June 25, 2019 — I am the CEO of a digital agency (Sideways8) and CTO of a nonprofit (48in48). I host two podcasts (soon to be three), work out regularly, read a book every week or two, and write two to three blog posts per week. 95% of my work days end at 5pm. I also have five kids, never work weekends, and I don’t consider myself to be busy. In this talk I will discuss my philosophy on getting things done and the strategies I use to get a lot done in a short amount of time. I believe every person can be insanely productive when given the right tools, mindsets and strategies.

June 25, 2019 — It is well known in the software and website development world that scope creep is the primary cause of projects running over time and budget. At the very least, uncontrolled scope creep will impact your project profit margin as you try and accommodate both legitimate and impractical client requests for change.

In this presentation, we will discuss how to minimize scope creep by acknowledging and planning for change instead of penalizing the client for it. We will cover the elements of a good change control plan and how acknowledging change up front can actually set you ahead of your competition and get you more clients.

Attendees will learn how to craft a good change control plan, how to educate the client regarding change, and how to use the change control plan as a selling feature. Attendees will leave with a sample written change control plan they can take and modify to meet their specific needs.

June 25, 2019 — A sort of 101 on what General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means for developers (and site owners), and how to approach certain aspects of it.

June 25, 2019 — Whether you manage a large site or a small one, if you write your own code one of the most tedious parts can be getting started. This talk will show you techniques such as scaffolding tools and others to get you a fully functional WordPress plugin with unit tests, continuous integration, a local development environment and more with just a single command. It will help you stop rebuilding the wheel so you can focus on the functionality you need and can be extended to themes, libraries or whatever else you need.

June 25, 2019 — You know security is important and want your site to be secure, but what will actually help? There’s so much information to be found on securing your site, but what are the myths and what actually helps? Find out how to avoid the myths and implement real security.

June 25, 2019 — Teaching yourself how to code is difficult. Even today, after working as a professional front-end developer for 6 years, I’m still struggling to keep up to be able to create what I want. In this talk, let me take you by the hand and give you insight into how I took my first steps as a front-end developer. Starting off with HTML and CSS, 15 years ago, using Microsoft Frontpage. Upon today where I’m teaching myself React to build Gutenberg blocks. During this journey, I will show you how and where you can start off to become a front-end developer. I will talk about recreating examples, where to find the information you need and why asking questions can save you dozens of hours!

June 25, 2019 — An introduction to the WordPress plugin for LikeCoin that leverages the blockchain

June 25, 2019 — The new editor experience has been introduced into WordPress and folks have been able to use it to create beautiful and media-rich posts. However, most don’t realize that blocks can do much more than that.

In this talk, we’ll go over just how powerful Gutenberg blocks are and how to use them to power experiences in native apps, games and video generation.

Presentation Slides »

June 25, 2019 — Lighting Talk from WordCamp Manchester 2018. A short, 6 point introduction to Google Data Studio.

June 25, 2019 — Panel Discussion