August 20, 2026 — Product builds. Partnerships open doors. Most companies treat these as separate functions that meet quarterly to align. Deals close on promises the roadmap doesn’t reflect, integrations ship that no partner actually asked for, customer feedback dies in notes that nobody on the product side ever sees, and the next big partnership opportunity fades away because nobody connected the dots in time. The presenters have been working this loop together for years. They’ve seen what happens when the loop holds and what happens when it breaks, and they’re shaping how a business operates around that hard-won pattern. In this talk, they’ll walk through partnership decisions made without product context and what they cost, product decisions made without partnership context and what those cost, and key moments where the loop worked and value compounded. They’ll talk candidly about AI as a tool running the loop with them: surfacing patterns across partner conversations and product signals, drafting the first version of things humans then sharpen, and making it possible for a small team to hold more of the big picture at once. The argument isn’t that AI replaces either role. It’s that AI, used well, makes the loop between them faster, sharper, and harder to drop. Expect concrete examples, honest failure stories, and a working model you can take back to your own team whether you sit on the product side, the business side, or somewhere in between.

August 20, 2026 — AI agents don’t browse the web the way humans do. They need to read it, query it, take actions on it. A new layer of the web is being built right now – one where sites aren’t just destinations for human visitors but interfaces that AI systems can interact with directly. WordPress, which already powers 43% of the web, has a real structural role to play here. But it requires the ecosystem to think differently about what a WordPress site actually is. In this talk I’ll dig into what the agentic web actually means in practice – what agents need from a site, how MCP and the WordPress AI infrastructure being built in core (WP AI Client, MCP Adapter, Abilities API) fit in, and what developers, agencies, and site owners should be thinking about now before this shift accelerates..

August 20, 2026 — Most agencies still update WordPress sites the same way regardless of risk: backup, update, then click through some pages hoping nothing broke. That approach burns hours, scales badly, and still misses the layout break a client catches first. This session presents a rock-solid maintenance workflow.

August 20, 2026 — Block themes give WordPress an opportunity to become more than a publishing tool or a place where finished designs are implemented. With the right theme structure, patterns, templates, and brand guidelines, a WordPress site can become the source of truth for how new pages and layouts should be built. That matters even more as agencies begin using AI in their build process. AI is useful when it can work from existing pieces: approved patterns, real content, design tokens, reusable blocks, and known template structures. It is much less useful when it starts every landing page from scratch. In this session, we’ll look at how agencies can treat WordPress as a practical design system for real client work. We’ll cover how block themes, patterns, `theme.json`, reusable layouts, and clear content structure can give both humans and AI better building blocks. WooCommerce will be used as a case study because store pages make the stakes obvious: product, cart, and checkout experiences need brand consistency, editing flexibility, and reliable structure. Attendees will leave with a clearer model for using block themes as a foundation for agency workflows, client handoff, and AI-assisted page building without losing control of the design system.

August 20, 2026 — The creator economy is rapidly evolving beyond sponsored posts and display ads. Today’s most successful creators are building diversified, community-driven businesses powered by owned platforms, strategic partnerships, and commerce-first content. As both the COO of Tastemaker Conference — a leading conference for food creators and digital entrepreneurs — and a longtime creator myself, I’ve had a front-row seat to how the industry is changing. In this session, I’ll share what brands, creators, and audiences are prioritizing in 2026 and how WordPress creators can position themselves for long-term growth. Attendees will learn: Why creator commerce is becoming more valuable than traditional influencer marketing How creators are building sustainable income beyond ad revenue The role WordPress plays in audience ownership and long-term business stability What brands are actually looking for in creator partnerships today How community and trust are becoming a creator’s greatest competitive advantage in the AI era Practical ways creators can future-proof their businesses Whether you’re a blogger, content creator, entrepreneur, marketer, or WordPress professional, this session will provide actionable insights into the next era of digital business and creator-led commerce. Audience Takeaways Understand where the creator economy is heading Learn how to diversify revenue streams Discover why owned platforms matter more than ever Gain practical strategies for building trust-driven creator businesses Learn how creators can stand out in an increasingly AI-saturated internet”

August 20, 2026 — Accessibility in WordPress is often misunderstood as something that can be solved by simply installing a plugin. While plugins can be helpful, true accessibility requires understanding how themes, content, design choices, navigation, forms, images, headings, and interactive elements affect real users. In this session, I will explain what real WordPress accessibility looks like beyond automated tools and quick fixes. Attendees will learn common accessibility issues found on WordPress websites, how to identify them, and practical steps they can take to make their sites more usable and compliant with WCAG and Section 508 standards. This presentation is designed for WordPress site owners, designers, developers, content creators, and anyone who wants to build websites that work better for everyone.

August 20, 2026 — Hook: Every dev on your team has their own pile of AI prompts and one-off scripts — which means every hard-won lesson stays trapped with the person who learned it, and the rest of the team keeps paying to learn it again. What if your team’s AI tooling lived in a versioned, reviewed, CI-enforced repo — the same way your plugins do? Take-away: a concrete starter pattern for a team-skills repo + the three policies that make it stick.

August 20, 2026 — Earlier this year I was the sole developer on a new WordPress site build. AI tools moved the work along, but only because I spent the project teaching them how to work in my way – correcting mistakes, capturing what I learned, and feeding it back so they wouldn’t repeat them over and over again. This talk is about that practice: teaching your AI tools your process as you go, so they get better instead of just faster. Two actual instances from the project as examples: A mega-menu nav with a dead click zone where the AI’s first move was a complicated JavaScript event handler – the actual fix was a few CSS utility classes on the link. A tangled Tailwind class string that smelled wrong before I could name why – four AI agents running in parallel helped me diagnose it, clean it, and codify a rule that’s held up since. What I’ve learned and my process improvements go beyond just writing code: Asking for HTML output instead of markdown when richer visualizations are helpful. Dispatching multiple models to get different viewpoints for comparison and brainstorming solutions. Keeping the lessons I’ve taught the tools portable so I don’t lose the learning when I migrate to a new model. My processes are still evolving and improving. This talk gives a snapshot of where I’m at now and attendees will leave with a new set of tools and perspectives to improve their own AI interactions, grounded in actual project work on a shipped site.

August 20, 2026 — AI is now embedded in plugins, themes, content pipelines, and client sites across the WordPress ecosystem. Most WordPress professionals have focused on what AI can do. Almost nobody has focused on what it requires of you legally This talk covers the compliance gap that agencies, freelancers, and product builders are about to run into: GDPR and data residency implications of AI tools processing user content, consent requirements when AI is involved in personalization or communication, the EU AI Act and what it means for WordPress businesses serving European clients, and disclosure obligations that are already in effect in some jurisdictions. These are not hypothetical future risks. They are current, and the WordPress ecosystem is largely unprepared for them. Attendees will leave with a practical checklist for auditing their own sites and client sites, an understanding of which AI use cases carry the most legal exposure, and clarity on what questions to bring to their legal counsel.

August 20, 2026 — Join Waymo’s Amanda Ventura and host David Levine for a fireside chat about earning public trust in AI that moves beyond screens and into the physical world.

Amanda works on Waymo’s public affairs team at the intersection of artificial intelligence and community engagement. By working directly with road safety and accessibility advocates, her team is helping shape a future of safer, more inclusive travel powered by autonomous driving.

David Levine is a member of the WordPress Core AI Team and Director of Growth Engineering at rtCamp. He brings more than a decade of experience working with nonprofits, NGOs, local governments, and organizations building technology people can rely on.

Together, Amanda and David explore questions relevant to anyone building with emerging technology:

How do you earn trust from people who did not ask for the technology?
How should communities help shape the products affecting their lives?
What does it take to maintain trust when safety and accessibility are at stake?