October 11, 2024 — This session will discuss the intricate world of pricing strategies, a critical factor in the growth and success of WordPress-based businesses. It is ideally suited for freelancers and small web agencies that focus on WordPress and related web services such as online marketing, SEO, and security. Discussions will focus on both the advantages and challenges of traditional pricing models, as well as the introduction of innovative ways to charge clients by leveraging current relationships and exploring new opportunities. Emphasis will be placed on pricing techniques that are particularly effective among the most successful WordPress service providers. Building a pricing strategy that grows with your business means you can develop flexible pricing strategies that evolve as the business grows, a concept that aligns with successful scalability and adaptability in pricing.

October 11, 2024 — AI is a blazingly fast-paced world and its impact on digital workflows has been significant, particularly in the realms of social media, newsletters, and websites. We will explore several AI tools and their applications in digital marketing. Learn how AI tools can assist in curating content, scheduling posts, analyzing engagement, and even interacting with followers. AI can also assist in making changes to your website and tweaking web content to better reflect the keywords you are targeting. Additionally, AI can aid in managing your newsletter, from writing and scheduling to segmenting your audiences. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies and knowledge of AI tools that can be implemented immediately to save time, increase efficiency, and drive better results in their digital endeavors.

October 11, 2024 — Are you thinking about growing your agency? Do yourself a favor and learn from our mistakes! In this talk, we’ll focus on bringing real world insights into the growing pains of agency life. Whether you’re a solo consultant dreaming of building a team or a small agency aiming for expansion, Karena and Gina will take a look at these pivotal stages of agency development, helping you anticipate risks and avoid common pitfalls.

We will cover critical topics such as effective team growth, clarity around service offerings, and the creation of solid processes and procedures. We’ll also explore crucial financial priorities, legal necessities, and the cultivation of a workplace culture that aligns with your vision.

This presentation will be packed with actionable takeaways for the WordPress professional, offering strategies for scaling, considerations for building with an exit in mind, and a variety of tools and resources that you can apply directly to your own agency expansion efforts.

October 11, 2024 — At the start of the pandemic, I built an online version of the dominoes-based game Mexican Train so my family could keep playing while staying safe. 200,000 games later, it has become my most successful “startup” to date, despite doing no marketing and being donation-based. It has also helped tens of thousands of people feel less isolated during the pandemic and after. I will walk through the surprising journey of starting a project on a whim, building a game on WordPress, how a community emerged, and the lessons I learned along the way.

October 11, 2024 — Regardless of whether you have a blog, a website, or online store, you have a Brand. In this talk, we will share the most cost-effective ways to protect and grow that brand.

We will talk about how to choose a name that sends the right signals about what you’re offering without triggering trademark conflicts. And we will explain multiple methods for registering and protecting your name and how to defend it from usurpers.

We will touch on the law where necessary, however, this will largely be a business focused talk to provide you practical, actionable advice and answer your burning questions.

October 11, 2024 — Last September, a small but nasty bug was added to the WordPress Core code base and remained undetected until 6.4 was released in November.

Once the severity was clear, Core contributors worked around the clock to determine the appropriate fix, getting a new release out to the world in less than 8 hours from start to finish. Let’s examine what happened during this moment in the project’s history before zooming out in a case study of release management. Lessons the project learned will be shared in a way that you can relate to, allowing you to use them in your own work.

This is a joint talk by Aaron Jorbin and Jonathan Desrosiers, two contributors with over a combined 26 years in contribution experience. They have each led multiple minor and major WordPress releases, are both core committers and members of the WordPress Security team.

October 11, 2024 — Explore the journey from content creation to monetization within the WordPress ecosystem, giving you actionable insights to design, market, and sell online courses effectively.

October 11, 2024 — iOne Digital was created to democratize publishing by showcasing and empowering Black-owned businesses. Leveraging WordPress, iOne has launched over 70 platforms, including BlackPlanet, the original social network predating Facebook. This extensive use of WordPress underscores their commitment to creating accessible and cost-effective digital spaces for the Black community.

Join Markus Robinson, the SVP, Product and Technology, to gain a deeper understanding of iOne Digital’s journey and impact. This session will explore the history of iOne, their vision and significant achievements. It will delve into their choice of WordPress, how their approach has evolved over the years and the technical decisions involved in managing such an extensive multisite network. This discussion will provide insights into the strategic and technical lessons learned, highlighting the thoughtful planning behind their expansive digital footprint.

October 11, 2024 — WordPress isn’t just for websites and blogs. It’s a powerful CMS that can serve as the backbone of complex web applications, portals, and intranets. Using WordPress saves development time on the backend, allowing you to focus on crafting front-end experiences that guide users through complex processes like applying to receive government services, requesting medical records from a doctor, or requesting a nurse to start an IV at a hospital.

In this session, speakers Amber Hinds and Steve Jones will share lessons from building multiple enterprise WordPress portals and present a case study of designing and developing a portal for Nurse Pro Plus, an on-demand IV services company fulfilling requests at hundreds of hospitals across 12 states.

The portal leverages WordPress’ data structure, user management system, and key plugins to power its backend admin. The front end is an accessible Vue.js application that enables hospital representatives to order IV services, notifies available contract nurses, and allows one to pick up and fulfill the order. Essentially, it’s Uber for nurses.

Attendees will leave inspired to reimagine WordPress as more than just a website builder, but as a key tool for building sophisticated web applications. Takeaways will include helpful plugins when building portals, specific considerations for accessibility, security, and UX, and ideas for overcoming challenges when building WordPress-powered web applications.

October 11, 2024 — The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit that supports these contributors and projects. For the last four years the Foundation’s Communications department has built and supported an open – anyone can edit – style blog using WordPress. It’s called Diff (diff.wikimedia.org) and it’s a multilingual blog that anyone can edit…or well, at least submit a post to be published.

Along the way we’ve learned some important and interesting lessons on how to allow anyone to submit a post, review and publish, while allowing for unique voices and perspectives. We’re using a mix of some off-the-shelf plugins, a bit of custom code, and bending WordPress and multilingualism to the extreme ends of how it’s “supposed” to work.

This session will introduce you to how we pulled this all off, some of the ways we’ve given back to the WordPress community, the challenges we’ve faced, and ideas on how you can run an open community blog.