September 3, 2025 — Open source software runs on passion, but passion doesn’t pay the bills. WordPress powers over 40% of the web, yet many of the people maintaining it aren’t funded. That’s starting to change, and your company can be part of it. In this talk, we’ll explore how sponsored contribution works, why it matters, and how companies, big and small, can participate. We’ll walk through my experience working within my company to sponsor contributors: from promoting the idea internally, identifying key areas of the WordPress project to support, finding and interviewing contributors, and building an internal framework for long-term sponsorship. You’ll hear real examples from contributors we support, and we’ll talk honestly about challenges like ROI, alignment, and accountability. Whether you’re a founder, product leader, or agency owner, you’ll leave with a clear understanding of how to start supporting the people behind the platform your business relies on. Presented byRoger Williams

June 7, 2025 — WordPress has long been criticized for being insecure. Some of this comes from prior versions of PHP having security issues, some of it comes from user configuration errors, and some of it comes from WordPress itself. In addition, WordPress does not specify any differences between regular theme and plugin updates and security updates. This means we should treat all theme and plugin updates as security updates and apply them sooner rather than later. The good news is that as of WordPress 6.6, we have a safer way to set themes and plugins to auto-update. The core team has added a rollback feature if any error is detected upon a theme or plugin update. WordPress then reverts the affected theme or plugin to the prior version and sends an email notification to the site owner. While activating this seems like a no-brainer, there are some caveats that site owners should consider. In this presentation, we will discuss the new rollback feature, its benefits, and potential pitfalls. We expect people to have thoughts and opinions on this topic and encourage a lively discussion.

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March 30, 2014 — Once you build a website with WordPress for a client you need to show them how to use it. This presentation covers what is critical to show them about how to use their WordPress website without blowing it up.