May 12, 2016 — Want to know what it takes to change careers and start a WordPress web development agency? I’ll take you step by step: – Bootcamp – Building a team – Workflow – Contracts

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November 3, 2015 — When I left my day job, I thought to myself “I’ll have so much more time when I’m full time working on my own business!” But that wasn’t the case. With clients knocking at my door and trying to grow the business, there were a slew of things I wish I had done before I left my steady paycheck to make the transition easier. I’ve gathered my top 10 things to work on before you quit your job to follow your design or development solo career.

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September 16, 2015 — Think only coders can make a living using WordPress? Think again! There are a surprising number of ways to make a career using WordPress without knowing a single line of code. This presentation will tackle some of the barriers that discourage beginners from using WordPress professionally, like a lack of technical skill and feeling like an impostor. Shed the fear and discover different career options and simple WordPress tips while learning to leverage your unique skill set for the tech industry.

Prerequisites:
For beginners, come as you are!

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August 6, 2015 — We explore the continued evolution of our talents through school, online research, self exploration, or accidental discoveries. I share useful resources regarding a number of areas such as process, dev and design. Some additional touch-points of the topic include cooperation, collaboration, competition, co-working and playing well with others. A secondary goal is to encourage confidence in attendee’s abilities as they grow and evolve in their career (regardless of what that is). Aspects of the session will have a WordPress slant to them.

August 5, 2015 — This talk is my personal story of how I rebuilt my life with a freelance WordPress career. In June 2011 after battling a crippling drug addiction most of my adult life, I was out of options. I stumbled into WordPress by accident and realized that it represented an opportunity to rebuild a name for myself and a business. I found in WordPress something that combined what I was good at with something that I enjoyed and got paid to do. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was delivering something of value to others, and I loved teaching people how to use a platform that gave them a voice.

This talk is the story of how battled my inner demons, fell in love with WordPress, built my business, and became involved in the WordPress community, both online and in person.

I cover how to quickly build technical skills, how to find mentors, how to become involved in the WordPress community, and how to keep moving forward without looking back. I talk about my inspiration for my WordPress educational business and organizing the first WordCamp in Connecticut. My hope is to inspire freelancers and anyone looking at WordPress as a career choice and a life choice, a platform that has introduced me to so many amazing people and allowed me to create a life only a few years ago I could have hardly dreamed.

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

March 24, 2015 — In this talk you will learn how to further your career, become better at what you do and make more money by helping others through writing about WordPress. I will cover how to use your writing strategically to grow your products and services, whether you’re writing on your own site or getting paid to write for other sites. You will learn the mechanics of writing useful, relatable content about WordPress, and how to ensure your writing delivers results for your readers and your career.

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March 10, 2015 — Build WordPress as a Career

October 15, 2014 — I run a WordPress news website called Post Status (http://poststat.us/). I’d like to share with you the story of Post Status, lessons I’ve learned, and why blogging about my craft been the biggest reason for the success I’ve had in my career so far.

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November 11, 2013 — This talk is a personal experience working as a developer. Discussion topics include the best practices for blending into a good workflow, how to prepare for your first developer job, and the expectation vs reality about working with a team.

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