December 29, 2019 — From childhood, we are taught to think about the right thing to do in our personal lives; but have you thought about the right thing to do for your business? For WordPress? And what about the long-term impact of those decisions? Join Christie for a conversation about business, WordPress, and ethics.

January 23, 2019 — The final panel will be a mix of prepared questions and moderated (to control length tone and moderate quality) audience questions to turn some of the aspirational and motivational points back into tactical practical takeaways.

Attendees will be guided through how the pieces fit together while inspiring and highlighting practical takeaways where attendees gain long-term motivation, and are able to implement immediate tactical changes when they get back to their desk.

January 21, 2019 — Hi, I’m Christie. I work with Josh Pollock, whom you probably know, on Caldera Forms. I came onboard to his team in an effort to think that maybe what a product needed to be successful wasn’t more development and support, but rather more business strategy and marketing, fresh out of business school.

I’ve talked to many community members who either are interested in getting an MBA, or interested in “hiring a Christie.” I thought this was an interesting pattern, so I decided to put together a quick overview of advanced topics in business.

I’ll cover when I think an MBA helps, and when it doesn’t. Then, we’ll do a quick rapid fire of things I think you should know about business-ing: how do you read and act on an income statement? What about electing your pass-through entity to be taxed as a corporation while remaining a pass-through entity? What’s the three sentence summary of theoretical frameworks for marketing? What do organizational behaviorists say about building good teams? How does price elasticity of demand affect your pricing strategy? Then, we’ll take questions from the audience and hopefully all walk away a little more calm (and a little less eager to go to business school).

July 12, 2018 — Planning allows you to grow strategically, be prepared for setbacks, and prioritize your time. Would you be surprised if I told you that that’s also the definition of financial forecasting?

In this talk, we’ll take some really complicated topics in the world of financial forecasting and break them down into ultra-simple ideas using contexts that we, as developers or marketers, actually understand. You will walk away being able to define qualitative vs. quantitative forecasting, the Delphi method, regression-based analysis, moving averages and exponential smoothing, but all in the context of WordPress business-specific applications.

Presentation Slides »

March 13, 2018 — This talk will not be platform-centric nor an advertisement. Although delivered by us at Caldera Labs, we will equally and unbiasedly present all leading contact form product options in the WordPress space with a fair pros vs. cons comparison in the product section. The talk will mostly be about form best practices with only a brief overview of platform.

February 15, 2018 — A frank, and honest discussion with women who work in WordPress. We will touch on our struggles, our achievements, and what we see as the future for young women in the WordPress community.

February 9, 2018 — So you’ve started a business, and your business is working. People are asking for your services and paying you for them. That’s awesome! Now, the tasks required to keep the business going are mounting. Everyone keeps telling you that it’s time to start outsourcing. However, few people seem to have an idea of how to actually grow a team. You need a bookkeeper, but how do you even find one? What about a lawyer? Should a support team member be a contractor or an employee? What about interns – do they need to be paid? What about services like Fiverr and Upwork?

In this talk, we will answer these questions and more. Relevant to any freelancer beginning to see themselves as an agency, product or education business looking for additional support, or anywhere in between, our experience growing the team at Caldera Labs has been full of lessons we’d like to share. From understanding what makes a legal unpaid internship vs. an illegal one, to best practices in how to teach new team members how to do things the way you think should be done while allowing room for each person’s unique strengths to shine through, this WordPress HR talk will be packed with information and leave you armed with the legalese and management concepts to grow a successful team – extra points for being specifically for WordPress businesses, by a WordPress business professional, and with knowledge of what employment law looks like especially in New York City.

December 10, 2017 — You’ve heard of financial forecasting, but you’re not really sure what it entails. However, you do know one thing: planning is good.

Planning allows you to grow strategically, be prepared for setbacks, and prioritize your time. Would you be surprised if I told you that that’s also the definition of financial forecasting?

Ever wanted to talk about what might be the key economic indicators of the WordPress industry? This talk is for you.

We’ll take some really complicated topics in the world of financial forecasting and break them down into ultra-simple ideas using contexts that we, as developers or marketers, actually understand. You will walk away being able to define qualitative vs. quantitative forecasting, the Delphi method, regression-based analysis, moving averages and exponential smoothing, but all in the context of WordPress business-specific applications.

This won’t be a math-heavy talk – the goal here is theoretical understanding. Understanding how the models work in theory will unlock a powerful, high-ROI thought process: to apply what you already know about the work you obsess over, and use that knowledge to think like a forecaster in your decision-making.

October 2, 2017 — This is a panel discussion meant to help anyone (such as freelancers, content creators, and small business owners) with questions about WordPress-related business issues.

August 14, 2017 — If you’re a self-starting entrepreneur with a potential product – whether it is a physical good, your expertise as a service, or the content you want to create for a blog – and you’re trying to figure out how to sell it but have no clue where to start, this talk is for you. In the shortest amount of time imaginable, we will cover how to sell anything – your crafts, products, services, content, digital downloads, and even request donations – using WordPress. This talk will take you through the major “tools of the trade” of ecommerce in the context of WordPress as 1) a portal for collecting payments or leads and 2) maximizing your marketing investment using third-party tools that work well with WordPress. In less than an hour, you will gain a high level understanding of the toolkit that is enabling people around the world to sell anything using WordPress.