October 27, 2018 — In the world of software and web development, all of the cool kids are talking about Agile as the only way to manage projects.

The old fashioned way of managing projects, aka Waterfall, is outdated, clumsy and not fit for purpose in this new fast paced era. Or is it?

The WordPress community is incredibly diverse and projects come in all shapes and sizes. Surely then it makes sense if we have a range of project management approaches that can be tailored to the individual project.

With examples of real projects from our agency, I’ll make the case that not only can Waterfall be the best approach for some WordPress projects but that there are a spectrum of different approaches to choose from and there is no one perfect way of doing things.

June 22, 2017 — The internet appears clean on the surface but in fact contributes 300m tonnes of CO2 a year, or 1% of global emissions.

WordPress is one of the world’s largest communities of “web creators”, shaping the code, design and content of roughly a quarter of websites worldwide.

Inspired by the landmark agreement made in Paris in November 2015, we should now unite here in Paris in 2017 as a global community to use the power of WordPress to help tackle climate change. We can harness our collective power to publish content that inspires and educates, to design and develop sites that use less energy, to power our hosting on clean renewable energy sources, to run sustainable web businesses and organise green events as a community.

WordPress can lead the way and set an example globally in how to move towards a zero web, and a zero world.

August 15, 2016 — WordPress is well known for its culture of remote workers, with people from all across the globe collaborating on projects, often without ever even meeting each other.

The benefits are numerous, enabling organisations to access the best talent without geographic constraints and allowing individuals to balance their work and personal lives in ways that are not possible in a conventional office environment.

But collaborating as a team of remote workers also comes with many challenges. I will share tips from 9 years of remote working at Wholegrain Digital to hopefully inspire others to try remote working and to help them do it successfully.

May 30, 2016 — Tom and Vineeta Greenwood founded Wholegrain Digital in 2007 and developed it into one of Europe’s top specialist WordPress agencies, with clients such as M&S, Rightmove, Lenovo, UNICEF and Ecover. The question that we are most commonly asked by other agency owners and freelancers is “How do you get those big name clients?” In this presentation, I will reveal the key secrets, tips and techniques that Wholegrain Digital have used to attract big name clients over the years, often defying conventional business wisdom and sales practices and instead following a process centred on love.

Presentation Slides »

June 8, 2015 — How not to give appalling user support
Franz Vitulli
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/franzvitulli/how-not-to-give-appalling-user-support
The talk touchs on the benefits and challenges of a great user support and training. I’ll share the most common problems I encountered whilst dealing with support. It will also look at how I give the best support I can and the tools that enable me to do so.

WordPress for Good
Tom Greenwood
This lightning talk presents the history and motives for the project, showcase a few “good” WordPress sites and inspire others to use WordPress for their positive projects and submit them to the showcase.

Forging a Career with WordPress: the Possibilities
Rachel McCollin
In this interactive talk I’ll inspire you to think again about the career options open to you with WordPress, and bust some myths about the kind of person you need to be or the kind of background you need to have if you want to make a living from WordPress.

Smart tips and tricks for managing freelancers
Annabel Kaye
“Freelancer is the ‘new employment’. Most organisations use freelancers for some tasks but some even build an entire business model on using freelancers.
In this talk Annabel explores the status of freelancers, how labels can be deceiving and suggests ways to approach hiring freelancers that will protect your business from harm.

5 ways to get better customers and sack the low value ones
Michael Killen
This talk is about how even small ‘1 person working out of their bedrooms’ businesses can:
no more negotiating on price, stop feeling like a bedroom business and look like a professional service, stop low value customers even getting through to you, how to feel more competitive towards other businesses, the responses you need to give to difficult customers