December 12, 2015 — So much attention is paid to the code that goes into making WordPress a stellar product, but you don’t hear much about the human side of it. While you will find the occasional blog post or random tweet talking about mental health and happiness in the WordPress community, most overlook the best way to contribute to WordPress…paying attention to your mental and physical health, and taking care of each other. Give back to WordPress by stepping back from the code and look around you.

December 12, 2015 — was a mild-mannered developer until that fateful day: the day I submitted my first patch to WordPress. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was that moment that would begin to change the way I thought about development, community, and what it meant to be a contributor to an Open Source project.

My contributions to WordPress have taken the form of talks, patches, code reviews, and documentation, but they’ve nearly all started in the same place: solving a problem that I (or someone close to me) had at the time. Together we’ll learn some ways for you to find a way to become a contributor and, just maybe, help scratch someone else’s itch at the same time.

December 12, 2015 — It’s 2020 and the majority of Internet traffic is mobile. Billions of the world Internet users have never owned, touched, or seen a computer larger than their pocket. Just as we were inquisitive kids, tinkering with Kid Pix and Geocities themes, the digital natives of today will be builders on the same platforms they use for consumption. Can you install and configure WordPress via your phone? Theme it? Create custom plugins? Launch it? Spoiler: I did, and I’ll show you how.

This talk is both a trend forecast thought piece and a proof-of-concept demo. I’ll share some technical learnings, discuss why they matter to our profession, and hopefully inspire you to attempt something just as crazy.

December 12, 2015 — This session covers the basics of the WordPress HTTP API. More often than not, custom code uses clunky cURL functions to make remote requests. WordPress has a built in API to make this much simpler. Why not use it?

December 12, 2015 — Digital Project Management is one of the fastest growing career fields in tech today. While it doesn’t require the ability to push change to a code base, it does require a high level of technical proficiency. This talk will cover tools and best practices for 21st century digital project management and would be appropriate for a business track.

December 11, 2015 — WordPress is coming of age as an application platform. Plugins like WP-API 2.0 and the JSON REST API have arrived, opening up new opportunities for how websites and applications are constructed with WordPress as a CMS. More and more developers are discovering the benefits of “decoupled” development for websites and applications, where the front-end client (website, native mobile, desktop) is built as a separate system from the CMS itself.

December 11, 2015 — Council meetings sit empty until a road closes, a subway schedule changes, or property taxes increase. Suddenly, meetings are packed with concerned residents. It’s often too late by that time. Use WordPress.com as an interactive digital communication tool to engage the public before meetings are crowded. Incorporate the public’s voice in your local planning process with simple steps outlined in this session.

December 11, 2015 — Every technically minded person needs to know how to communicate technical knowledge clearly and effectively. This talk examines the fundamentals of “explaining hard things to humans,” including:

What makes technical communication uniquely difficult, and uniquely important.
Avoiding two major impediments to technical communication: arrogance (relating to gaps in knowledge as a hassle or irritation) and breeziness (attempting to ignore gaps in knowledge altogether).
How and why to make technical communication both audience-aware and strategic: tailored to both the knowledge level of the audience and the goal of the communication.
The value of analogies in technical communication.
Principles of clear technical writing.
You’ll leave the talk better able to communicate what you know, and to diagnose and work with common failures in technical communication.

December 11, 2015 — React has taken the JavaScript community by storm and is changing how we build UIs and write JavaScript. What are some cool things that you can do with React? Why did Automattic chose to build the new WordPress.com UI (Calypso) using it? And, how can you start using React today in WordPress to enhance your themes and plugins? Let’s see what we can come up with and imagine a future filled with easy to reuse components.

December 11, 2015 — Do you think you don’t know enough about WordPress to help out someone else? Come with Kathryn Presner on my journey through the techie continuum – swinging through Self-Doubt Boulevard and taking a leisurely jaunt through Imposter Syndrome Alley.

Find out how she finally realized she knew enough to contribute – and how you can too.