March 11, 2017 — I. An Intro to Video Libraries
In this session, I will be discussing the impact that a video library can have on your website. A video library is a collection of videos, typically organized into categories and groups, that members can view directly on your website.There is a place for video in almost any website, from marketing to content to customer service.

II. How to best utilize videos to engage your customers
I will cover the importance of a Video Library for Search Engine Optimization and how it helps keep visitors on your site for a longer amount of time. I will discuss how you can use video content marketing to better connect with your audience and communicate with customers. I will also present a number of strategic approaches to including videos on various types of websites.

III. Options for sharing and creating video libraries
I will include the different video sharing options that are available, how to create and host a video library, and how to utilize video for marketing, training, and communication.

IV. The best audiences for video content
Lastly, I would like to present the type of audiences that video is good for and statistically who is viewing videos on the web. This will include how to promote and organize your video library for your intended audiences.

Presentation Slides »

March 11, 2017 — A website is much more than an online business card. It is the central hub of your online presence and the face of your business to thousands of potential clients. To effectively reach your audience, you must have the proper elements in place, as well as the tools that will allow you to manage your WordPress website with the greatest of ease, functionality and power.

Join Taylor in this presentation to learn the elements that every WordPress website must have. You will learn how to:

Ensure an SEO-friendly website
Keep track of where your visitors are coming from
Start building a marketable email list
Use the tools that will save you time and headaches
Make your website and blog posts more engaging
And much more!

March 10, 2017 — Can improv help you be a better content creator? Does Big Red go with Barbacoa? (The answer to both, is “yes.”) I’ll show you how I apply improv philosophies, such as “Yes, and,” giving gifts, and many more, in my roles as blogger, Community Manager and co-host of multiple podcasts. You’ll leave learning how you can use these same philosophies to create new and interesting content on your own or in collaboration with others.

Presentation Slides »

March 10, 2017 — Remember what it was like when you first set up your blog? You were full of piss and vinegar and incredibly excited. It may have sustained you during a rocky time at work or in your personal life. It was a life force that energized you. After all, people would be reading what you had to say.

Then it happened. Your blog moved from being a life force to a life suck, taking away all the joy that you originally had. Updating it became a chore; you exhaled an audible groan every time you opened up wp-admin. Your blog turned into a vampire (and not of the Twilight variety).

This talk is geared around the four types of blog vampires I’ve encountered and strategies to help make personal blogging fun again. Regardless of where you are on your blogging journey, vampires abound, including:

The No One Is Reading My Blog Vampire—this is where a blogger becomes so despondent after realizing that no one, not even their friends and family, are reading their blog

The Keeping Up with the Jones’s Vampire—this is where a blogger starts comparing themselves to others and has a feeling of inadequacy/jealousy
Getting Caught Up in the Fame of (Minor) Celebrity—this is where the blogger gets an inkling of fame and PR people reach out along with the endless invites; but it’s to things they may not care about
The Administrative Vampire—this is where the blogger gets mired down in all the SEO/tagging/socialing/posting minutiae and hates life
All these vampires make you want to just give up. But that flicker of light from the life force still draws you in. You feel confused on what to do and mostly trapped—I mean, isn’t this supposed to be fun? Having personally experienced all of these types of blog vampires, I’ll walk through strategies to vanquish them so you can enjoy the joys of blogging once again.

March 6, 2017 — Jenny Beaumont is a multicultural, multidisciplinary maker and writer of things. She is a leader of people and of projects, who values communication above all else as a means to successful collaboration.

Jenny and Paolo Belcastro, are the co-organizers of WordCamp Europe. She is the team lead of the local WordPress Community.

March 5, 2017 — There are many factors that go into making WordPress fast. Caching, minifying, optimizing, CDN’s, web servers, you name it! We’ll take an in-depth look at all the technologies involved in WordPress performance, and make it a little less daunting to go under the hood and start tuning. Yes, yes! You can haz more performanz, too!

Presentation Slides »

March 5, 2017 — WordPress is a great framework. What can we learn from other frameworks? What’s the most expensive things that can happen on, frankly, any website? In this talk, we’ll take a comparative look at different philosophies, tools, and methods to make WordPress sites blazing fast. After attending, you should be able to understand where bottlenecks can pop up in your sites. If you have questions, I’m open to answer them over coffee via Twitter!

March 5, 2017 — Too often, UX is only considered on the front-end of a WordPress site design. Although that is very important, too many WP Designers/Developers stop there. We are going to go over tricks and methods to make updating and administrating WordPress sites much more user-friendly for the admin/site-owner/client. Using Custom Post Types, the WPDB API and some creative coding, we can make WordPress sites easier for ANY business and/or experience level of user to update and add content specific to their business. After all, content is king, so let’s encourages admins to add more!

Presentation Slides »

March 5, 2017 — Asked Alok about his WordPress journey.

March 5, 2017 — WordPress security isn’t as difficult as most people think; the leading causes of hacked sites and malware tend to be some combination of misinformation and inaction. This talk aims to show folks how easy it actually is to keep your WordPress site secure, and offers simple steps to prevent issues like hacks and malware from ever occurring with implementations that any WordPress user can handle, from developer to user.