July 19, 2017 — A Happiness Engineer at Automattic, Nagesh started his WordPress journey as a freelancer, by building, and tinkering with WordPress websites between 2012 and 2016.

Nagesh comes with a rather diverse career track-record. With a strong background in Banking & Finance, Nagesh has worked in the roles of Digital Marketing at Technology, as well as in Media houses. He has also served as a Media Planner in quite-a-few agencies. The interesting part about his story is that, despite his diverse background, Nagesh’s WordPress journey kickstarted from a unique vertical: by setting up and running a community website that he built, without having any prior knowledge of programming. – RadioIdli.net. He started it on blogger, and, migrated it to self-hosted WordPress. This journey, introduced him to a career in digital marketing, helped him learn to create beautiful websites, and eventually led him to Automattic!

In today’s fast-paced world, it is essential for every individual, or institution, to ‘own’ their place in the World Wide Web, through a custom website in their own name. Whether one is a journalist or a teacher, an artist or an observer, having an own medium of communication with the world – through a website is exciting, to say the least. Through his talk, Nagesh will guide the audience on how to create a website through WordPress.com . Platforms like WordPress.com extend the functionality of the open-source WordPress software, and make it significantly-easy for anyone to create their own website, and to gain popularity, with quality content, and by sharing unique ideas.

Presentation Slides »

July 19, 2017 — Pros and cons of a few different ways to build an iOS or Android app that connects to your WordPress site.

July 19, 2017 — Ever wonder how to create amazing images that will stand out? Find out the “secret sauce” process to take a photo from “meh” to “wow”! You’ll learn techniques like framing the shot with your camera/smartphone, lighting, editing your photo, and the right way to share your photo on the web or social media. You will see multiple examples ranging from product shots, to portraits, and even large-scale landscapes.

July 19, 2017 — Dasun Edirisinghe from Sri Lanka, and is obsessed with WordPress. He started using WordPress in 2011 and it soon became his hobby, passion, and career.
In his talk the major focus would be on the following key points:

-What is gamifications
-Why we need gamifications
-Game elements and WordPress Components
-Developing a gamification platform in -WordPress ( Architecture / Elements )
-Conclusion ( Using WordPress for -Application Developments )

July 19, 2017 — Nancy Thanki is a photographer, filmmaker and Happiness Engineer at Automattic. She has spoken at WordCamp Asheville, Seattle, and Birmingham in 2014, Atlanta, Asheville, and WCUS in Philadelphia in 2015, and Atlanta, Asheville, and (will also be speaking at) WCUS in Philadelphia again in 2016.
She talked about The GPL: What It Means (And What It Doesn’t) which will cover the concept and motto behind the GPL.

July 19, 2017 — Having earned the moderator level on WordPress.tv, Nirmal works as a Business Manager at Multidots. His passion lies in contributing to WordPress and in his words – he loves increasing the fan base of WordPress.

In words of Nirmal – “In India and around Asia, we have very few contributors. As we know that, WordPress.tv is the only platform to publish the official WordPress videos. As moderator at WordPress.tv from India, I feel that if we have more and more contributors from India then we can have more larger community of WordPress.tv too”.

July 19, 2017 — Using WordPress for nearly a decade, David turned to WordPress as the main source of income three years back. Since then, it’s been a happy journey.

In last 5 months, David started producing video content for WordPress users (mainly for Beaver Builder users) on his Youtube channel.
WordPress (and open source in general) has been important in democratizing the web. Now with the likes of Wix, Weebly, and SquareSpace we probably need to turn our attention more towards User Experience.

July 19, 2017 — WordPress Pros and Cons

Presentation Slides »

July 18, 2017 — Learning the hard lessons the hard way is never fun. This talk will be in the form of 5 short stories on how I self-sabotaged my own career, and my business endeavors and briefly touch on how I recovered, or didn’t in some cases. Will close with 2 revelations that anyone can and should apply in their own business.

Burning the candle at both ends (2 jobs or a side job/product)
Taking on debt to make payroll as an agency
Firing slow (bad culture fits kill morale)
Swimming against the current in the community (necessary at times, but mind your tone)
All hustle, no personal time. (nothing is worth family + relationships)
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate (perseverance)
Invest in your team at every opportunity (the golden ticket)

July 17, 2017 — “Are we giving too much information away?
As we adopt use of technology into our daily routines, it’s easy to forget that our blogs and connected social media posts sometimes reach a wider audience than we mean them to. Updates intended for friends, family, and coworkers may seem innocuous enough, but often leak private information that hackers can use to invade our privacy and steal important data.
In this presentation I will discuss ways in which we can become more aware of our vulnerabilities online, and make recommendations on how to avoid some common pitfalls.