August 17, 2024 — I am a proponent of art for art’s sake, but Late Capitalism almost demands that you turn your passion into profit. In this talk, we’ll explore a variety of monetization strategies tailored for content creators, from affiliate marketing and selling digital products to setting up membership sites and managing sponsored content. Learn how to seamlessly integrate these revenue streams into your WordPress site, optimize your site for monetization, and engage with your audience. Whether you’re a blogger, artist, or educator, we’ll share practical tips and tools to monetize your content effectively and sustainably. Join us to transform your creative endeavors into a thriving online business.

November 18, 2023 — This talk discusses the IndieWeb movement and explains how you can use WordPress to build your own IndieWeb site.

The IndieWeb is an initiative to take back control of our online identities and relationships. It’s based on the principles of openness, decentralization, and ownership. This may sound familiar to WordPress users!

Presentation Slides »

October 4, 2023 — Newsletters have made a resurgence in the past few years, thanks in large part to renewed focus on reaching subscribers outside of social media, and a slew of new tools that make it easier than ever to get started.

In the past there were fewer options for building your own newsletters. Platforms like Constant Contact and Mailchimp have been around for a long time for business, but newer tools like Substack and Revue have been getting a lot of attention for empowering writers. And if you want to make newsletters in WordPress along with the rest of your website, there are some great tools available for that as well.

You’ve heard the advice to start your own email list countless times, but what do you do after collecting emails? How do you ask for them ethically in the first place? What type of content should you be sharing to your mailing list and how often?

I’ve written newsletters for myself and clients for years on a variety of platforms. I currently write for personal enrichment, as well as to promote business offerings. I think that anyone who has something that interests themselves to write about has something of interest to share.

In this presentation I’d like to share with you:

– Why you might want to start a newsletter
– What you should write about
– How to setup a WordPress based newsletter
– Where to find subscribers
– When to send your newsletter
– Who to talk to about building it up

June 22, 2023 — In this presentation, we discuss the IndieWeb movement and how you can use WordPress to build your own IndieWeb site.

The IndieWeb is a movement to take back control of our online identities and relationships. It’s based on the principles of openness, decentralization, and ownership. This may sound familiar to WordPress users!

Presentation Slides »

November 3, 2020 — Come learn about how you can use WordPress to power and amplify your voice online, and reclaim the web from the walled gardens for the user!

Presentation Slides »

July 11, 2020 — If you’ve ever wanted to build your own plugin for WordPress, this is the session for you. We’re going to start from scratch and work our way up.
First, we’ll take a look at the basic requirements of a plugin. Next we’ll take our example plugin idea and break it into the various components and steps that we’ll need. We’ll code up the plugin together and install it on our sites, debugging any problems that arise. Finally, we’ll look at ways that we could further extend our plugin.
This tutorial assumes some HTML and CSS knowledge, but you don’t already need to be familiar with writing PHP or JavaScript.

February 25, 2020 — This topic has picked up a lot of traction thanks to tireless work by a few individuals in our community, but ethical thinking should be in all of our minds while working. We’ll look at a few ethical frameworks and standards, as well as some examples for how they can be applied. It’s time for a discussion on ethics in the web, how we can individually apply ethical thinking in our work, and how to share this with others.

December 2, 2019 — You have a WordPress product or service to offer and you have a signup form. But now what? Collecting email addresses is great for vanity metrics but even better if you bring them into your sales cycle.

WordPress can be used to start a blog, make a site for a club, or power a business, large or small.

WordPress can also be used as a way to document your life, and save important things for later. You can bridge WordPress to other parts of the web that you use to store all of your data in one place, without having to worry about an app, hardware maker, or social media site going out of business and taking all of your content with it.

In this talk, you’ll learn how to own more of your content on your site first, while syndicating to social media.Come learn about how you can use WordPress to power and amplify your voice online, and reclaim the web from the walled gardens for the user!

Presentation Slides »

November 14, 2019 — Do you run a WordPress event, but noticed only one type of person is attending? You’d love to have more diversity in your group, but folks are either not showing up – or they attend once and don’t come back. What can you do to foster, promote, and support diversity and an inclusive space? In this workshop, we’ll cover 5 topics: Shifting the way you think about diversity; how to attract and foster a diverse community; creating a welcoming environment, both in person and online; how to encourage more people from diverse backgrounds to step up to be speakers and leaders; and how to be a better ally. You will walk away with an action list to start making changes right away. This is not just for organizers, but anyone who wants to champion this kind of environment, now or in the future! Bring an electronic device or computer: We will be working with a workbook PDF and there will be an opportunity to anonymously submit those questions you’ve always wanted to know but been afraid to ask.

November 14, 2019 — Do you run a WordPress event, but noticed only one type of person is attending? You’d love to have more diversity in your group, but folks are either not showing up – or they attend once and don’t come back. What can you do to foster, promote, and support diversity and an inclusive space? In this workshop, we’ll cover 5 topics: Shifting the way you think about diversity; how to attract and foster a diverse community; creating a welcoming environment, both in person and online; how to encourage more people from diverse backgrounds to step up to be speakers and leaders; and how to be a better ally. You will walk away with an action list to start making changes right away. This is not just for organizers, but anyone who wants to champion this kind of environment, now or in the future! Bring an electronic device or computer: We will be working with a workbook PDF and there will be an opportunity to anonymously submit those questions you’ve always wanted to know but been afraid to ask.