July 23, 2017 — Building a Successful WordPress Business

July 19, 2017 — Nancy Thanki is a photographer, filmmaker and Happiness Engineer at Automattic. She has spoken at WordCamp Asheville, Seattle, and Birmingham in 2014, Atlanta, Asheville, and WCUS in Philadelphia in 2015, and Atlanta, Asheville, and (will also be speaking at) WCUS in Philadelphia again in 2016.
She talked about The GPL: What It Means (And What It Doesn’t) which will cover the concept and motto behind the GPL.

May 13, 2017 — Are you a designer, communicator, or other non-coder? Do you wonder if and how you can fit into a WordPress agency? Are you a student looking for a career path that excites you?

Each of our panelists have made successful careers in WordPress agencies, while having core responsibilities other than writing code. They will provide insight on the possibilities and paths that you can take towards a career in WordPress.

The session will be informal and conversational, with sufficient time devoted to audience questions.

May 7, 2017 — On December 3rd, 2015 a service called Let’s Encrypt entered its public beta. Backed by several major sponsors, the service caught on quickly. As of summer 2016, more than 5 million SSL certificates had been issued by Let’s Encrypt, nearly four million of which were active and unexpired.

If you are not familiar, Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, open certificate authority that allows users to encrypt the data flowing to and from their websites easily and for free. The goal of Let’s Encrypt is to make data transfer over the internet secure by default. Towards that end, they have invested a considerable amount of time and energy in making it easy for users of all stripes to secure the data flowing in and out of their websites.

You may have already considered encrypting your website before — perhaps to perform better in search engines, or to gain the ability to accept payments on your website. Regardless of whether you’ve considered enabling SSL on your website or not, the goal of this talk is to demonstrate why encryption on your website matters. We will look at some practical examples and live demos of what data can be stolen from your website, even if you are using an encrypted wifi connection. Likewise, we’ll talk about how encryption of all websites — whether they’re dealing with sensitive information or not — makes the web a safer place for all of us.

Last, of course, we will look at how you can get started with Let’s Encrypt on your website. We’ll review the options available to you on common hosting providers, as well as walk through the steps for how you can set this up for yourself, if you have administrative access to your server.

If you already have Let’s Encrypt enabled on your site, this talk may be basic for you (although we’ll do a few cool demos that make for great party tricks, so feel free to stop by).

If you’ve never accessed your hosting provider’s website admin area (CPanel, Plesk, etc), this talk might be a bit hard for you to follow (although you should totally come and ask questions both during the presentation and after).

If you have a website and you’ve thought about enabling SSL on it but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet, this talk will be perfect for you. By the end of this presentation, you should not only know how to enable encryption on your website, but you will understand why it’s so important that you do.

It sounds like an intimidating topic, but we can do this. Come on and let’s encrypt!

December 11, 2016 — On December 3rd, 2015 (one day before the inaugural WordCamp USA) a service called Let’s Encrypt entered its public beta. Backed by several major sponsors (including Automattic), the service caught on quickly. As of summer 2016, more than 5 million SSL certificates had been issued by Let’s Encrypt, nearly four million of which were active and unexpired.

If you are not familiar, Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, open certificate authority that allows users to encrypt the data flowing to and from their websites easily and for free. The goal of Let’s Encrypt is to make data transfer over the internet secure by default. Towards that end, they have invested a considerable amount of time and energy in making it easy for users of all stripes to secure the data flowing in and out of their websites.

You may have already considered encrypting your website before — perhaps to perform better in search engines, or to gain the ability to accept payments on your website. Regardless of whether you’ve considered enabling SSL on your website or not, the goal of this talk is to demonstrate why encryption on your website matters. We will look at some practical examples and live demos of what data can be stolen from your website, even if you using an encrypted wifi connection. Likewise, we’ll talk about how encryption of all websites — whether they’re dealing with sensitive information or not — makes the web a safer place for all of us.

Last, of course, we will look at how you can get started with Let’s Encrypt on your website. We’ll review the options available to you on common hosting providers, as well as walk through the steps for how you can set this up for yourself, if you have administrative access to your server.

If you already have Let’s Encrypt enabled on your site, this talk may be basic for you (although we’ll do a few cool demos that make for great party tricks, so feel free to stop by).

If you’ve never accessed your hosting provider’s website admin area (CPanel, Plesk, etc), this talk might be a bit hard for you to follow (although you should totally come and ask questions both during the presentation and after).

If you have a WordPress website and you’ve thought about enabling SSL on it but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet, this talk will be perfect for you. By the end of this presentation, you should not only know how to enable encryption on your website, but you will understand why it’s so important that you do.

It sounds like an intimidating topic, but we can do this. Come on and let’s encrypt!

Presentation Slides »

August 16, 2016 — The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a free (as in freedom) software license that is used by many open source projects, including WordPress. While many of us are probably familiar with the GPL, there are also a number of misconceptions. It’s important, as WordPress professionals, for us to be able to talk about the GPL with our clients and coworkers — both in terms of what the GPL says and also what it doesn’t say. The GPL is based on some extremely powerful ideas, and it’s a shame that they are sometimes misunderstood. If you feel like you could use a refresher, or ideas about how to explain the GPL to people you’re working with, this talk is for you.

Target audience: Anyone interested in getting into GPL products or wanting to learn more about what they’re already doing. This can be building them, purchasing them, or modifying ones that already exist.

Take aways:

What does the GPL actually mean? We’ll cover several examples of what sort of circumstances are and are not permitted under the GPL (as well as the sort of obligations you have when working with GPL-licensed software like WordPress).
How do I make money from GPL products if people can just copy and distribute my work?
What are some common misconceptions people have when talking about the GPL and where can you get some clarification.

Presentation Slides »

April 6, 2016 — Accessibility is so much more than just catering to screen readers. What goes into making a website accessible? Many government contracts require websites to be accessible. A variety of companies and brands want them. It can affect the “magic” of SEO (ranking, search-ability, search engine karma, etc). How can you determine whether or not your website is?

Ultimately, it’s really not that hard, doing even one thing is better than nothing at all, and it’s never too late to start thinking about it. This talk will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.

Presentation Slides »

December 8, 2015 — Accessibility is so much more than just catering to screen readers. What goes into making a website accessible? Many government contracts require websites to be accessible. A variety of companies and brands want them. It can affect the “magic” of SEO (ranking, search-ability, search engine karma, etc). How can you determine whether or not your website is?

Ultimately, it’s really not that hard, doing even one thing is better than nothing at all, and it’s never too late to start thinking about it. This presentation will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.

Presentation Slides »

September 9, 2015 — There are over 20 million blind adults in the United States, approximately 10% of whom use screen readers to access the internet. Likewise, roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness. Many government contracts are beginning to require websites to be accessible and many companies who are not legally required to build accessible websites are starting to do it regardless. What goes into making a website accessible? How can you determine whether or not your website is? This presentation discusses both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites

Presentation Slides »

April 21, 2015 — This presentation discusses both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.

Presentation Slides »