October 10, 2024 — WordPress is evolving, and so should we. The Interactivity API opens up new possibilities for building interactive, dynamic, and engaging websites without sacrificing performance. In this session, we’ll explore what this API is all about, why it matters, and how to get started with it. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of the Interactivity API and be ready to implement it in your projects.

October 10, 2024 — Up against a challenge you don’t think WordPress can solve? Think again. WordPress functionality can be leveraged for so much more than blog posts. This talk will feature case studies on a wide variety of projects built in WordPress for the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE). In the past three years, Georgia established a community-focused site for statewide education staff using a strategic set of plugins and custom modifications within WordPress to produce the functionality needed. Once that site was launched, it opened the door for multiple additional WordPress sites under the GaDOE umbrella, including continuing education events for staff across the state, a menu builder with state-approved recipes for cafeteria staff, and rebuilding the main GaDOE site using a headless WordPress setup with Next.js.

Key takeaways will include out-of-the-box perspectives for utilizing WordPress infrastructure in large-scale initiatives for enterprise and public sector clients. Extend the functionality of WordPress to build next-level sites, custom functionality, and mobile applications that will save your clients thousands when compared to other types of custom development. This will be a co-speaking engagement with Aaron Reimann of Clockwork WP and Dr. Keith Osborn, Chief Information Officer of GaDOE.

October 10, 2024 — This session will cover the OSS Capital thesis – why we believe open source is the most important trend in technology and the implications across crypto, AI and traditional software / tech businesses and markets.

October 10, 2024 — The WordPress media library currently relies on server-side processing for tasks like image resizing. This can result in strained server resources and a subpar user experience. Client-side processing provides a solution to enhance both performance and UX by leveraging the user’s browser capabilities and technologies such as WebAssembly. This presentation dives into the technical aspects of media handling in WordPress and demonstrates the exciting benefits of the new client-side processing approach. It sparks your imagination by showcasing how these powerful new capabilities revolutionize media management and pave the way for new use cases within WordPress core and beyond.

October 10, 2024 — The Automattic Special Projects Team helps interesting people, projects, and organizations to have a great experience with their WordPress websites. By connecting their partners with the best that the WordPress community has to offer, the team spreads enthusiasm for WordPress and open source in general.

In this follow up to Christy Nyiri’s presentation, Highlights from the Automattic Special Project Team, Mike Straw will show the technical details behind some of the advanced features and customizations the Automattic Special Projects Team has built for their partners, and share details to help developers implement them on their own sites.

October 10, 2024 — Human Made recently collaborated with the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University’s official news outlet, to transform and modernize their digital presence. The project team established a scalable design system, reduced training time by simplifying the editorial workflow, and engineered custom blocks to captivate the reader and tell new kinds of stories — all without compromising on the highest accessibility standards.

This talk will guide the audience through the technologies and decision-making framework behind some of the most complex and interesting features of the new site. Expect to gain a fresh perspective on what’s possible within the block editor!

October 10, 2024 — For two decades, Gravatar has quietly powered billions of avatars across countless websites. Dive into the latest evolution of Gravatar as we unveil how we are building a new open graph that intertwines domains, identities, and social connections, setting the stage for a more connected and personalized web experience. We’ll highlight the simple integration process using our new WordPress plugin, APIs, SDKs, and web components. And we’ll discuss how profiles-as-a-service aligns with current trends such as decentralization, AI, and privacy.

October 10, 2024 — This year Amnesty International open sourced their WordPress theme and plugins. Amnesty International will discuss their journey to launching 45 WordPress sites on the Humanity WordPress theme and how they went about open sourcing their code. The talk will cover a demo, the challenges faced and most importantly information on how you can download and install the Humanity theme on your WordPress install.

This session is especially valuable for NGOs looking for a theme as well as engineers who might want to build features or help fix bugs for an important charity.

October 10, 2024 — This past spring, the Pew Research Center launched a new digital news platform entirely built with blocks to power their condensed multisite at http://www.pewresearch.org. This initiative goes beyond the mere use of blocks for content and page layout, building upon the Center’s work in drag-and-drop web app creation using the block editor found in their Chart Builder and Quiz Builder plugins. Every system, feature, and functionality on pewresearch.org is a block, from the external user accounts system and login forms to the facets on post archive pages, interactive charts, media downloads, the legal acceptance form for specific media downloads, and newsletter signup forms.

The presentation will cover the key features of the platform, including Block Context Wrappers and Atomic Interactive Blocks. These innovations enable scalable interactivity for blocks, not just from a performance perspective, but also from a developer workload and support standpoint. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the possibilities of blocks and the new WordPress Interactivity API.

October 10, 2024 — In this session, Jessica will show you how Mrs.Sporty – Europe’s leading women’s fitness & health brand – managed to build a website system with 250 connected WordPress websites. As a franchise, Mrs.Sporty needs to be able to control some parts of these sites globally, while still allowing local franchisees to make local adjustments.

Jessica will walk you through this exciting case and explain how multiple multisites were linked together to synchronize some parts while leaving others open for local editing. She will highlight how the separation of content, design & layout was critical to making this case possible.