September 3, 2025 — Big ideas don’t scale on inspiration alone—they scale on systems. In this talk, Tammie Lister makes the case for treating systems thinking as a core strategic tool, not just a design discipline. From building resilient design systems to structuring AI workflows, she’ll show how the most effective work happens when strategy and systems are inseparable. You’ll learn how to architect flexibility into your tools, reduce friction in your processes, and design for the long term, without sacrificing creativity. Whether you’re navigating complexity in teams, tools, or technology, this talk will reframe how you think about structure: not as a constraint, but as your most significant advantage. Presented byTammie Lister

August 27, 2024 — In this Developer Hours session, we explored how to use the Create Block Theme plugin to make block theme development easier. Tammie Lister, core committer, theme maintainer, and contributor to Gutenberg, joined us to explain how it works and talk about the new features. Whether you’ve used the plugin before or created your own block theme, you won’t want to miss this chance to see how it can improve your workflow.

The following topics are covered in this session:

– How to create a theme from scratch
– How to clone an existing block theme or create a child theme
– How to customize your theme in the Site Editor
– How media used in templates is managed for you
– How the plugin helps make themes translation-ready
– And more!

Presentation Slides »

July 3, 2024 — Art and products have more in common than we usually think.

In this talk, I will explore established art practices and how they can be applied to product creation. We will learn from these practices and identify where we should deviate. From ideation to creation, we can bring principles and practices that work within art to improve our products.

We will discover how feedback can help us grow our products, how experimentation can lead to evolution, and when to focus on specific aspects of the product.

There is art in product creation; let’s discover it together.

Presentation Slides »

April 9, 2024 — WordPress is made of blocks, but that’s just the start. The system starts with blocks, that combine to form patterns, template parts, templates and then styling unites everything. This evolution is growing in pace and even more critical to understand not just for those creating designs, but those even looking to extend the interface and components.

Blocks, patterns, templates and styles are the elements of WordPress. What does that mean today? How can you take that knowledge and use it? What does it mean for the concept of themes or the experience of using WordPress itself? In this talk let’s explore a little the history to give context, the present and then the future of the elements of WordPress.

February 26, 2024 — Compatibility is often indicated with labels like “works with Gutenberg” or “Gutenberg ready.” However, these labels often only mean the product can function with it. It’s essential to fully embrace and use the new features to enhance the quality of your interface and workflow.

What does it mean to embrace the new phases of WordPress as a product? Specifically, how can you take advantage of them now and in the future? In this talk, I will share steps and offer insights into how to embrace the changes.

October 22, 2023 — Editorial styling has made significant progress since Snowfall, which inspired Gutenberg. With the evolutions, you can automatically generate styles considering content, mood, or data input. As a result, it has become more sophisticated and accessible, truly generative. We’ll review the past looking at generative art and upcoming AI technology, and then explore current tool availability. Discover the need for intent, understand what happens beyond simple prompt-based styling and explore the true power of generative styling.

October 13, 2023 — As of 2023, WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world that also powers a global economy estimated to be worth billions of dollars. However, no corporation owns WordPress – it is open source and maintained by a global community, and it needs steady contributions to grow and thrive. Many WordPress companies support the project through the Five for the Future program by sponsoring up to 5% of their employees’ time to contribute to the software. Pledging contributions to WordPress will not only ensure the project’s long-term sustainability but will also offer tangible benefits and growth opportunities for individuals and companies.

This session will be in a panel discussion format that will bring together four seasoned WordPress contributors to share about their contribution journeys. We will discuss Five for the Future and explore various available growth opportunities as part of the program. The discussion will also explore how companies can set up their own internal contribution teams and how they can contribute efficiently and grow alongside the project. Together, we will explore how individual contributors of all experience levels can start their contribution journey through WordPress and use it to build a successful career. The discussion will delve deep into contributor sponsorship opportunities as well.

March 9, 2023 — Several WordPress community theme developers and designers come together to discuss the Community Themes Initiative. The goal was to lay the groundwork and hash out ideas around building block themes collaboratively to submit to the official WordPress theme directory.

July 21, 2022 — There is a design system in WordPress, and it starts with the block. How do we grow it, nurture it and build on those foundations?

In this talk, I’ll show why we need the system and how important it is for the project, why if we don’t build on those foundations, we make an unstable base. I’ll dream beyond today at what could be, where could we go, and what can we learn from the existing design systems? We will cover processes and tools to look at possible solutions to our problems today.

Let’s explore how to grow the WordPress design system because it’s essential to the future of WordPress and the products created with it.

December 30, 2021 — This lightning talk examines the past and present of WordPress theme development, with a look towards role of themes in the future of WordPress.