November 15, 2009 — Andy Peatling asks, “Why Use BuddyPress” and then answers the question in this five-minute talk from WordCamp NYC.

Video courtesy ISOC-NY.

November 15, 2009 — Jeremy Clarke gives an overview of choosing a good IDE for development of PHP applications in this five-minute talk.

Video courtesy ISOC-NY.

November 14, 2009 — jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript framework that’s extremely popular with Web designers and developers. Jim Doran presents an overview of jQuery and how to start using it and will show beginners how to start using jQuery and how to begin making WordPress themes.

Slides for this presentation are available here.

November 14, 2009 — Change the way you look at WordPress themes. Daryl Koopersmith talks about Elastic and the concepts behind today’s WordPress themes. Elastic is a plugin and theme framework that began development during GSoC 2009. Elastic isn’t just a parent theme; it represents a fundamental change to how WordPress themes work.

November 14, 2009 — Justin Shreve presents his Google Summer of Code 2009 project creating a WordPress search API. The rationale behind the project, the lack of power and flexibility in the existing WordPress search engine, and aspects of the development process are discussed. The presentation concludes with an overview of the enhancements made with this project and some Q&A.

November 14, 2009 — Non profits inhabit their own strange little bubble of marketing goals, work attitude, lack of staff, volunteer turnover and of course, budget. NPO websites need to serve both marketing and functional goals to create engaging messaging and effective service delivery. Amanda Blum nails down why Wordpress is the ideal solution across the board (and speaking of which, how to convince yours).

Video courtesy ISOC-NY.

Slides for this presentation are available here.

November 14, 2009 — For front-end and user experience designers, tweaking WordPress themes to your liking has always been a cinch. But what happens when it’s time to upgrade your theme to include features in a new version of WP? Allan Cole introduces us to Child Themes which will allow you to speed up your development time and make future-proof theme edits, while also leaving the inefficient processes of trial & error behind.

November 14, 2009 — Every day, there are thousands of people who need a website built. They have no idea what it will take, how to do it or where to start. WordPress is great but how to tell that to a business owner? Join Adria Richards to learn what it takes to prepare for a successful project.

Video courtesy ISOC-NY.

November 14, 2009 — How using WordPress in university courses sets up a solid base for later creativity in post-graduation life, the possibilities for interaction between academic and non-academic WordPress communities, and the ways in which students at UMW are taking advantage of their university blogging system by re-imagining it in new contexts.

Speakers: Serena Epstein and Shannon Houser.

November 14, 2009 — Library catalogs are big, database-driven websites with lots of metadata but little social interaction. WordPress is an outstanding platform for database-driven websites full of social interaction. Extending WordPress to replace library catalogs is easier than fixing library catalogs to support modern interactions. Scriblio adds faceted searching and browsing as well as structured metadata to make WordPress the most flexible and social platform for presenting any catalog data.

Video courtesy ISOC-NY.