December 10, 2017 — Have you been tasked to build the most powerful weapon in the universe? No? How about a hyper performant and scalable system integrating multiple services and workflows all corners of the globe? Are you new to creating and maintaining a system for WordPress to thrive in, but don’t know how to keep it safe?

Whatever your task is, architecture is key. And while putting an exhaust port on the reactor core seems like a good idea, trust me when I say it’ll blow up in your face later. “Death Star” security happens whenever a system relies entirely on an outermost security layer — and fails catastrophically when breached. Defense in depth is especially critical as a site becomes more complex, utilizing systems which may not all be on the same server.

We’ll be exploring methods strong enough to cross the public Internet, flexible enough to allow your team to thrive, and robust enough to avoid single points of failure. Layering your security into a project from the beginning at every step and every layer will help prevent a young Jedi shooting a proton torpedo through a hole the size of a wamp rat and destroying your hard work.

A talk for projects and teams of all sizes, this will be an interactive time filled with lessons learned and examples from the real world. Just promise that afterwards you’ll use what you learn for the good of the galaxy and that you won’t go build a planet sized weapon of mass destruction.

December 10, 2017 — You know that Continuous something-or-other exists. Maybe you have even heard the terms Continuous Integration or Continuous Deployment, but not much more than that. I was in your shoes just a few short months ago. I came, I coded, I conquered. Now I am breaking it all down so you too can feel confident with the basics of continuous integration and deployment.

I will cover the basics of how to setup Github and Circle CI with WordPress and configure deployment to a staging environment. We will cover continuous-jargon and break down yml and script files to better understand how it works and how you can start to use it with your projects.

Attend. Absorb. And you too can conquer.

December 10, 2017 — “What do I need to learn to become a WordPress developer?” This question pops up in forums, social media, and everywhere else on a daily basis. I think a better question is “How do I prepare for a future that looks nothing like the status quo?”

Tech is changing at incredible speed, and what we consider important skills today may be meaningless a year from now. This talk is a discussion of what technologies are on the horizon, how the web and the internet will change, and how we can all prepare for a future with or without WordPress.

December 10, 2017 — I’ve been a PHP developer for most of my professional life, but earlier this year I switched to JavaScript full time. I’m here to tell you that it’s not a scary move, and can be a whole lot of fun!

From my first impressions of React, ES6, and large scale JavaScript projects, through to implementing large scale features, I’ll walk you through how I became a JavaScript developer in just a few months. I’ll show you how you can do it, too, and what this means for the future of WordPress development.

December 10, 2017 — Webpack is a powerful tool for bundling, transforming and optimizing your JavaScript, CSS and HTML for front-end web applications, but it can be hard to get started, and even harder to understand what’s happening inside that build. A simple boilerplate might take a minute to build, and create a many-megabyte JavaScript bundle, before you even add any code of your own—but it doesn’t have to be this way. In this talk we’ll discuss what Webpack is doing when it creates your bundle, and how to inspect the generated code to understand the origin of build performance issues. Armed with that information we will then learn some simple ways to create smaller bundles that rebuild faster, to speed up your own development and to improve the experience for the users of your application!

December 10, 2017 — The most important factor for people in web design is, that it makes it easy for them to find what they want. Yet, so many websites are so poorly structured, that it’s impossible to do so. If you want to learn what content should be on your site or how your menu should be structured: this talk is for you.

Information architecture is something serious, however, the majority of businesses have structured their sites in an bad way, using the ITTIR-method – “I think this is right”. While common sense is a useful tool and a lot of sites are very simple (e.g. 5 pages total), there’s a better way to go about it. If you already have tens of pages on your site, you should do proper information architecture analysis. Guiding people through the vast amount of information on offer is something that requires thought and research. Intuitive navigation doesn’t happen by chance. So don’t jump the visual part of of your webdesign too quick, but take plenty of time to think about the architecture of the information you offer on your site.

This helps you answer user’s four most important questions when they arrive at a website:

Am I in the right place?
Do they have what I am looking for?
Do they have anything better (if this isn’t what I want)?
What do I do now?
After this talk you’ve learned what content should be on your website and how you should structure it.

December 10, 2017 — My talk will focus on how we as a community can work together to drive the next phase of growth for WordPress that goes beyond just relying heavily on the product itself and the breadth of the community. With other, proprietary, platforms gaining ground in the marketplace and spending large amounts to build their brands, it is increasingly important that we are able to compete in more conventional ways. I’ll cover the opportunities for WordPress growth, the potential role and efforts to-date of the Growth Council, and the efforts Automattic is making to grow our brands and WordPress as a whole.

Specifically, I’ll share:
– Data on the growth and marketing efforts of the competitive platforms.
– Opportunities and challenges presented by those platforms.
– Marketing and brand positioning of Automattic products.
– Ways we, as a community, can work together to ensure strong growth in the future.

December 10, 2017 — While a contributor day in the core team gives you a basic idea on how the development environment is setup and the processes involved, it is often hard to follow up on that. Trying to find tickets to work on is tough when there are almost 5000 open tickets around, and when your ideas are rejected for seemingly no apparent reason, frustration quickly becomes a factor.

This talk addresses what comes next: How do you spend your contributing time efficiently? How do you find access to developer groups? How do you make your ideas heard? Following up on your first contribution efforts is not always as straightforward as one may expect, and the goal of this talk is to prepare you for a beneficial long-term relationship as a core contributor, by presenting advanced techniques and clarifying expectations.

December 10, 2017 — As members of the WordPress community, we have a unique opportunity to contribute to making the news better. WordPress powers news sites of all shapes and sizes – from small investigative teams, to large national publications. What they share in common is a reliance on open source tools developed in the WordPress community. However you want to improve the news – whether that’s making it more trustworthy, more accessible, more engaging, or something else entirely – the journalism community would love your help!

We’ll take a look at plugins and themes used in journalism and the impact each has on readers. We’ll identify areas for improvement, and simple ways that everyone can get involved – from documentation, to translation, and (of course) development. Everyone has the ability to help build the future of WordPress, and I hope you’ll leave feeling inspired to get involved!

December 10, 2017 — Open source projects are sustained by volunteer efforts. This talk will look at the basics of open source contribution and how to find your place as a WordPress contributor.