June 10, 2019 — Imposter Syndrome

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June 10, 2019 — A great opening to a WordCamp, this is a tale of overcoming, revisiting dormant passions, inspiration, and motivating others through giving back to Community.

After years of general fatigue, a myriad of tests without an answer, a catheter was inserted through my hip eventually winding its way to my heart, discovering two blocked arteries. After successfully re-opening them, I set out on difficult cardio-rehabilitation to regain heart fitness. During the next three months (including a leave of absence from work), Joe set out to restore my physical, spiritual and emotional well being. This speech details a 3-month journey of rediscovery the things that nourish and nurture each of these three areas — a thirst for learning, unearthing my dormant creativity and all things WordPress.

He set out to become more mindful of the things that bring me positive energy including truly engaging in the Community — 4 WordCamps, 16+ WordPress Meetups, and Events, designed a Wapuu, and a website build/brand to give back. From Castaic north to Palmdale (northernmost Los Angeles County), east to Riverside and all ports of call in-between (Pasadena, Whittier, Hollywood, Downtown Los Angeles) learn what makes good clubs while finding a network of common minds and colorful characters and gain inspiration to start the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup, over 8,000 Miles later.

In this presentation, you’ll learn:

What are the benefits of attending WordCamp?
Why join a WordPress Slack Channel?
Why volunteer to help at a WordCamp (experience being on both sides of the table)?
What is a WordPress Meetup?
What are the ‘five rules’ of hosting a WP Meetup?
How to get started? From visiting your local WordPress Meetup to even starting your own.
How to harness the energy from attending a WordCamp in your WP Meetups?
What are the benefits of attending a WordPress Meetup?
What is WordPress.tv?
What are my favorite WordPress podcasts?
Who are the faces of WordPress Community?
Learning resources – Codex, videos and more.
Why would I do something so crazy (deal with LA traffic)?
My takeaways or goals (get better at WordPress, start a local Meetup, etc)

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June 10, 2019 — Our lightning talk speakers answer questions after presenting.

Content Strategy in a Gutenberg World

Getting Into Position Zero – How to Leverage Content to Rise Above the Competition

Killer Keywords: How to Write Content for Both Humans and Search Engines

June 10, 2019 — Looking Back at 10 Years of WordPress Hosting with our hosting panel:

AJ Morris – Liquid Web
Tessa Kriesel – Pantheon
Ronnie Burt – WPMU
Josh Heicorn – CTO Pagely
Tara Wellington – Godaddy
Tony Gilharry – WP Engine
Chris David Miles – Bluehost
Chris Wales – Greengeeks

June 10, 2019 — As our work environments change and more people start working remotely, new challenges are encountered and habits arise (both good and bad). In this talk about working remotely, at home, how it can affect us and some ways to ensure our remote work environments can be more productive and work for us, instead of against us.

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June 10, 2019 — How often do we update something on our website, whether it’s a plugin, theme, or WordPress itself, and then move on without testing if our site still works? It probably happens more often than we’d like to admit. Of course we want our site to always work as expected, but there is just so much to test, we don’t have the time to do it all. Especially with what seems like daily updates. What if YOU didn’t have to test every little thing on your site to see if it’s working? This talk will discuss ways to automate testing of critical site functionality like contact forms, e-commerce checkout, and landing pages to ensure your site’s essential features are working as expected after every update.

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June 10, 2019 — For a variety of reasons, we humans tend to be poor assessors of both the probability that something bad will happen, and the damage that is likely to result should such a thing occur. Academics have studied this phenomenon since about the 1960s under the rubric of risk assessment. What does this way of thinking have to teach us about WordPress security? Can we construct a risk matrix to help us choose which aspects of WordPress security are most in need of our limited time and attention?

In this session, I’ll draw on both on my own experience providing technical consulting in the areas of security and scaling to some of the world’s largest and most security-sensitive WordPress sites, and on the wisdom of community members who maintain smaller sites for businesses and individuals. In addition to providing a brief overview of the total security landscape as it applies to WordPress, we will attempt to use some of the tools of risk assessment to help us focus our attention in the right areas, including any we tend to naturally overlook.

This session, though touching on some technical topics, is suitable for anyone who administers, uses or develops WordPress sites.

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June 10, 2019 — Whether you work remotely or work with remote coworkers and partners, it’s becoming increasingly common to need to collaborate differently. In this session panelists, who are all remote workers, discuss their strategies for success and pitfalls to avoid when working remotely.

June 10, 2019 — When I started my business in 2011, I didn’t think I needed a business plan. I only needed clients, tons of clients. Even though my title was Web Designer, I took every job that came my way. I made WordPress websites, of course, but also did graphic design, print design, social media management, training — basically anything!

In less than eight months, I had to go back to work as an employee because I managed to spend way more money than I earned.
I kept freelancing on the side with no direction whatsoever and finally, I realised that I needed a plan.

It doesn’t matter what your financial goal is for the year or your mission for your small business. Having measurable goals and a clear strategy will allow you to do what you love and make a living out of it.

In this talk I will go over the basic sections of a business plan and show you some examples of how you can make one that represents you and your business.

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June 10, 2019 — ReactJS is changing how the web is built, including WordPress.

Take your existing development skills to the next level by learning the basics of ReactJS. We’ll explore things like components, state, props, and building interactive frontend applications for WordPress.