November 22, 2016 — There are a lot of parallels between the open source development world and Improv communities. The goal of this talk is to expose the similarities and directly apply the core principles for the stagecraft of improv to get better code, smoother projects and ultimately happier customers. At the end the audience will be able to take practical examples and very simple exercises back to their organizations to better communicate with customers and internal stakeholders alike. Also, techniques to get ‘unstuck’ when hitting major blockages in creativity needed for elegant code.

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November 22, 2016 — Security can seem intimidating and complex for many of us, but we shouldn’t (can’t) let that stop us from making sure we’re doing everything we can to secure our WordPress sites. After all, our websites are often part of our livelihood. In this session Adam will discuss the “big picture” of website security and break down the fundamental tasks needed for a strong security plan, in order of importance. Adam will provide an actionable checklist on what you can start doing today to better secure your WordPress websites. After attending this session, audience members will have a better understanding of website security as a whole and what steps they can take to mitigate risk. Attendees will be able to start building their WordPress security master plan immediately.

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November 22, 2016 — In this talk, I’d talk about all the recent improvements to i18n (internationalization) and l10n (localization) in WordPress 4.6 and upcoming versions. There are some great performance improvements and new features to make the lives of developers and users easier.

This includes, but is not limited to, just-in-time loading of translations, per-user language settings and JavaScript internationalization. Some very interesting stuff that I will demonstrate with code examples and screenshots.

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November 22, 2016 — Timmy Gelles is the Senior Web Developer for the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University. A Baltimore resident, he’s a self-taught developer who once worked as a newspaper reporter and an AmeriCorps VISTA. For the past 2 years he’s assisted academic departments, faculty members, and other educational groups on the Homewood campus get on board the WordPress train.

November 22, 2016 — As WordPress gains more popularity, high schools, colleges and universities, and online learning environments are spending more time and money developing WordPress-based courses. Over the last few years I have developed several curriculums for myself, for colleges, and for training-based companies. In this talk, I will go through my process for developing 3 courses: an introduction to WordPress, creating a business website for WordPress, and an introduction to WordPress theming.

November 22, 2016 — Don’t you just hate it when a large traffic spike comes your way and your website goes down? Is your server set-up shakier than an all-night Red Bull + espresso bender at Starbucks? Is your web host holding you back from running your website of your dreams? Then setting up on top of Amazon’s cloud is definitely for you! There is a lot of information about how to set-up a server and running a basic WordPress site on Amazon Web Services. But there isn’t a lot of information on building a highly-available, scalable, enterprise-grade, infrastructure to power WordPress. This talk will cover the nuts and bolts of a highly-scalable cloud hosting set-up specifically for WordPress through my own experience re-architecting BillyPenn.com.

November 22, 2016 — Undergraduates. Graduates. Post-docs. Researchers. Staff. Investigators, both principle and otherwise. Faculty. Just about every site that one works with in Higher Education has lists and lists of people. A WordPress Page can be used to present this information, but keeping them organized on that Page — especially for larger directories and when each person within a directory has their own member profile — is a daunting task. The solution: a custom post type. Come hear about how David Dashifen Kees developed a Site Directory and Profile plugin for use on the University of Illinois’s WordPress Network, Publish.illinois.edu, and how it — along with carefully crafted filters, templates, and CSS — has provided the means by which campus sites present lists of people for going on three years now. And, he’s recently enhanced the plugin to make use of on-campus APIs to load site member information from data sources other than the site’s database providing more flexibility and interoperability throughout the campus.

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November 21, 2016 — A “how-to” on using free resources to design, develop, and launch a killer website that will work for your business. In this talk, we will touch on everything from the goal of your site, to the character it portrays, all while making use of quality free resources such as themes, plugins, fonts, and analytics.

November 21, 2016 — In this session I will be covering the importance of good customer service and the powerful impact your support team has on your business. I will discuss practices to use and practices to avoid. I’ll take poor customer service examples and show how they could be handled differently and turned into excellent customer outcomes. I’ll also cover the steps to develop and implement an all star customer service program. This will include the secrets to providing super service, general support standards, and how to get things right for your customers. I’ll discuss why it’s important to go the extra mile to make and keep your customers happy so that they turn into returning customers and brand ambassadors.

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November 21, 2016 — Our goal: empower a diverse docent community to create their own training hub. Powered by open-source software and an ambitious docent corps, we wondered how to provide a space for docents to self-moderate and share responsibility while adhering to an institution’s guidelines and oversight? A demonstration of the site will provide fodder for discussing the planning, revision, and maintenance workflows that evolved. Modules developed include plugins for the docent library, museum exhibitions, training materials, and roster. Participants will receive links to the custom built software we have released as open source on GitHub. Discussion will focus on lessons learned and how other institutions can incorporate open-source tools for their own training needs.