August 9, 2017 — A case study of how the Harvard Chan School is leveraging Amazon Web Services to power a high performance, elastic and scalable hosting environment for 1900+ websites, on one WordPress Multisite installation.

This session will introduce how the ever-growing panel of Amazon Web Services can be used to perform load balancing, auto-scaling, content delivery, caching, backups, continuous integration and monitoring for WordPress.

Presentation Slides »

August 9, 2017 — If you ask a WordPress contributor what the project’s goal is, chances are we’ll say “to democratize publishing.” However, for over a decade the community that has grown around WordPress has been doing something even more important: our community is democratizing software itself. By creating one of the only web communities to include everybody from writers and photographers to interaction designers and senior software architects, WordPress has done what often seems impossible in Open Source software: we have built a product not just for ourselves, but for everyone. The future of WordPress rests on our ability to recognize and celebrate the spectrum of our community.

August 9, 2017 — Panel discussion on Design

August 9, 2017 — Have you ever wondered WHY you can’t do some things in plugins? Why we don’t let you use your own jQuery or call wp-load or offload images? I’ll tell you the real reasons why your plugins get flagged for fixes beyond the obvious like….

* Call my own jquery
* Call wp-load directly
* Offload images
* Put Google Analytics on the Backend of my plugin/theme
* Use FancyBox 2.x
* Name My Plugin X….

This talk will be CODE LITE, so if you’re working on your first plugin or want to get started, this can be for you!

August 8, 2017 — A panel discussion with leaders and contributors in the WordPress project, and other open source project owners. How do you get started contributing to open source software, like WordPress? How have your contributions to open source helped you?

August 8, 2017 — What distinguishes good WordPress development from great WordPress development? What tools can I use to improve my development process? How do I make my code extensible for future adopters? Why should I bother with following the coding standards and best practices? Will my software scale? How can I ensure my code will perform in the wild?

This crash course session will dive head-first into answering these questions as we explore the development practices of professional WordPress developers. Through exposure to tooling and popular development workflows, you will become familiar with the best practices from the industry. Geared towards creators of all skill levels, this session will help you build confidence when developing with the web’s most popular content management system.

August 8, 2017 — You’ve set up your site and popped in a newsletter signup form on the sidebar… now what?

In this session, you’ll learn techniques that you can immediately apply to your site that’ll turn it into a marketing automation machine! Understand your visitors, boost up your SEO, and heat up those conversion rates.

August 7, 2017 — ” .. every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question” – Carl Sagan

Have a question that hasn’t been answered by one of the presenters today? Or maybe a discussion with one of your new WordPress friends has sparked your curiosity? This is your chance to get answers, explanations, or just a good laugh

August 7, 2017 — New research indicates that sitting 8 hours a day may be as hazardous to your health as smoking!

Web developers and other desk-jobbers frequently suffer from postural ailments such as Hyperkyphosis (hunch back) and Anterior Pelvic Tilt, which can cause pain, and eventually lead to injuries such as ruptured disks or sciatica.

This talk will be broken into three main sections.
Lecture: The woes of desk jobs, a brief outline of Hyperkyphosis and Anterior Pelvic Tilt and what can be done to combat them. This will focus on body positivity and not what is “normal” vs “abnormal” but what causes YOU the individual, discomfort and how to alleviate pain.
Questions: 5 minutes
Zumba Class: That’s right! I am going to lead whomever-shows-up in a beginner friendly, booty shaking, smile inducing physical break from *sitting all day at WordCamp!*

Presentation Slides »

August 7, 2017 — Word-of-mouth advertising – and a good reputation among customers – is still your most valuable marketing and public relations asset in the digital age. On the Internet, a positive reputation can take you farther than ever… and a few bad reviews can sink your sales overnight.

In this short workshop, experienced online marketing coach Tammy Finch is going to show you:

How to monitor reviews and respond to negative feedback
How to manage (and separate) your personal and professional personas
How to use social media profiles and other digital tools to get feedback from buyers
This should be considered a must-attend session for any marketer or business owner.

Presentation Slides »