December 11, 2016 — WordPress has come a long way since Matt Cutts first spoke about SEO at WordCamp SF in 2007. The platform has changed and improved much of its SEO capabilities. But what’s left for the end user; which tweaks can really make a difference? Joost covers the most important aspects of a good WordPress SEO strategy.

In this talk, he will cover:
* your site’s settings
* your theme
* mobile friendliness and speed
* needed plugin(s)
* content

Note: while Joost is, of course, the project lead for Yoast SEO, most of this session will _not_ cover this plugin.

December 11, 2016 — Contributor Panel with Michael Arestad, Gary Pendergast, Joe Dolson, Taco Verdonschot and Tina Kesova

December 11, 2016 — No one can dispute the power that democratized publishing affords us. After all, anyone today can start a website and be heard by the world. And of course, WordPress has played a central role in all this. At the same time, the power granted by democratization has led to unforeseen consequences. From the persistence of misinformation to the proliferation of content designed to manipulate our emotions, from the polarization of politics to the spread of radicalism, all of these can be attributed in some way to the ease with which anyone can find a voice on the internet today. My talk will therefore 1) describe the problems democratization can create, and 2) discuss potential solutions. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

December 11, 2016 — The New York Times recently launched a version of the site in Spanish and is expanding to more languages in the future. The workflow and architecture is built on top of WordPress. This talk will show how the NYT uses WordPress’ built-in i18n capabilities, generates translation files using Gulp, and takes existing projects (not built on WordPress) and turns them into a cohesive theme using Mustache. I’ll explain how we use Guzzle to talk to S3, and the REST API to syndicate content and offload expensive processes.

Presentation Slides »

December 10, 2016 — Pippin will answer some of the questions he is asked most often in regards to plugin development, business, managing a team, life, and other subjects.

December 10, 2016 — Burnout takes many forms. From mental and emotional fatigue all the way down to physical ailments, it’s a problem that everyone will face at some point in their career. There is a lot of information in the world about self-care for your mental and personal health, but it’s harder to find information about how to care for the causes you’re passionate about. Just like fatigue of the mind and body can plague someone who is experiencing personal burnout, it’s also possible to experience that same fatigue when it comes to the “why” behind your passion. Join me as I talk a bit about how I keep loving what I do and the things I’ve done to help others love what they do as well.

December 10, 2016 — How I worked with the FBI around the country to create BanditTracker websites to put away some of the countries most dangerous criminals.

Starting from my initial email request and skepticism. “The FBI wants a website to display suspects on in Texas”, my thought was like anyone’s “It’s the FBI, they have their resources.. and ignored the email”. On the 2nd request I said, what the heck, I’ll setup a WP site they can post photos on. From there the requests came in from around the country and helped capture some very dangerous criminals.

I have some specific cases that are interesting and fun, and how some of the obstacles I ran into along the way. Including headlines of ‘Site Traffic Brings Down New FBI Website”, etc.

December 10, 2016 — TypeScript, an open source programming language has seen enormous growth over the past year. Today, it is used to build several key frameworks like AngularJS, Ionic etc. In this talk, Doris will go through how TypeScript enables you to leverage features from the current and future of JavaScript while increasing the productivity of JavaScript development across the board. As ECMAScript 6 gains popularity and more browsers are implementing the standard, JavaScript developers across the board are beginning to wonder, ‘what’s next?’ This session will cover some of the latest features of TypeScript, including future ECMAScript proposals, support for Angular and React/JSX, the state of the art type system capabilities, and how it all comes together to make working and creating things in JavaScript more productive and fun with TypeScript.

December 10, 2016 — As many museums move towards diverse open data policies, one would assume their choice of CMS would follow suit. One would be WRONG.

In this talk I will begin by reviewing the current state of technology in museums, with a focus on their usage of open source Content Management Systems (where Drupal reigns supreme and WordPress is only for blogging). I will discuss why the perceived lack of os software competition in this sector keeps museums trapped in systems they cannot afford to update. I will end by sharing ways the OS community can get involved in the would of Cultural Institutions.

December 10, 2016 — Clear and compelling writing can improve any website, from hobby blogs to academic resource centers. If you think your web content needs a little love, take a cue from the professionals who make a living writing every day: Journalists! In this talk, I’ll use examples from the newsroom that apply to anyone writing for the web. You don’t need to see your name in print to be a good writer.