August 5, 2017 — This is meant to be a blunt and straight-forward talk on the challenges of entering the WordPress space. This space is not all unicorns and rainbows – at least not anymore. Business and ideas fail in this space just like any other. Panelists should come with pros and cons of being in the WordPress space, and what they would do if WordPress’s dominance in the CMS/etc. space decreases. This is not mean to be a negative subject but a realistic one, and panelists represent different viewpoints (freelancer, small, large businesses, plugin/theme shops).

August 5, 2017 — This panel helps to convey what it takes to build an agency from scratch or a few freelancers. How does one get an agency started? What are the things you need before or as you start? What are the biggest keys to success and the toughest lessons to remember?

August 5, 2017 — While this “sales and marketing” panel is intended for small business and agencies, lessons learned can also apply to the freelancer or the developer looking to make a business from plugins. What are the right AND wrong ways? What lessons can our panelists share from personal experience? Simply “raise your rates” isn’t enough detail here so panelists should be prepared so share a few of their tips.

August 5, 2017 — Yuvraj is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. He currently supports customers using WooCommerce, at Automattic, and has been using WooCommerce, ever since it was launched in 2011. He has handcrafted more than 75 websites using WooCommerce.

In his talk, Yuvraj will share his experience in running design agency successfully for 7 years. He will also be sharing his insights on running an agency, that will help newbies and current developers transition from being freelancers to starting their own business.

August 5, 2017 — his talk will take you through the major “tools of the trade” of ecommerce in the context of WordPress as 1) a portal for collecting payments or leads and 2) maximizing your marketing investment using third-party tools that work well with WordPress. In less than an hour, you will gain a high level understanding of the toolkit that is enabling people around the world to sell anything using WordPress.

August 5, 2017 — Andrew Wikel is a WooCommerce ninja at Automattic. He is committed to open source values and loves working with WordPress. He fell in love with WordPress in 2008, and has been working with it in some capacity since then.

August 5, 2017 — Mark Jaquith has been working with and contributing to WordPress since 2004. He is one of the lead developers of the WordPress core and offers freelance WordPress consulting services through Covered Web Services with a focus on scaling, security, and custom functionality.

August 3, 2017 — How to present and maintain a secure E-Commerce site. We will go over some details on PCI compliance as well as privacy policy and general web security.

Presentation Slides »

August 3, 2017 — WordPress has created many opportunities for people all around the world, so many people are curious about how it could help them grow.

In his talk, Noel will discuss the path to success for anyone interested in working with WordPress, remote working or generally being part of this movement.

August 3, 2017 — With the new Plugin Directory being based on WordPress comes the ability to use its REST API to access its data. In this session we’ll be going over the various modules and libraries available that make it fairly straight forward to get started on a front-end React client for your site. We’ll discuss a possible NPM module setup and Grunt workflow, as well as how React components for the Plugin Directory are structured, before looking at how it all comes together. And finally we’ll take a look at how the Directory is using React today!