February 26, 2018 — The internet is the single most effective information sharing tool in all of history. We can build on the work and progress of others in a completely unprecedented way. The implications for the progress of humanity are both serious and exciting!

But it’s also in danger. Find out why I think open systems and the open web will steer our future or how the lack of them will ruin it.

February 26, 2018 — In this talk we’re specifically going to look at how a combination of REST principles and modeling our processes and dialogs as state machines can dramatically simplify our client applications and API exchanges.

Why would you want to hear more about this subject? As we all start working more in the browser and communicate back to WordPress via API calls it’s easy for the complexity to start stacking up and overwhelming us! In fact, API design isn’t necessarily intuitive and the web is full of noisy advice.

We’ll use an example Gutenberg plugin to walk through a very common scenario dealing with interactive processes and we’ll see how a few design principles can save us the headaches of race conditions, code bloat, and changing requirements. We’ll examine how “state machines” can guide us and simplify complex business logic and we’ll explore how “HATEOAS” and REST pair with these machines to simplify complex application and UI logic.

Whether you are just starting to write your own APIs and API clients or you have been churning them out for years I invite you to join this design session; we’ll stay away from nitty-gritty code details and instead focus on general principles we can apply in any coding environment.

It’s my hope that after participating in this session you will be able to confidently work with: indicating loading states; testing and debugging forms, processes, and uploads; untangle complicated business rules dealing with things like authentication, limiting, validation, and triggering related activity; and end up with well documented means of doing so.

Presentation Slides »

February 26, 2018 — In this talk, we will look at what WordPress looks like as an Application Data Graph and how WPGraphQL enables a GraphQL API for WordPress and allows us to interact with the WordPress graph via GraphQL queries and mutations.

In previous talks, (WordCamp US 2017, WordCamp for Publishers 2017, WordCamp Orange County 2017) I’ve talked a lot about the history of WordPress APIs and how GraphQL compares to them and helps solve some problems of using other APIs.

This talk will focus less on the history of why WPGraphQL came to be and how it compares with other existing WP APIs, and focus more on how to use WPGraphQL, how to extend WPGraphQL to work for your site.

We’ll start by looking at basic usage of WPGraphQL: querying posts, pages, terms, etc. Then we’ll explore some features of the query language such as variables, aliases, and field arguments.

Then we’ll look at Mutations (creating, updating and deleting data) and we’ll discuss how WPGraphQL handles Authentication and Authorization, and other features like fragments.

Throughout the talk we’ll look at the internals of WPGraphQL and how it goes from a request to the WordPress server to resolving data back to the client, and how it makes use of core WordPress technology to efficiently resolve data.

Presentation Slides »

February 26, 2018 — Chris Lema interviewing Alonso Indacocha, lead organizer of this WordCamp.

February 26, 2018 — Chris Lema interviews Ashleigh Axios

February 26, 2018 — The topic will focus on
– Visual Assets & Appeal
– Excerpts
– Omitting ‘Happy talk’
– Making relevant content ‘More Prominent’
– Call To Action (CTA)s

Presentation Slides »

February 26, 2018 — Many non-profits don’t realize that they have a problem until a volunteer half-finishes a website and disappears. Whether you create WordPress sites for others or as a non-profit employee or volunteer, this session will help you use WordPress to engage donors and volunteers, represent the organization as a good steward of donors’ money, and protect its security and reputation. Non-profits also have unique project management and maintenance needs, and we will discuss these as well.

Presentation Slides »

February 26, 2018 — My presentation will be ultra-visual, and I will be exploring actionable changes that attendees will be able to make immediately to improve their client relationships as well as their launch/site management workflows. Finally, I will address the financial benefits of offering a better user experience – in other words, how much more money freelancers and agencies can make by providing a solid user experience for their clients.

February 26, 2018 — You may have heard about React.js and the WordPress API, but how do you get started using these new technologies? We’ll cover a simple, practical example of how to start using React.js with the WordPress API in a traditional PHP templated WordPress Theme.

February 26, 2018 — This track consists of five short sessions focused on using themes and building sites.

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Help Us Help You. Things You Should Know Before Contacting Support.

Brooke Dukes

I’ve been on all sides of support. In that time I’ve learned a lot of the dos-and-don’ts of asking for (and providing) support. In this lighting talk I’ll go over some of the most commonly missing information when reaching out to support.

Slides: https://2017.seattle.wordcamp.org/files/2017/11/brooke_dukes_wcsea.pdf

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Creating A Knowledge Transfer Plan, or How To Really Go On Vacation

Hilary Fosdal

It’s surprising how stressful going on vacation or attending a conference can be. Are you ready to temporarily step away from the business relationships you’ve carefully built with your clients and handing over all the hard work you’ve put into your projects to someone else?

Learn how you can transition your projects and clients professionally and programmatically to co-workers during your temporary absence. Take the stress out of leaving for vacation by having a knowledge transfer plan – a.k.a. your vacation exit strategy.

Slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0bd6bji99p5cs6t/HowToReallyGoOnVacation.pdf?dl=0

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Sketches: The Universal Language

Joshua Wold

Anyone can sketch. You don’t have to be an artist. A few simple shapes can help explain a problem quickly and clearly. Sketching is a universal language that anyone can understand regardless of technical background.

Have you ever tried explaining a technical problem to a stakeholder, developer, designer, or customer? Has that ever led to miscommunication? A quick sketch can help validate that everyone understands the issue – or show that each person is thinking something completely different.

In this talk you’ll learn some very simple steps to create sketches and wireframes that you can add to any ticket or problem you’re discussing.

Slides: https://cloudup.com/c19N_0Hryii

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Quick Tips: Gain Mutual Buy-In and Inject More Empathy Into Your Projects

Justin Parra

Let’s discuss empathetic strategies that will ultimately help you create a more satisfying client experience, smoother creative process with less barriers, and help clients grant a new level of trust in your creative/technical concepts. Empathy is often said to be the most important quality of a UX professional. One can argue that it is the most important quality in a human being. While we won’t go quite that far, let’s talk about how injecting a higher level of empathy into your project management and client interactions can improve your final product.

Slides: https://2017.seattle.wordcamp.org/files/2017/11/justin-parra-wp-project-management-strategies.pdf

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Getting up to Speed on Build Processes

Jacob Wayne Smith

In this hands-on talk Jacob Smith will demystify Gulp, NPM, Grunt, and more so that you can work smarter and faster.

With code examples and live programming, we will work with a standard build process for WordPress development.

Slides: https://abravenew.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Jacob-Smith-wordcamp-seattle-2017.pdf