October 10, 2024 — The architecture of the WordPress Playground provides unique opportunities to build new development and product flows that take WordPress into new domains: powering offline apps, normalizing testing and development environments, providing isolated containers in which to stage updates, and integrating WordPress with complicated software projects.

This talk will survey several exciting projects built on the Playground and discuss the ways in which it might power your new tool or product. Come learn how it might revolutionize or dramatically simplify your existing development flows.

October 10, 2024 — In today’s ever-changing landscape, digital marketers face unique challenges. Economic uncertainty has businesses tightening budgets, and the rise of AI brings robust DIY tools into the mix. How can digital agencies remain steady and even achieve growth in these uncertain times?

In this session, we’ll explore key strategies for staffing, including how to retain top talent, empower professional growth, and efficiently manage remote teams. We’ll talk about the importance of building recurring revenue streams for financial stability, even when new projects are scarce. Discover innovative ways to leverage AI and other technologies to enhance your service offerings and compliment staff, without losing the human touch that sets your agency apart.

October 10, 2024 — Join Travis, a seasoned online business entrepreneur and Customer Success Manager at WooCommerce, alongside Bryce Adams from Metorik, as they uncover the powerful strategies that industry giants use to scale their businesses with WordPress and WooCommerce. In this insightful session, they will delve into large companies’ real-world applications and success stories, showcasing how these platforms provide the flexibility and scalability needed to thrive in today’s competitive market. Attendees will gain practical knowledge of the best practices employed by top-tier enterprises, learning how to implement these techniques to elevate their own businesses and achieve sustainable growth. Whether you’re a seasoned WordPress user or just beginning your journey, this session offers valuable insights that can be applied to any stage of business development.

October 10, 2024 — In 2018, one of the early Customer Success Departments in WordPress was started with one person, added to a team of nine developers and support techs. This tenth employee was viewed with some skepticism and a “let’s see how it goes” outlook.

Within the first month, that new hire started phoning new customers. And thus disrupted the way that plugin companies interact with their users.

From that first phone call in January 2018 to present day, customer success teams have influenced sales, and more importantly, satisfaction – resulting in less churn, great reviews, and customers who feel confident in using plugin software.

This talk will narrate the history of the triumphs, mistakes, and (sometimes) accidental steps and missteps that have taken them from one person with a phone to entire teams of change agents determined to help customers succeed.

October 10, 2024 — Every year, new privacy laws are going into effect that impact WordPress websites. Three are going into effect in 2024, five go into effect in 2025, and we’re currently tracking a few dozen privacy bills that could also be added to the mix.

Web Designers are busy enough without having to worry about passing the BAR exam on the weekends to keep up with all these legal requirements.

Fortunately, there are certain “Privacy by Design” techniques designers can implement that will not only help them comply with today’s privacy laws, but tomorrow’s as well.

And who better to offer such tips than a privacy attorney (married to an ex-web designer!)

October 10, 2024 — Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and exposing environmental injustices. The session will showcase how WordPress is at the center of Grist’s innovative storytelling for bold and impactful journalism. It will also cover the integrated analytics experience provided by Parse.ly.

This session is for publishers, agencies, and engineering teams looking to run newsrooms tailored to their unique needs, implement content syndication solutions in WordPress, and leverage analytics to inform their content strategy.

October 10, 2024 — In late 2023 http://www.nasa.gov re-launched on WordPress. This talk is a walk through of how the dev team cleaned up wp-admin to help the hundreds of users create the compelling content that won NASA a Webby award. From leveraging the dashboard as a 1-step setup, to creating content. Plus, modifying the admin menu to direct users where they need to go. In addition a demo of the block library and some other ways content creators interact with their content in WordPress.

October 10, 2024 — WordPress is evolving, and so should we. The Interactivity API opens up new possibilities for building interactive, dynamic, and engaging websites without sacrificing performance. In this session, we’ll explore what this API is all about, why it matters, and how to get started with it. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of the Interactivity API and be ready to implement it in your projects.

October 10, 2024 — Up against a challenge you don’t think WordPress can solve? Think again. WordPress functionality can be leveraged for so much more than blog posts. This talk will feature case studies on a wide variety of projects built in WordPress for the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE). In the past three years, Georgia established a community-focused site for statewide education staff using a strategic set of plugins and custom modifications within WordPress to produce the functionality needed. Once that site was launched, it opened the door for multiple additional WordPress sites under the GaDOE umbrella, including continuing education events for staff across the state, a menu builder with state-approved recipes for cafeteria staff, and rebuilding the main GaDOE site using a headless WordPress setup with Next.js.

Key takeaways will include out-of-the-box perspectives for utilizing WordPress infrastructure in large-scale initiatives for enterprise and public sector clients. Extend the functionality of WordPress to build next-level sites, custom functionality, and mobile applications that will save your clients thousands when compared to other types of custom development. This will be a co-speaking engagement with Aaron Reimann of Clockwork WP and Dr. Keith Osborn, Chief Information Officer of GaDOE.

October 10, 2024 — This session will cover the OSS Capital thesis – why we believe open source is the most important trend in technology and the implications across crypto, AI and traditional software / tech businesses and markets.