January 17, 2016 — So many devices, so little time! Learn how to efficiently and effectively design your website so it will look amazing… from mobile to big screen (and everything in-between)! A combination of strategy, design and code tips for designing for all devices. A little something for everyone (and most technical levels).

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January 17, 2016 — In the field of Information Architecture (IA) and User Experience Design (UX), there is a practice known as Usage Modeling, which maps user scenarios and stories to business priorities. This technique has been traditionally employed in software development to help define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for first candidate release.

In this session, you will learn how the Usage Modeling process can be applied to your or your clients’ website and mobile projects to:

– put the end-user first
– prioritize features
– scope out functionality you thought was important (but isn’t)
– determine an appropriate budget for the project

The format of this session is unique: part lecture, part hands-on simulation of an actual Usage Modeling Workshop in the boardroom so you can experience the methodology first-hand with a seasoned facilitator.

If you are considering a large web project for yourself or your organisation, or if you often quote on web work for clients, then this session is not to be missed!

January 17, 2016 — Education, Media, and Public Service are having their business and service delivery models disrupted. Sometimes, they haven’t fully internalized customer, student, or patient-centric business drivers, and sometimes they can’t justify budget line items related to user-centered design in this fiscally constrained environment.

The result is that designers may need to “disguise” user-centered design methods behind other processes, and play it fast and loose with research methodologies to get the job done, while speaking to clients in a language they can both understand and get behind.

In this session, Christine will illustrate how she has enlisted scenario planning, a facilitation methodology used in strategic business planning, as a tool to effectively create user personas and journey maps with simple and clear implications for adaptive content delivery. She will walk through how a traditional sales and marketing funnel became a powerful model to structure just-in-time content delivery for a healthcare client to progressively disclose information at exactly the right level of complexity for the user. And how she has used process design exercises to enlist active participation of clients in the UX design process that has helped them improve their service delivery.

When we mashup user experience design practices with strategic planning and other, sometimes non-traditional business processes, we add value to organizations that goes well beyond the user experience. It helps them to be better at doing what they do.

This session will be of interest to project leaders who want to better understand how to “sell” user experience design, as well as user experience designers who want to learn about new ways of approaching clients who may not understand what they do. Knowledge of standard user experience design methodologies is a must, as is a desire to learn about new ways to work with business leaders to help them derive more business value from their website or app design.

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January 16, 2016 — For all of its simplicity, WordPress requires many pieces to come together to end up with a functioning, complete web site. This talk will take attendees through a visual roadmap that acts like the photo on a puzzle box to help you pull it all together. We will review a series of diagrams of the environment in which WP is installed as well as visual guides to find the right place inside WP to make the changes you need.

Many people who use or want to use WordPress are not web site developers. To beginners, the WP environment gives little hint about which option to pick to make a change on their site: Dashboard? Theme? Plugin? CSS? Hosting Control Panel? mySQL? Etc.

Even with 13 years of experience behind me in creating web sites, it took significant effort for me to learn WP and be able to handle its challenges and surprises.

This presentation gives participants a road map (available nowhere else that I can find) that helps them figure out what to change and where to make the change when their site needs something updated. Then they can either do it themselves or find someone to help.

Learning Outcomes:

– Get the big picture of how all the major pieces come together to create a WP-run site: hosting, WP, themes, plugins, CSS, HTML, etc.
– Know where to look to find the correct place to change the desired characteristic of the web site.
– Conference participants will have online access to download the slides and a cheatsheet for navigating the various tools supporting their WP web site.
– NOTE: This presentation will NOT go into detail about how to choose the options available in each supporting function. It’s meant to help people at least find the right place to make the change because they’ll have a good idea of the keywords to use in a search.

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January 16, 2016 — WordPress has built-in support for storing location information on posts, but no real way to make use of it. The Geo Mashup plugin enables deep, powerful geolocation in WordPress, letting you easily add geolocations (coordinates) to almost any content type.

It also displays locations on maps you can embed in your theme, posts or widgets, with a dizzying array of options for what to show and how to display it.

This talk will start with the default geolocation system in WordPress and how Geo Mashup integrates with it. We’ll then cover the basics of setup and adding locations on posts, then the different map types and situations where you’d use them. We’ll finish with some dev considerations for displaying maps as elegantly as possible.

Prerequisites:
This talk is aimed at anyone planning a site and considering geo integration. There will be developer speak (PHP/HTML/CSS) at times, but there will be lots to consider for anyone building custom WordPress sites.

Learning Outcomes:

– Understand the premises of geolocation and mapping as they apply to WordPress content.
– Identify valuable features in geolocation plugins.
– Grasp the complex feature set of Geo Mashup as a full-suite plugin.
– Identify content that makes sense to geolocate and/or map.
– Plan out ways of collecting geodata and displaying it using various types of map.
– Be ready to overcome the initial platform and design hurdles specific to Geo Mashup.

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January 16, 2016 — Many new users of WordPress are confused with and when pages are used and when posts are used. Are posts made to pages? Are posts pages in a site or blog? It’s such a mystery. In my session, we will solve the mystery of pages vs. posts with the help of Scooby Doo and the gang from Mysteries Inc.

Well go through step by step what each are and why and when they should be used. We’ll uncover clues and put those clues together to solve the mystery once and for all. We’ll even enjoy some Scooby Snacks along the way. Zoinks! Totally not kidding.

Learning Outcomes:

– Attendees will have a clear understand of what pages are for, what posts are and do and when either should be used and how.

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January 16, 2016 — The introduction to using WP-Cli, including: How to get it setup. Some helpful basics about the shell/command line. Some of the very useful things you can do with WP-CLI. Audience is Power users or administrators.

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January 16, 2016 — Writing blog posts without a clear direction is typically a waste of time for bloggers and businesses that are trying to grow their audience. If you aren’t sure how to reach your ideal audience and need actionable tips to gain traction, this is the session for you.

You may already be engaged in content marketing without even knowing it. It’s a great way to increase readership, brand awareness, search engine visibility, social media networking opportunities, and sales. During this session, the concept of content marketing will be explained and attendees will discover key concepts and learn important tactics which they can implement right away to reach their ideal audience.

Find out who wants to consume your content and how to beat the competition at figuring it out. Topics such as search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing will also be touched on. Relevant plugins and other online tools will be highlighted.

Learning Outcomes

– Follow clear steps to better content marketing.
– Implement actionable content marketing ideas.
– Find ideal content opportunities.
– Practice smart content marketing.

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January 16, 2016 — Think only coders can make a living using WordPress? Think again! There are a surprising number of ways to make a career using WordPress without knowing a single line of code. This presentation will tackle some of the barriers that discourage beginners from using WordPress professionally, like a lack of technical skill and feeling like an impostor.

Shed the fear and discover different career options and simple WordPress tips while learning to leverage your unique skill set for the tech industry.

Learning Outcomes:

– Participants will be encouraged to use WordPress professionally.
– Participants will be inspired to keep learning and pursue tech.
– They will be able to market their skills for the tech industry.
– They will have resources on how to learn to code and how to build up their knowledge and experience.

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January 16, 2016 — This is not a marketing presentation on how to get more conversions. In this presentation we’ll walk through best practices for integrating A/B testing tools and plugins like Visual Web Optimizer and Optimizely for WordPress. We will also look at how to properly setup template pages, embed tracking codes and how to manage your content and media for testing across multiple devices.

Learning Outcomes:

– Use WordPress to develop Landing Pages.
– Integrate 3rd party tools for conversion and landing page optimization.
– Turn WordPress into a marketing machine.
– Create A/B tests on posts and pages.
– Design pages and content with conversion design principles.
– Integrate WordPress with other marketing vehicles efficiently.

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