December 20, 2016 — Have you ever had a light-bulb moment? Whether you’re a business owner, blogger, developer or dreamer, you probably know the feeling. Product ideas can be gold – if you know how to use them. WordPress can help you get there. In fact, thanks to new features like the REST API, there’s never been a better time to use WordPress as a platform for your product projects.

Luke will outline his framework for taking your product idea from conception through to reality, with his tips on experimentation, validation, user engagement, hiring, branding, and monetisation.

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December 20, 2016 — This talk will cover some things I’ve learned working customer support for WordPress.com. These things include:

when you need to get in-your-face
domains are hard
never reply upset
kill with kindness
when support informs development

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December 19, 2016 — Public relations, brands and bloggers: who’s influencing who? Sure running a blog is great, but social media followers aside — how do you monetize it? Can people really tell it you’re buying followers and engagement? The blogger market is becoming increasingly more saturated, as more and more Millenials want to be considered influencers. More often than not, bloggers with larger social media followings are hired over their low-follower peers, but how effective are the campaigns they are hired for? This talk will examine the realities of bloggers who are trying to make a living and whether or not these campaigns are actually paying off for the clients. A strong emphasis will be placed on the importance of systematic support in face to face discussions, versus faceless, less personal (and expensive!) sponsored posts on social media — and where the influencer world is heading. Spoiler alert: don’t quit your day job.

December 19, 2016 — Thanks to the internet you can start relationships, learn new skills, and discover new identities, but how does that translate offline? For some of us, it’s easier said than done but is indisputably key to growing our network. This talk highlights some of the best practices for building relationships, making the most out of networking mixers, and building your personal brand.

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December 19, 2016 — You’ll never know everything about WordPress. But you probably know something that other people don’t, and you know it in your own unique way.

So get over your impostor syndrome, and create something with WordPress by being yourself, giving back, and embracing your mediocrity!

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December 19, 2016 — As a developer, there are many experiences which have helped me grow and improve. None of them have been as valuable as blogging. We’ll look at how blogging has helped me as a developer and why I think you should be blogging, too.

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December 19, 2016 — Content is EVERYBODY’s problem: it’s a problem for the content creator, and a problem for the developer. Without content, there is no website. Without the website there is no client. Yet… how is it always left for last? In this talk I will teach you the core practices of the field known as Content Strategy: planning, development, and management of content. Learn how to integrate Content Strategy into your web process will transform your workflow to give everyone a grasp on creating, managing and structuring content– organized and delivered on-time.

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December 19, 2016 — How much money and credibility would you lose if your website went down for a week? A day? An hour? Let’s take a look at some of the most common things that can go wrong with a WordPress site. This short talk will outline easy plans and steps you can take to prevent website disaster. Kate will share a downloadable action plan to help you get started.

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December 19, 2016 — It was the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus who said “There is nothing permanent except change” and another, perhaps more well known American philosopher, Billy Crystal who, said “Change is such hard work.” Both of them though millennia apart recognise two existential certainties, change happens and navigating change can be difficult.

We as WordPress users and developers are navigating an ecosystem that’s rife with change, Matt Mullenweg counselled us in the last State of the Word to Learn Javascript deeply, the REST API is changing the game in terms of what’s possible with WordPress… Furthermore, it’s almost as if every day there’s some new framework, toolkit or productivity hack that could ‘totally change your workflow’. Quite frankly, it’s overwhelming.

Such looming changes may fill you with either excitement, or dread, so in this talk Dee will be discussing the kinds of ways you can adjust your trajectory, and your mindset to confidently navigate large scale change as it approaches.

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December 18, 2016 — In an ever-growing WordPress ecosystem, both the number and scale of companies using WordPress for their online operations are expanding rapidly. Providing your client’s visitors with a usable, accessible and good-looking frontend to their website is usually concern number 1. But should it be? Often, the usability of the WordPress backend is overlooked by developers, and choices pondered on by core developers for months are negated by developers overloading the admin panel with useless menu items, options and data — resulting in a complete lack of insight.

In this talk, I will discuss with you the need of building WordPress websites and web applications that are not only usable to its visitors, but also to its users — be it administrators, content editors or developers. I will walk you through the why and how of improving your WordPress backend experience using plugins and custom code (specifically, the menu API and the columns API), lead by my experience as a developer for clients and as a former co-author of the Admin Columns plugin.

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