December 31, 2018 — Gutenberg will soon be part of the WordPress core and will be the new way we make content. How can you make some income as the new platform is released?

December 31, 2018 — How do you leverage your business blog to work with all the competition in the neighborhood

December 31, 2018 — How many times have you been in a situation where the client is never happy with the results, no matter what you do? How many ’emergency’ messages have you responded to because the site isn’t quite right in some new way? How many clients have you lost or fired because they honestly had no idea what they really wanted? If you answered yes to any of those questions, this session is for you!

Gathered from years of ‘learning it the hard way’ I am excited to share my knowledge with Freelancers, Agency Owners, Project Managers, Business Development professionals as well as anyone else who wants to better manage conversations.
Walk away from this talk with a better understanding of:
Project And Sales Pipeline Strategy
Uncovering Client Business Goals
KPIs vs KPIs
Managing Scope

December 31, 2018 — Agile methodology and frameworks like Scrum were created for iterative processes like software development, and in recent years have been getting adopted more and more by digital agencies of all shapes and sizes.

And yet, this methodology created for development, and therefore _for developers_, meets with a lot of resistance. Why?

Whatever the applied method, project management is often viewed as an imposition, a constraint – a heavy process that slows you down, interminable meetings that interrupt your day. Does this ring true?

Scrum is in fact an empowering tool for developers and development teams. In this presentation, I will walk you through the basics of Agile and Scrum, debunk some common myths, and share some of my experiences with the practical application of Scrum, including working with remote teams.

December 31, 2018 — Visiting a foreign open source community is kind of like traveling to a foreign country! It may be difficult if you don’t speak the language or share the same culture, but you’re guaranteed to return home with a new perspective and interesting experiences.

It’s easy to get comfortable and stay in your own community bubble. Breaking outside of that allows you to see how others solve problems and tackle new opportunities. And, it turns out that other open source communities are generally welcoming and interested in your perspective as well!

We’ll share high-level overviews of popular open source projects to help you plan your itinerary. Attendees will leave with knowledge about what’s out there, recommendations on how to prepare, and confidence to your own start journey.

December 30, 2018 — You’ve no doubt heard a fast loading website is critical to success. With Google’s recent algorithm updates, this is more true now than ever. Many plugins and services claim to speed up WordPress, but which are most effective? Should you spend money on a service or find something free? How can site owners improve performance without writing code? This beginner-friendly talk covers the basics of site performance and recommends simple strategies and tools to boost performance. Sprinkled throughout will be pro tips for power users who want to take these concepts to the next level.

Presentation Slides »

December 30, 2018 — Sometimes the best way to know what you’re doing right, and what you can do better, is to look at things from a fresh perspective. Being a Drupal developer for almost 9 years, and a recent convert to WordPress 2 years ago, I’ve seen the best and worst of both systems. Rather than pitting the two against each other, it’s best to look at the strengths, and yes the weaknesses of both. By doing so we can learn from each unique community and together make the projects stronger.

This talk will center around my experiences of building a plugin coming from Drupal, what I found in the WordPress community that I’m trying to take to the Drupal community, and visa-versa what I learned in Drupal that I hope to share with WordPress. This will be a fun look at the two communities and from it we’ll come away with a greater sense of how we can better ourselves, our sites, and the open source community as a whole.

December 30, 2018 — The idea of marketing is shrouded in mystery. While there are endless agencies and consultants that bill themselves as the best at understanding particular demographics and tools, I believe anyone can be a great marketer if they apply four core principles. We’ll talk about product, place, promotion, and price – the keys to a strong marketing plan. We’ll dive into understand the art and science behind great campaigns and 10 key concepts I have observed.

December 30, 2018 — What if we saw WordPress as a force of change on the web and in society? We talk about our aspiration to reach 50%, but we rarely talk about how we could and should use the power that comes with that market share. Starting from the WordPress philosophy of “democratizing publishing through free open source software,” this talk explores how — through code, community, and political engagement — WordPress can be used to move the web, the internet, and our society forward.

December 30, 2018 — Stories are powerful and a part of our genetic DNA. Stories in products can be used as fuel to power creation. The experience itself is a story and it’s important to craft the narrative. By understanding the stories of those interacting with the product, you can guide, support and even change their narrative from a tragedy to a happily ever after. In this talk I will show how to use stories in your day to day work. Start seeing the stories, learn ways to tell the stories to others. By putting stories at the heart of everything you do, you experience will improve and everyone will have a better time.