September 25, 2015 — There is so much information put out there about growing a business, about SEO or marketing in general. One area that doesn’t get much love is customer service. So you can get the clients in the door, you want to do a great job but at the end of the day you’re stressed out. In this talk, I want to discuss ways to provide an excellent customer service experience while keeping you sane and your bills paid.

Takeaways

How to manage expectations of clients to benefit you and your client
How to organize yourself to complete projects on time
How to chose your clients for a good working relationship

Presentation Slides »

September 25, 2015 — I 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.

September 24, 2015 — With WordPress powering almost 20% of all sites on the internet, it’s a ripe target for cyber criminals. Brute force attacks, malicious code, and site defacements are concerns for even the casual user. Hey, but there’s no need for panic. With a few code snippets, one or two plugins and some common sense practices, you can make your website more secure and make the crooks look somewhere else for an easier target.

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September 23, 2015 — There is incredible power in knowing the story you’re in, and how to manage it. The brand you develop will impact your pricing, your positioning, and your prospective market. Come hear Chris Lema’s take on branding – specifically in the WordPress ecosystem – and how you can leverage the power of story in your marketing, sales, product announcements, and blog.

September 23, 2015 — Finding success as a professional freelancer can be a difficult and challenging journey! You have to know the right stuff and have the proper skills in order to survive in the freelancing economy.

James Dalman will share seven key strategies so that you’ll be better equipped to survive – and thrive – in your own freelancing career or business. All the lessons are based on his 27 years experience as a professional freelancer and are applicable no matter where you are at in your journey.

Eating crickets during this session is optional.

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September 23, 2015 — Developers should keep content editors and administrators in mind when making backend decisions concerning how content and settings are edited. We should also consider how the decisions we make now affect people who will touch our code after shipping – other developers, support staff, and our future selves. We’ll discuss the importance of making better decisions, as well as tips on how to do so.

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September 22, 2015 — Backbone (and Underscore!) are bundled with WordPress – explore how you can leverage their power to deliver complex user experiences while keeping your code organized and maintainable.
~ When and why should you use Backbone?
~ How can WordPress help?
~ Backbone fundamentals
~ Backbone in core
~ A sample Backbone project
~ Using the JSON REST API

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September 22, 2015 — This presentation is geared towards individuals looking to start or grow a WordPress design/development company. Topics covered will include:

When and how to hire help
Tools and services that help automate and streamline
Project Management
Time Tracking
How to identify what makes your company unique in a sea of competitors

Takeaways

Should you become an employee, a freelancer, or a business owner?
What tools are vital to the success of the business operations?
Mistakes and mishaps that you should try to avoid

Presentation Slides »

September 21, 2015 — This talk will explain the concept of internationalization and localization in plugins and themes and introduce theme and plugin developers to the necessary tools for the job. In addition to discussing the importance of internationalization, this talk will cover WordPress internationalization functions and best practices.

Presentation Slides »

September 21, 2015 — Ever wanted to make small changes to the look-and-feel of your site but weren’t sure how to go about it? Itching to change the colour of your site title, tweak the size of your paragraph text, or hide the date on your posts? Let’s go on a CSS adventure together! In this session you’ll learn some basic CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and we’ll look at some practical examples, using a browser inspector to customize our site’s design.

Prerequisites:
Some basic HTML knowledge is helpful, but not required. You should be open to looking “under the hood” at a site’s HTML and CSS.