April 25, 2018 — As WordPress developers and project managers, freelancers and agencies, our work revolves around the concept of the client project. We invest countless hours in discussing and preparing projects for presentation throughout the sales process. In this context, we limit ourselves to thinking about projects from the perspective of budget, timeline, and resources. After all, this is the information we need to land sales and maintain a revenue stream. However, a successful project is much more than a set of numbers in a proposal. Projects are complex systems with multiple inputs and outputs. They are impacted by relationships, variables and dependencies. Neglecting these intricacies and interactions at the beginning of a project only increase the risks that your project team will need to overcome. Establishing a sustainable and thorough infrastructure for your project will mitigate these risks and allow your team to focus on writing awesome code and generating opportunities for your team and your clients. This talk will focus on practical suggestions for effective onboarding, offboarding and documentation that will improve your ability to establish a healthy, self-sustaining project.

May 30, 2017 — Protecting diversity, empowering oneself and ones colleagues are difficult are challenging career questions that we all face at some point during our professional lives. As WordPress professionals, we are lucky that, in addition to our communities as freelancers, agencies or publishers, the larger WordPress community serves as a support network when we face these challenges. The goal of this panel is to bring together professionals from different sectors of the WordPress community to share their experiences facing questions of diversity and empowerment in the WP community.