October 19, 2026 — Building a High-Performing Remote WordPress Team

Managing a remote team across countries and time zones comes with opportunities—and challenges around communication, accountability, culture, and productivity.

In this practical session, Jonathan Weindruch shares lessons from managing distributed WordPress professionals and supporting clients across the United States. Learn practical approaches to hiring, onboarding, communication, project management, time tracking, accountability, and building trust without micromanagement.

Whether you’re a freelancer making your first hire, an agency owner scaling your team, or a team leader managing remote contributors, you’ll leave with practical systems and ideas you can apply immediately to build a productive and sustainable remote workforce.

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October 18, 2026 — AI is often treated as a buzzword and shown through a polished, flashy lens in the startup and innovation ecosystem, but behind this mainstream narrative lies a more complex reality that is rarely seen or discussed. This session explores what it means to “decolonize AI” by rethinking how artificial intelligence systems are designed, developed, and deployed to reflect local realities, languages, communities, and values particularly in the Philippine and broader Southeast Asian context. It challenges the idea that AI is a one-size-fits-all technology shaped by Western Context and emphasizes the need for cultural relevance, inclusivity, and locally grounded, participatory approaches in shaping emerging technologies.

Beyond the technical aspects, the discussion raises critical questions about power, access, and representation in AI development. By the end of the session, participants are invited to rethink their assumptions about AI and reflect on how technology can be made more inclusive, equitable, and grounded in the communities it serves, beyond efficiency and intelligence.

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October 18, 2026 — Human Intelligence in the Age of AI

AI is transforming how we create content, manage websites, communicate, and grow businesses—but technology alone isn’t enough.

This talk explores how the WordPress community can combine AI’s speed with uniquely human strengths such as emotional intelligence, critical thinking, creativity, empathy, leadership, and authentic connection.

Learn how to use AI tools to improve productivity, workflows, branding, and content strategy while keeping human creativity and authenticity at the center.

A timely conversation for Filipino freelancers, creators, entrepreneurs, and digital professionals preparing to lead in an increasingly automated world.

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October 18, 2026 — Lessons from 10 Years in Web Agencies

After more than a decade working across web development agencies and freelancing, I’ve learned that the hardest lessons in agency life rarely come from code.

This talk shares practical lessons from real agency experience—covering client communication, project estimates, pricing, contracts, expectations, teamwork, and delivery.

We’ll explore why communication problems often become technical problems, why “small changes” are rarely small, how pricing influences client behavior, and which skills matter most beyond development.

Whether you’re a freelancer, developer, project manager, agency owner, or aspiring agency professional, this session offers lessons I wish I had learned 10 years ago.

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October 18, 2026 — The New Era of Local SEO

Local SEO is changing fast. Search results, click-through rates, Google Business Profiles, and AI-powered search are reshaping how local businesses get discovered.

This talk explores the latest shifts in local SERPs, Google Business Profile, UGC platforms, YouTube, and AI/LLM citations—and what they mean for local SEO strategies.

Learn why traditional organic clicks are declining, how Google’s evolving search experience is affecting local intent, and how AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are discovering and citing local businesses.

A practical look at where local SEO is heading—and how to adapt.

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October 14, 2026 — AI, restructuring, and constant change are compressing tech org charts and pushing more technical experts into people leadership faster, with less support. This talk gives the conference audience a practical, source-backed, framework-driven answer to a problem every technical organization is living right now (not another theoretical leadership talk).
The goal is to give technical leaders (the ones promoted for their code, not their people skills) one concrete, repeatable tool they can use the Monday after the conference to stop the conflicts, misunderstandings, and silent attrition that technical excellence alone cannot prevent.

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October 14, 2026 — WordPress has a reputation for being slow at scale. It isn’t — but its database layer punishes you for ignoring it. In this talk I’ll walk through real bottlenecks from an enterprise media platform serving tens of millions of HTTP requests a month: why wp_postmeta becomes the number one suspect, how EAV design turns innocent meta_query calls into multi-second JOINs, and how to diagnose this with EXPLAIN and Query Monitor before your client notices. You’ll get a practical ladder of fixes — from indexes and query rewrites that work on any shared hosting, to custom tables and object caching for high-traffic projects — each with before/after numbers. No theory you can’t apply on Monday.

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October 14, 2026 — Accessibility usually breaks because of decisions made long before anyone audits for it. We’ll follow one WordPress project from quote to launch, pinpointing exactly where it happens and how to fix it at every stage.

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September 30, 2026 — AI has been a hot topic for some time now, but using AI effectively and avoiding slop requires a shift in how humans organize work. With AI tools rapidly evolving, what is the best way to integrate AI into existing processes – or should we rethink them altogether? What is the future of WordPress within this new technological landscape? This presentation will tackle these questions. This presentation by Julia Wilk of Wheelhorse Web explores key takeaways from the Vistara Conference and WordCamp Europe with an emphasis on real-world applications and personal experience.

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September 30, 2026 — When the internet first transformed the world, it connected humanity in ways that redefined how we lived, learned, and worked. It erased geographical boundaries, gave rise to global communication, and empowered developers to build the foundation of a digital civilization. The internet turned information into power — and developers became the architects of that revolution.

Now, in 2026, Artificial Intelligence is leading a transformation of similar, if not greater, magnitude. If the internet connected the world, AI is making it intelligent. It is not just changing what developers create but reshaping how creation itself happens. Where the internet was about access, AI is about understanding. It enables machines to reason, predict, and adapt — fundamentally altering how humans interact with technology.

In the early days of web development, every website, app, and feature was hand-coded line by line. Developers were the digital craftsmen of the internet era. But AI has now evolved into a creative collaborator — a co-developer capable of understanding natural language, generating code, fixing bugs, and optimizing performance autonomously. Instead of focusing on syntax and structure, developers now focus on design thinking, logic, and user experience while AI handles the repetitive and mechanical aspects.

This shift marks a new paradigm. The internet democratized access to information, while AI is democratizing creation itself. Tools powered by AI can now generate complete websites, write backend logic, test for security vulnerabilities, and even predict scalability issues before deployment. This allows anyone — not just professional coders — to turn ideas into functioning digital products, breaking down barriers that once limited innovation.

AI is also transforming how web systems behave. Traditional websites were static; AI-driven platforms are adaptive and self-learning. They analyze user interactions in real time and evolve automatically to deliver personalized experiences. Content creation, UI design, and SEO optimization — once time-consuming tasks — are now automated and continuously improving through machine learning.