August 20, 2026 — AI agents don’t browse the web the way humans do. They need to read it, query it, take actions on it. A new layer of the web is being built right now – one where sites aren’t just destinations for human visitors but interfaces that AI systems can interact with directly. WordPress, which already powers 43% of the web, has a real structural role to play here. But it requires the ecosystem to think differently about what a WordPress site actually is. In this talk I’ll dig into what the agentic web actually means in practice – what agents need from a site, how MCP and the WordPress AI infrastructure being built in core (WP AI Client, MCP Adapter, Abilities API) fit in, and what developers, agencies, and site owners should be thinking about now before this shift accelerates..

August 20, 2026 — Most agencies still update WordPress sites the same way regardless of risk: backup, update, then click through some pages hoping nothing broke. That approach burns hours, scales badly, and still misses the layout break a client catches first. This session presents a rock-solid maintenance workflow.

August 20, 2026 — Block themes give WordPress an opportunity to become more than a publishing tool or a place where finished designs are implemented. With the right theme structure, patterns, templates, and brand guidelines, a WordPress site can become the source of truth for how new pages and layouts should be built. That matters even more as agencies begin using AI in their build process. AI is useful when it can work from existing pieces: approved patterns, real content, design tokens, reusable blocks, and known template structures. It is much less useful when it starts every landing page from scratch. In this session, we’ll look at how agencies can treat WordPress as a practical design system for real client work. We’ll cover how block themes, patterns, `theme.json`, reusable layouts, and clear content structure can give both humans and AI better building blocks. WooCommerce will be used as a case study because store pages make the stakes obvious: product, cart, and checkout experiences need brand consistency, editing flexibility, and reliable structure. Attendees will leave with a clearer model for using block themes as a foundation for agency workflows, client handoff, and AI-assisted page building without losing control of the design system.

August 20, 2026 — The creator economy is rapidly evolving beyond sponsored posts and display ads. Today’s most successful creators are building diversified, community-driven businesses powered by owned platforms, strategic partnerships, and commerce-first content. As both the COO of Tastemaker Conference — a leading conference for food creators and digital entrepreneurs — and a longtime creator myself, I’ve had a front-row seat to how the industry is changing. In this session, I’ll share what brands, creators, and audiences are prioritizing in 2026 and how WordPress creators can position themselves for long-term growth. Attendees will learn: Why creator commerce is becoming more valuable than traditional influencer marketing How creators are building sustainable income beyond ad revenue The role WordPress plays in audience ownership and long-term business stability What brands are actually looking for in creator partnerships today How community and trust are becoming a creator’s greatest competitive advantage in the AI era Practical ways creators can future-proof their businesses Whether you’re a blogger, content creator, entrepreneur, marketer, or WordPress professional, this session will provide actionable insights into the next era of digital business and creator-led commerce. Audience Takeaways Understand where the creator economy is heading Learn how to diversify revenue streams Discover why owned platforms matter more than ever Gain practical strategies for building trust-driven creator businesses Learn how creators can stand out in an increasingly AI-saturated internet”

August 20, 2026 — Accessibility in WordPress is often misunderstood as something that can be solved by simply installing a plugin. While plugins can be helpful, true accessibility requires understanding how themes, content, design choices, navigation, forms, images, headings, and interactive elements affect real users. In this session, I will explain what real WordPress accessibility looks like beyond automated tools and quick fixes. Attendees will learn common accessibility issues found on WordPress websites, how to identify them, and practical steps they can take to make their sites more usable and compliant with WCAG and Section 508 standards. This presentation is designed for WordPress site owners, designers, developers, content creators, and anyone who wants to build websites that work better for everyone.

August 20, 2026 — Hook: Every dev on your team has their own pile of AI prompts and one-off scripts — which means every hard-won lesson stays trapped with the person who learned it, and the rest of the team keeps paying to learn it again. What if your team’s AI tooling lived in a versioned, reviewed, CI-enforced repo — the same way your plugins do? Take-away: a concrete starter pattern for a team-skills repo + the three policies that make it stick.

August 20, 2026 — Earlier this year I was the sole developer on a new WordPress site build. AI tools moved the work along, but only because I spent the project teaching them how to work in my way – correcting mistakes, capturing what I learned, and feeding it back so they wouldn’t repeat them over and over again. This talk is about that practice: teaching your AI tools your process as you go, so they get better instead of just faster. Two actual instances from the project as examples: A mega-menu nav with a dead click zone where the AI’s first move was a complicated JavaScript event handler – the actual fix was a few CSS utility classes on the link. A tangled Tailwind class string that smelled wrong before I could name why – four AI agents running in parallel helped me diagnose it, clean it, and codify a rule that’s held up since. What I’ve learned and my process improvements go beyond just writing code: Asking for HTML output instead of markdown when richer visualizations are helpful. Dispatching multiple models to get different viewpoints for comparison and brainstorming solutions. Keeping the lessons I’ve taught the tools portable so I don’t lose the learning when I migrate to a new model. My processes are still evolving and improving. This talk gives a snapshot of where I’m at now and attendees will leave with a new set of tools and perspectives to improve their own AI interactions, grounded in actual project work on a shipped site.

August 20, 2026 — AI is now embedded in plugins, themes, content pipelines, and client sites across the WordPress ecosystem. Most WordPress professionals have focused on what AI can do. Almost nobody has focused on what it requires of you legally This talk covers the compliance gap that agencies, freelancers, and product builders are about to run into: GDPR and data residency implications of AI tools processing user content, consent requirements when AI is involved in personalization or communication, the EU AI Act and what it means for WordPress businesses serving European clients, and disclosure obligations that are already in effect in some jurisdictions. These are not hypothetical future risks. They are current, and the WordPress ecosystem is largely unprepared for them. Attendees will leave with a practical checklist for auditing their own sites and client sites, an understanding of which AI use cases carry the most legal exposure, and clarity on what questions to bring to their legal counsel.

August 20, 2026 — Join Waymo’s Amanda Ventura and host David Levine for a fireside chat about earning public trust in AI that moves beyond screens and into the physical world.

Amanda works on Waymo’s public affairs team at the intersection of artificial intelligence and community engagement. By working directly with road safety and accessibility advocates, her team is helping shape a future of safer, more inclusive travel powered by autonomous driving.

David Levine is a member of the WordPress Core AI Team and Director of Growth Engineering at rtCamp. He brings more than a decade of experience working with nonprofits, NGOs, local governments, and organizations building technology people can rely on.

Together, Amanda and David explore questions relevant to anyone building with emerging technology:

How do you earn trust from people who did not ask for the technology?
How should communities help shape the products affecting their lives?
What does it take to maintain trust when safety and accessibility are at stake?

August 19, 2026 — The standard toolkit for custom WordPress theme development is undergoing a generational shift. Legacy bundlers, bulky frameworks, and guessing games with AI code completion are being replaced by lightweight execution environments, composable architectures, and rigid, deterministic code scaffolding. In this immersive, hands-on workshop, developers will dive into the future of theme development using WP Rig, the open-source progressive development starter theme and build tool system tailored for modern WordPress theme development. Participants will strip away development friction by moving into a completely automated local development environment powered by Bun and Lightning CSS, unlocking instantaneous feedback loops and hyper-optimized assets. We will dive deep into native WordPress Block support, exploring how to structure high-performance layout systems and map them cleanly to global styles. Next, we’ll unlock the true power of modern development: AI-Native Engineering. Attendees will discover how WP Rig’s structural blueprints interact seamlessly with AI coding agents. By leveraging codebases intentionally architected to minimize model hallucinations, you will learn how to turn your AI coding agent into a reliable pair-programmer for complex theme features. Finally, we’ll touch on the future of building “a la carte,” demonstrating how open-source component library paradigms allow developers to inject community-driven, plug-and-play features instantly into their projects without introducing theme bloat and increasing deterministic AI theme enhancements. Bring your laptop, leave legacy tooling behind, and discover how to write cleaner code faster while remaining fully aligned with modern WordPress standards. 🎯 What Attendees Will Learn (Learning Objectives) Directory-First QA Pipelines: How to leverage WP Rig’s native automated check suite to identify and correct code violations against official WordPress.org Theme Review guidelines. Modern Block & Hybrid Scaffolding: Safely integrating standard PHP-based code with block architectures, including flawless generation and testing of theme.json. AI-Guided Architecture (Agentic Workflows): Utilizing AI coding assistants alongside WP Rig’s structured structural blueprints to build error-free, custom block patterns rapidly. Blazing-Fast Tooling: How to bypass legacy configurations using an integrated build tool system designed for instant compilation feedback loops. 🛠 Prerequisites & Requirements Attendees should have a foundational understanding of PHP, CSS, and localized development. To participate in the coding portions, they will need: A laptop with a local WordPress development environment (e.g., WordPress Studio or LocalWP). Node.js/Bun and Composer installed locally. A code editor equipped with an AI programming extension (optional, but recommended for experiencing the agentic workflow elements). Directly Supports the Open Source Project: One of WordPress’s biggest needs is getting more developers to submit high-quality, block-compatible themes to the official directory. This workshop removes the intimidation factor of theme submissions and directly trains attendees to become directory contributors. Aligns with Core Innovation: The session balances the historical PHP strength of WordPress with modern Block paradigms and automated testing frameworks, providing a masterclass in how hybrid development should look in 2026. Solves the “Review Loop” Pain Point: By showing how the framework mimics the validation logic of the Theme Review Team, this workshop solves a massive developer pain point (waiting weeks for code-review feedback only to get rejected over basic formatting rules). It introduces an automated safety net.