June 18, 2020

November 19, 2019 — In this workshop, we will all rewrite our bios. I’ll be helping you with the formula I came up with for over 40 speaker bios I’ve written for WordCamp speakers. You will leave this workshop with a finished product you can apply to your sites immediately.

November 19, 2019 — In this workshop, we will all rewrite our bios. I’ll be helping you with the formula I came up with for over 40 speaker bios I’ve written for WordCamp speakers. You will leave this workshop with a finished product you can apply to your sites immediately.

November 18, 2019 — In any industry, you have peers. In WordPress, you have community. So what does community mean? Why is it important to be part of a community? How do you become part of the community when you’re new? And how can we have mentorship from the seasoned community members?

In this talk, I’ll discuss how we can include others. How new people can observe. How active members can include. And how we can have a truly diverse and and accepting culture — not just an inclusive label.

Presentation Slides »

September 15, 2019 — In the WordPress Community, we talk about community frequently. We know how to build community with WordPress, but what about with our own clients?

Retaining clients and parting ways with clients requires grace. This type of relationship maintenance is an important thing to learn for introverts and applies to new businesses to veterans. It’s an art and a science — soft skills for the win!

In this talk, I’ll discuss how I went from an employee to a business owner — with half of the clients I need in the first four months — because of soft skills. We’ll talk about relationship building tips for organic and sustainable growth — online and off.

September 12, 2019 — Imposter syndrome combined with isolation is a concern in our increasingly growing industry, particularly for those working remotely. How do we address imposter syndrome without looking our internal programming or self talk?

Though talking with developers over the years, I believe many of us came to tech because of our backgrounds. Namely, computers are something we can control. More than half of the people I know in technology have dysfunctional backgrounds.

Teaching emotional coping skills with something developers understand (logical code) can produce powerful breakthroughs. Though I am not a licensed therapist, I do care about our developers, our community, and specifically, my friends.

In this talk, I’ll relate how I’ve dealt with mental health through my journey and the insight into how destructive our self-talk is. It affects the jobs we go after, the work we do, and how we relate with each other. Instead of keeping old self-talk and growing around it, we need to make “breaking changes” in the way we talk about ourselves.

Presentation Slides »

January 6, 2019 — In the WordPress Community, we talk about community frequently. We know how to build community with WordPress, but what about with our own clients? Retaining clients and parting ways with clients requires grace. This type of relationship maintenance is an important thing to learn for introverts and applies to new businesses to veterans. It’s an art and a science — soft skills for the win! In this talk, I’ll discuss how I went from an employee to a business owner — with half of the clients I need in the first four months — because of soft skills. We’ll talk about relationship building tips for organic and sustainable growth — online and off.

December 14, 2018 — In the WordPress Community, we talk about value — quite a lot. And that’s awesome. We should charge for our value. The problem comes when we don’t understand our cost — both in financial, physical, and branding terms.

Having spent over ten years in construction accounting, “job costing” is in my vocabulary and the front of my mind. But as a marketer, I also understand that WordPress has a branding problem. In order to elevate our personal brands and the brand of WordPress, it’s important that we go beyond value and take a look at cost.

In this talk, I’ll discuss job costing, sample time tracking, and just how to reverse engineer your pricing to not only meet your expenses, but live the life you want.

December 12, 2018 — Once you have a great website for your business, or a client’s business, time to get it out there. No longer is the Internet a Field of Dreams where people just show up. Using Social Media can help grow your brand awareness and show customers how engaged with them you are.

June 10, 2018 — WordPress is awesome. Open Source is great. But what does that mean? It means that this free and open source software is maintained and written by a volunteer labor base. When you contribute to WordPress, that’s you.

With now 30% of the market share, WordPress is scaling fast — as a software and as a community.

In this talk, Bridget Willard will give actionable tips to help us be mindful of our entire health: physical, emotional, and financial.