December 15, 2017 — Open Source can be a great foundation for building a business. That being said, keeping the balance between community building and commercial activities can be tricky. In this talk I want to share my experience and practical tips, which can help you leverage OS and boost your business, while meeting fantastic people and learning a lot in the process.

December 15, 2017 — Since its launch in 2009., Netokracija has become “The Techcrunch of the Balkans” – according to Techcrunch itself – the largest tech and business blog in the region built entirely with enthusiasm – and WordPress.

With over 250.000 readers across the Balkans, Netokracija’s Ivan Brezak Brkan will tell the story about how his team created not just a blog, but a community that supports startups, digital change etc, explaining:

* How WP provided a great basis, but also proved customizable when the project grew;
* How Netokracija’s team based in 3 cities manages their editorial process to create outstanding content;
* What has Netokracija build over the years based on WordPress and their evolving business model;
* What other content creators can learn from the evolution of the project over the past 8 years.

December 13, 2017 — For WordCamp Europe 2017, the design team wanted to create a brand new theme. Not only for this WordCamp iteration, but for all WordCamps worldwide.

Developing a theme is not hard, but what makes it differently, when you have to develop something that fits for many different countries and languages. How do you deal with the limitations of a huge multisite, which all WordCamp website run on. And were do you put which code? And last, but not least: how can you contribute code to a plattform like wordcamp.org, when you don’t have direct code access?

In this talk, I will share my experiences in developing a new default theme and the difficulties I had along the way.

December 13, 2017 — In her talk, she will cover how the power of WordPress REST APIs can be used to create functional Single Page Applications (SPA). Also, if time permits, she would cover possibilities where else the RESTful APIs can be used.

December 12, 2017 — So you’ve just built (or contracted for) a shiny new WordPress website and now your first visitors are leaving comments, purchasing off your site… exciting!

But just like out there in sci-fi movies, the internet can be a dangerous place: spam bots, malware attacks, insecure web hosting, etc.

With this Awesome Toolkit Vol 1, I intend to provide you with all the basic (and some more advanced) WP management tools AND techniques that will ensure your site is secured, backed-up, and performs at its best.

At the end of this presentation, you’ll have the know-how and resources to maintain your own site, or if you’re a designer, to improve what you deliver to your clients and ensure the safekeeping of their new site.

December 12, 2017 — eCommerce websites have been evolving since the first online shop opened in 1995. You would think that, by now, businesses would have perfected their customer journey and user experience? Yet, many online retailers are still buying or commissioning one-size-fits-all themes under the assumption that these will automatically rake in the millions.

Each and every functionality and feature on your website’s money pages has a purpose – to arouse curiosity, generate interest, tingle desire, provide social proof and create a sense of urgency. That’s how you will convert your visitors into paying customers.
During my talk, I will walk you through proven product, cart and checkout frameworks, that you can take away to design the customer journey that fits your business model and product offerings. I will draw on examples from my own professional experience and other successful eCommerce websites.

You will pick up some inspiration to turn your own website into a high-converting eCommerce machine.

December 12, 2017 — That phase of any project that, if not pinned down and given the attention it needs, can trip us up big time. Chatting with other small agencies and self-employed WordPress developers and designers, I’ve found we all share experiences of differences between the client’s expectations and what we’ve priced and committed to delivering. If only we knew all the details upfront…

So for this talk I will gather as many experiences and ideas from as many of us as possible – from one man bands to the larger agencies, developers and designers – we all need to pin down Discovery!

Discovering just what the client expects and all the things around being able to make that happen. That’s what we want to do.

The thing is, we all know this. Some include this already in their process and from this they have become successful (surely!!). Each of us has a horror story of the client’s expectations not being met because we did not understand quite what they had in mind; there was a mismatch and the client holds us accountable for that. Or what they want and expect is just not possible on their hosting. Or the client’s data needs significant translation to be usable.

Being clear at the start is essential. If we do this, document it, get the client to confirm that this document is what they want and understand they’re paying for, then we’re winning and so are they.

December 12, 2017 — The accessibility of a website is significantly affected by the underlying HTML, CSS and javascript that developers use to create it. But it is also possible to impact upon the accessibility of a site at the design stage – both the visual design, and the interactive design or UX. And it’s not just about colour schemes either.

In this presentation I will outline a few key points to keep in mind when you are designing your next beautiful website or theme. I will illustrate the points with some good (and bad) examples.

Good design and web accessibility can go hand in hand – come and find out how.

I have previously presented this talk at WordCamp London 2017 and WordCamp Bristol 2017, WordCamp Edinburgh and a couple of WP meetup groups.

December 12, 2017 — Remote work has been called the future of work. While many WordPress based companies both large and small work remotely, it’s not always easy, there might not be options for co-working spaces in your area, you may not be able to work effectively from home, etc. How do you stay focused, how do you communicate effectively with your team, your boss? This talk will cover why remote work matters, whether or not it works, real life stories, and resources for finding remote work.

December 12, 2017 — Searching for WordPress project management on Google brings up tons of articles about tools you can use for managing WordPress projects. Like any tool, if not used correctly, it does more harm than good. Instead of first reaching for a tool to organize your tasks, this talk covers the human behaviours, habits and communication methods that make successful project delivery, no matter what tools you choose to use to organize yourself.