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.

December 10, 2017

December 10, 2017 — Growing up I was that kid always taking appliances apart trying to figure out how they worked. I was also that kid that only tended to focus on things that were sciency and nerdy. I missed a lot of details growing up frequently feeling out of place when clearly other children knew what was going on and I again wasn’t listening.

Entering adulthood I discovered this uniqueness had its challenges but I learned to cope and was successful at school and work. I also started developing health problems that cropped up slowly over the years – mostly attributed to weight gain and being less active physically.

Four years ago I started working 100% remote. Within a couple months I realized my brain and my ways of dealing with the focus & attention issues weren’t compatible with remote work. I struggled a lot and finally talked to my doctor. Discovering I did in fact have ADHD helped me understand a lot. Working with a professional counselor I developed a set of tools to help with attention and focus issues working remote. A side effect of all of those efforts was a drastic improvement to my physical health.

You’ll find out what tools have been successful for me and more importantly how to implement the changes in a way to set yourself up to succeed.

December 10, 2017 — As web designers and developers one of the keys to our business success is retaining clients over time and generating client referrals. If we build strong supportive relationships with our existing customers we can guarantee future projects and work. Clients need more than just a great website, they need to be empowered to manage their WordPress site on their own. However, many business owners and marketing professionals are not knowledgeable about WordPress and feel confused and stressed about running the site once it is launched. Learning about WordPress online is also very confusing for people that are newer to or less experienced with the platform. So how can we empower our clients to manage their sites on their own and feel confident in their abilities? Many designers and developers offer a single training when the site goes live, but for clients that have never used WordPress or rarely use it this single training is not enough. Get tips and tricks about how to prepare your clients so they can take their WordPress tool and make the most out of it for their company or organization. Learn how to put together a launch plan that includes in person training, video tutorials, FAQs, and more. Discover why as designers and developers we are also educators. Give your customers the best chance they have to succeed and they will be more likely to return to you when the site needs to grow, as well as tell other professionals, businesses owners, and organizations they know about your service.

December 10, 2017 — There are a lot of things that go into running a service business beyond finding clients and building things for them. You’ve got to manage contracts, invoices, estimates, proposals, and more. You need to keep clients informed on progress, collect payments, and follow up on those payments invariably missed. On top of all of that, you need to have some sort of repeatable process to make projects run smoothly and keep getting in new work.

We’re going to look at a few ways that you can use WordPress to manage your WordPress business. This includes managing all of that paperwork from the backend of your site, allowing clients to make payments, and setting up a progress and ticketing system. We’ll also take a look at some ways to use your site to gain and manage leads.

From there you’ll be able to manage your business with ease and focus on the most important part: keeping your clients happy and successful!

December 10, 2017 — This year’s heavy focus in core has been on WordPress’s next generation Gutenberg editor. With the call to learn JavaScript deeply, it’s no surprise that Gutenberg is written in a JavaScript-first architecture. Once Gutenberg and its building blocks are in core, focus will broaden to then include Customizer. The Customizer was the first JavaScript single-page application in WordPress (added in 3.4). With the focus transition from Editor to Customizer, while keeping a JavaScript-first mindset, it is important for contributors and plugin authors that the Customizer’s JavaScript API be demystified to facilitate the integration of the new block editing interfaces. In my talk I’ll delve into the inner workings of the Customizer JS API, show how to use React to build custom controls in the Customizer, and demonstrate how to use the Customizer to preview changes to sites that use React-based themes—including previewing changes on headless REST API-driven sites.

December 10, 2017 — The Personal Web of the 1990s/early 2000s was the first wave of online diarists and bloggers who use the web as a platform to chronicle and share their our daily lives. WordPress came out of this movement, and is now in its second decade.

2017 marks 20 years that I’ve been using the web to create and archive memories, and 12 years that I’ve been doing it with WordPress. I’ve learned a few things about creating a real and permanent record of a lifetime on the ephemeral digital landscape, and together we’ll discuss how to use WordPress to create your own home on the web. We’ll cover topics such as how to maintain your (and your family’s) privacy, using WordPress to build a keepsake repository your friends and family can contribute to, and how to ensure that these digital spaces are available as a legacy for lifetimes to come.