April 22, 2016 — Facebook Retargeting and Ads: Learn how to leverage Facebook’s custom pixel codes on your WordPress site. This talk is geared towards anyone interested in utilizing Facebook Ads (including Instagram) and understanding how retargeting works.

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April 22, 2016 — The Power of User-Generated Content is a great talk for newbies learning about content marketing and social media. This presentation will highlight the benefits of UGC with examples. Attendees will learn how to run an effective UGC campaign.

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April 21, 2016 — Learning to be comfortable speaking in public, in both formal and informal settings, is an important life and professional skill. You can be “outgoing on command,” especially with support from the WordPress community.

Liam Dempsey has worked by himself from home since 2005. He thrives in working alone, outside of the company of others. He’s not eager to join a co-working space. Yet, he started and organizes a WordPress Meetup. He regularly gives professional talks to sizable audiences on topics around WordPress and online marketing. He’s delivered open-invite webinars and been a guest on a number of podcasts. Through a series of observations, choices, decisions and tactics, Liam learned to be “outgoing on command”. His approach has helped other members of his small consultancy achieve similar “outgoing on command” skills. Whether you’re interested in getting into public speaking or just looking to get more from hallway meetings at WordCamps, this session will give you practical, non-gimicky ideas to help you get there.

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April 21, 2016 — In this session, Thorsten explains IT certifications in general and how different they can be structured. He then provides several examples of what a certificate in the IT industry can mean for both employees and employers. Based on his experience from by now six seven certification exams with three different providers, Thorsten gives an overview of appropriate certifications for WordPress engineers.

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April 21, 2016 — Navigating BuddyPress’ Identity Crisis

April 21, 2016 — Successful businesses have happy customers. Taking the time to discover the real problems, pain points and opportunities of your clients will help you propose and sell the solutions they need. This will make them happy. Your business will benefit as a result.

This presentation will cover:

The importance of Discovery and how to conduct it.
How to help customers define clear business objectives so you can enable their success.
How articulate differentiation and focus on value instead of price.
Choosing hourly vs fixed bid pricing based on the situation.
When and how to bundle additional services like hosting, SEO and support services.
How and when to say no to new prospects

April 21, 2016 — Scott Mann some of the nuts and bolts growth lessons and showing off some of the hard-earned bruises he’s earned in the last 7 years bootstrapping a freelance service agency into a 10-person team. Come find out when and how to hire, when and how to raise rates, what awesome business tools to use, and how not to totally screw everything up horribly.

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April 21, 2016 — If JavaScript and API driven interface are the future of the web, why should your plugin or theme admin interfaces be any different? With a highly-extensible tool for creating REST APIs included in WordPress, using JavaScript MVC frameworks to create great interfaces for your plugins, themes, apps and services is easier than ever.

In this hands-on talk Josh and Roy will share their experience creating an Angular App, powered by custom REST API endpoints for their A/B testing plugin Ingot. They will address API creation, using Angular, and ensuring that the final product is extensible and accessible as a WordPress admin interface should be.

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April 21, 2016 — “Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The time has come. You’ve put your nose to the grindstone and built your skill set to the point where you’re ready to take the plunge, put on the entrepreneur cap and become a freelancer. You’ll be free to make your own decisions, work your own hours, and work from anywhere, any time! At least that’s how it may seem.

And then . . . reality. Fear of loss of security, too much responsibility, too many commitments and not enough time. Suddenly you find you’re working for a couple bucks an hour and you’re ALWAYS busy. And before you know it, you’re working for peanuts and burning out and/or losing your sanity.

It’s an all too common story and one that most of us have been through at one point in time or another.

In my presentation, I will share tips that I’ve picked up through my own journey as a freelancer to help you manage your new career while avoiding most of the pitfalls associated with being a freelancer. I’ll share some of my successes, but as importantly, my failures in order for you to start and maintain a successful freelance business.

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April 21, 2016 — For many first-time freelancers and seasoned freelancers, tax season can be a rude awakening—making them keenly aware of how their self-employed status impacts their tax situation. In this talk, you will learn the basic overview of how accounting and taxes work for freelancers, things you need to do or keep track of, and some tips for making the whole process easier.

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