February 17, 2015 — In 2011, Michael sent his very first email to the wp-hackers mailing list. He wasn’t sure if it was the right place to introduce himself, but he had to start somewhere. In the years since, he has gone from being a tentative new contributor to being one of the release leads for WordPress 3.9. In this presentation, Michael talks about his journey through the WordPress project. Michael will focus on some of the problems he encountered as a contributor and how he dealt with them. Michael also look at how, more recently, the project has removed some of those barriers, making it simpler than ever for newcomers to get involved.

NOTE: slides are from WordCamp Orange County 2014

Presentation Slides »

February 17, 2015 — Underscores has become the go to tool for many theme developers, as their starting point when creating a new theme. It’s the semi-standard for the WordPress.org Theme Repository, and the origin for all themes launched on WordPress.com in the past three years. In this presentation we’re taking a look back at its origins, its successes, and most importantly, its most recent improvements. Including a feature update that supercharges Underscores.me, and will change how developers will interact with WordPress starter themes for years to come.

Presentation Slides »

February 17, 2015 — This session is a beginner’s guide to best practice set up of Google Analytics and navigating the user interface so you can look at your traffic more critically. It talks about how Google Analytics WordPress plugins simplify your set-up and analysis.

Presentation Slides »

February 16, 2015 — Discover what SEO best practices and resources can help you win in the long run, while complementing your current WordPress development processes. Learn how to incorporate our key take-aways to improve your organic search results and generate more customers for your brand.

Presentation Slides »

February 16, 2015 — Learn some fundamentals of web accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities).

Presentation Slides »

February 12, 2015 — Technical look, from a front ender perspective at the process of tweaking the admin styles or building a completely different look for it. Showcasing a real-world example of the process and application of styles.

Presentation Slides »

February 12, 2015 — At what point answering questions about WordPress goes beyond the making conversation and becomes a driver for professional skills and reputation? Our proficiency at answering questions spans over our work, our ability to learn, and how we are perceived in community. Yet we are rarely purposeful in learning how to benefit from this skill and improve at it. We can do better than that — to evolve professionally and personally.

Presentation Slides »

February 3, 2015 — In this presentation learn how SVG helps make otherwise awkward shapes easy to make, and how to use it to make icons that are more accessible than with any other web-based icon creation technique. You’ll learn how SVG can make customized complex graphics on the fly, create compelling animations and other interactions, and empower some pretty great designerly effects. And end discovering a cornucopia of SVG source materials that are easy to find and even easier to work with.

January 31, 2015 — Learn how to keep your WordPress sites under version control using a git workflow refined over dozens of sites. We’ll cover repository organization, what belongs (and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t belong), and how to make deploying updates and working with multiple environments as painless as possible.

Presentation Slides »

January 30, 2015 — Ramya Pandyan is your token ‘artsy’ type among the techies. She calls herself a techno-greek, which means technology is Greek to her. And yet, she is a digital story-teller, a job and identity only made possible because of the wonderful tools at her disposal. This presentation covers: Digitalia – the parallel universe, The roles we play in this universe, The big Cs – Content, Conversations, Community