June 24, 2022 — The Open Web, as impactful as it is for our society, is currently in danger and has been for while now.

There is a constant pressure from walled gardens and app stores to monopolize on information, at the detriment of all but a few. Nothing new on that front, right? We all know by now how important the Open Web is and that we need to safeguard it, especially in the WordPress community.

Yet here we are, still keeping on doing the things that hurt the Open Web, and supporting the platforms that endanger it.

In this talk, we’ll look past the bare minimums of accessibility and performance to discuss how UX and monetization relate to each other, and how an healthy Open Web might need to look for alternative business models.

December 19, 2019 — Gutenberg is a major change to how you will develop software for WordPress. It starts with the WordPress editor but is planned to slowly take over the entire admin interface.

If you already have existing plugin or theme code that you need to maintain and make ready for the upcoming Gutenberg update, you will probably face some architectural design challenges.

This talk will first provide an overview of the general concepts that govern development in the Gutenberg era, and then discuss the different tricks & techniques you can use to gradually move your existing code from here to there, in a clean transition.

Presentation Slides »

November 30, 2019 — AMP mit WordPress nutzen

AMP ist ein Open-Source-HTML-Framework, das eine einfache Möglichkeit bietet, Webseiten zu erstellen, die schnell laden, butterweich scrollen und vor allem das Benutzererlebnis an erste Stelle setzen.

In diesem Talk wird Alain zuerst in groben Zügen erläutern, was AMP genau ist (und was es nicht ist), welche Ziele es verfolgt, und warum man es nutzen würde.

Danach wird er mehr in Detail gehen und vorführen wie man AMP als Entwickler in einem WordPress-Projekt nutzen kann.

November 13, 2019 — If you build websites, you inevitably run into problems. Maybe there’s no way to achieve an aspect of your design using CSS. Or maybe there’s a device feature you really wish you could tap into using JavaScript. Or perhaps the in-browser DevTools don’t give you a key insight you need to do your job. We want to know your pain.

November 13, 2019 — Joining such a welcoming and inspiring community as is the WordPress project can be exhilarating and makes people want to contribute their part to join the movement and strengthen their feeling of belonging.

The initial enthusiasm can easily lead to contributors slowly spiraling into overcommitment and a feeling of obligation and responsibility towards the project. There’s a cost attached to anything we do, even when we’re talking about unpaid volunteer work done in the spare time. And that cost will be paid in some way, no matter what.

We need to more openly talk about the adverse effects of doing open source contributions in an unsustainable way, destigmatize the money topic when it comes to “”free”” software and directly address immediate issues of frustration and burn-out as they surface.

Let’s all have our fellow contributors’ backs, and make sure we’re all in it for the long run!

October 29, 2019 — Modern infrastructure technologies like serverless computing and real-time databases offer a huge potential for new and improved online user experiences.

In this session, we’ll go through a practical use case to find out how we can harness their power in the context of WordPress.

We’ll build a Gutenberg block that shows status updates, to be incorporated into a status page. We’ll use serverless computing to allow adding status updates via a Slack command, and we’ll use a real-time database so that all visitors receive these updates in real-time without any impact on our WordPress server.

March 27, 2019 — Four key members of the WordPress community discuss what the future of WordPress holds – a panel discussion led by Ana Silva.

February 1, 2019 — Design Patterns in software engineering are a huge help for developers, providing a common, shared vocabulary across languages and platforms that facilitates communication and reasoning. Due to their very nature, they are rather abstract and difficult to properly assimilate and apply in a practical context. This session will discuss the construction of a real WordPress plugin while using several of the more common Design Patterns to demonstrate their real-world usage and highlight the benefits they provide.

January 6, 2019 — WordPress draws a lot of its success from the fact that it jumps through hoops to maintain backward compatibility. Most WordPress sites can be smoothly updated to the latest version of WordPress Core with the click of a button. However, this compatibility comes at a steep price: through this absolute priority on backward compatibility, the project sets itself up to continuously accumulate technical debt in the process. The effects of this are an increasing effort to maintain the codebase and an increasing difficulty to add new features. Let’s examine how these two factors interrelate and what this means for WordPress’ current state and future evolution.

Presentation Slides »

October 9, 2018 — Gutenberg is a major change to how you develop software for WordPress. The changes will start with the WordPress editor but the long term plan is for Gutenberg to slowly take over the entire admin interface.

If you already have existing plugin or theme code that you need to maintain and make ready for the upcoming Gutenberg update, you will probably face some architectural design challenges. This session will help prepare you to make those changes in a clean transition.