September 10, 2023 — The Internet has evolved leaps and bounds since its early inception in the research and academic domain, and on top of it a huge and vibrant open web ecosystem flourished. In just 30 years the web ecosystem has reached levels that were not imagined at the time of its inception. WordPress emerged as part of this evolution with an initial focus on the blogosphere, and it has itself evolved considerably and played a seminal role in the open web across time for almost 20 years. The web of today is vastly different from the past, and we are now in the midst of a web economic “boom” fueled by modern creators and formats fulfilling the needs and desires of new generations of content consumers. In this talk we will distill a brief history of the Internet, the Web, and the Creator Economy, and why and how WordPress is very well positioned to continue its evolution journey and also play a seminal role in the success of modern content creators.

October 22, 2020 — In this presentation we’ll explore the underlying structures all stories share, explain how every member of a publishing team can benefit from this understanding. We’ll take a look at some specific examples, and attendees will leave the session inspired and reinvigorated with their storytelling approach.

October 10, 2017 — Most, not all bloggers hit the dreaded wall called Bloggers Block. You blog, but you either fall into one of the following:

1. You’ve reached a plateau with your site, and just cannot seem to write any more.
2. You really are not sure what you can cover on your site. (For those with businesses, you might be scared of spamming.)
3. You are afraid you might be copying other sites in your niche, that may be covering the same topics.
4. Juggling family or personal issues.

There’s a solution for all of these!

I am going to go over some tips to help you overcome Blogger’s Block, and get you to think outside the box when coming up with loads of topics for you. Don’t let search results scare you- your blog voice and your knowledge can do wonders for you!

Presentation Slides »

October 2, 2017 — This is a panel discussion meant to help anyone (such as freelancers, content creators, and small business owners) with questions about WordPress-related business issues.

August 15, 2017 — NC State’s central IT office employs almost 300 people, whose areas of expertise range from high-performance computing to video production to installing fiber optic cable. By tradition and budgetary necessity, every single one of them has content creation and editing privileges on our unit website, oit.ncsu.edu. After years of a content free-for-all, the result wasn’t pretty: 2,500 pages total, with lots of out-of-date information, duplication, broken navigation, and accessibility issues everywhere.

In this session, we discuss how we stepped back from the brink, took control of our content, and—with a few homegrown WordPress plugins and help from the higher ed community—taught our 300-person content team how to build and maintain a good website.

Presentation Slides »