December 12, 2017 — WordPress isn’t always as lean as you might like. In this talk, we’ll go through some simple steps you can take, without any development know-how to make your sites leaner and more responsive.

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December 12, 2017 — In my experience, answering these questions are building blocks for a successful client relationship- whether a small theme project or one with a huge scope.

Because at the end of the day, we are humans dealing with other humans.

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December 12, 2017 — Images and video are among the largest use-cases for WordPress content, but the way in which users interact with media in WordPress hasn’t improved significantly since the introduction of the Media Library in WordPress 3.5 in 2012 and Media Grid in WordPress 4.0, released in 2014.
Meanwhile, user expectations for handling of photos or videos have since changed, with users expecting rich editing experiences with solid mobile flows, causing WordPress to fall behind.

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December 12, 2017 — The session will explore possibilities for how WordPress can modernize its media handling capabilities to support the next generation of media experiences built on top of WordPress.

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December 12, 2017 — This talk describes how the exercise worked, presents some of the more interesting findings and explains how the 30 Questions exercise can be adapted and applied to any type of website.

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December 12, 2017 — Plugins are a vital part of WordPress websites that need specific functionalities. While the official WordPress repository has more than 45,000 plugins from you to choose from, many of these plugins miss the mark. Just because a plugin is in the repository doesn’t mean it won’t hinder its performance or compromise its security. So what can you do? Well, you can build your own. In this talk we’ll talk about what you should do when building a plugin as well as walk trough how that can be done trough an example plugin called Toptal Save.

December 10, 2017 — Those of us who collaborate on websites work with coworkers, employees, and freelancers who often aren’t in our office, our city, or even in our country. When work is remote, new challenges arise: people can find it harder to stay motivated, to communicate goals and accomplishments, and to check in effectively. This talk is about how to lead others from a distance toward a common goal. How do you build and maintain working relationships and get things done correctly and on time when you aren’t in the same physical location as your colleagues? Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is fully distributed, which means all of our communication is entirely online. If we can do it, so can you!

December 10, 2017 — In my more than two years serving as the content creator for WooCommerce, I wrote 200 posts, responded to over 600 comments, and literally wore out an Macbook keyboard to the point of failure. (Eat your heart out, George R.R. Martin.)

I’ve learned three valuable lessons while writing for a business of Woo’s size that I’d like to share:

1. Never, ever fully commit to a publish date if you can help it — people get sick, writers don’t deliver, and unexpected things will happen.
2. Commenters are going to test your patience — always be kind, always think of their intent, and look for the gems (the funny ones/the helpers).
3. Writing content for a business is not easy, but it is rewarding. Lots of examples to share here: people recognizing/thanking me at WordCamps, getting comments weeks later saying “I did this and it worked!” and knowing you’re making it easier for someone to succeed.

December 10, 2017 — As brick and mortar stores close because of tough e-commerce competition, local governments can take a page from the retail playbook. Innovate with the times, or risk being left behind. When local private investment dries up and empty stores predominate downtown, “Buying Local” is only one step in thinking critically about how to improve a local economy. Why not buy local…online? Here is how one local government almost made this a reality.

December 10, 2017