on a variety of topics, including (of course) WordPress. He also blogs at VegasGeek.com.

To say John is a community leader is an understatement. We’re excited to have him involved with Prestige Conference as both a speaker and a sponsor for our Las Vegas event.

In 3 sentences or less, please describe what you do for a living:

I’m a partner at 9seeds. I lead the biz dev team and focus on client communications. Occasionally, they let me write a line or two of code. Occasionally.

Why this career and not something else?

As an early adopter of WordPress, I was already in the community from the beginning. As I started building more and more sites for friends, family and a couple small businesses, I really fell in love with the process. Why not do something I love for a living?

When did you figure out what you wanted to be when you grew up?

When I was 10 years old I bought my first computer with my own money. An Atari 400. I was hooked. I don’t know that I knew then what exactly I wanted to be, but I knew that it would be focused on building stuff with computers.

Once you figured out what you wanted to do with your career, how did you start making things happen?

I spent nights and weekends all through my teenage years writing all sorts of little programs on a Commodore 64. Remember Compute magazine? It used to have code for programs you could write and then run to play games. I’d stay up all night on a Friday to type in the code, play the game for a short time and then, because I had no way to save what I was doing, I’d turn the machine off and the game would be gone. It sounds kinda painful, but those were some of my favorite weekends ever.

Who were your most valuable mentors and how did you connect with them?

Wow, that’s a tough one. I’m like a sponge and I like to pick up tips and tricks from a lot of different people. Chris Brogan has always been somebody I’ve looked up to and have learned a ton from.

What’s coming up next for you?

At my company we’re looking at products as a way to grow our business. So I see a bit of a shift coming from us in 2015. Nothing drastic, we’re not stopping client work, but more likely building up a new team to have a different focus.

What book(s) are you reading right now?

I just finished reading a book called Embrace the Suck. It’s about a guy’s journey in to the world of CrossFit. While I’m driving, I’m currently listening to Book 3 of the Game of Thrones series (but I don’t drive a lot, so it’s going to take me forever to finish all 5 books). And I just started a book called “18 minutes: Find your focus, master distraction and get the right things done.”

Favorite “guilty pleasure” song or band that you can’t help but rock out to?

Seriously, that Taylor Swift writes some catchy tunes. I’d be lying if I said they didn’t get stuck in my head lately.

You’re not going to print this, right?

Name one thing you’re looking forward to for Prestige Conference Las Vegas:

Honestly, just the conference as a whole. I heard so much great stuff about the first Prestige event, I’m absolutely thrilled that they picked Vegas as the second location. I would have traveled to attend if it wasn’t in Vegas, but it’s sure nice to have it right here in my back yard!