March 16, 2017 — Failing to plan is planning to fail. Way too many otherwise talented WordPress businesses get bogged down in development hell. Pain Free(ish) Project Management is a product and method agnostic approach to setting goals, getting systems in place, and following through with consistent execution. The talk includes ideas and samples of flowcharts and systems that people can use on their own projects at no or low cost.

This talk is not only for businesses but also great for anyone building a WordPress site or doing any type of project.

July 3, 2016 — Getting burnt by a project can leave you and your team feeling unmotivated and your agency unprofitable. Using our proven Discovery & Definition approach to project planning you’ll learn how to plan and budget a WordPress project successfully from the beginning whilst keeping both you clients and team happy.

February 5, 2016 — As developer we can get excited about a new project idea and immediately we start coding and hacking to get a first alpha version ready. But in most cases our initial implementation idea is by far neither the best nor the fastest to implement. In this lightning talk I want to show you one example, where I exploit another plugin to accomplish my task and it saved me a lot of time.

Presentation Slides »

December 12, 2015 — As one of the first museums to fully digitize its collections and make them available online for the public, the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian has embraced open source tools to empower its audience and staff to discuss and experience art. We are counting to leverage this open attitude by working with a small group within Automattic to research, plan, and design the Freer and Sackler site. As a team, we are developing custom plugins and code in-house that will be made available to the public and other cultural institutions on GitHub in hopes of furthering open source within the cultural environment.

During the presentation, we will briefly discuss the democratization of art, review our planning and design process and how we are working to make sure the tools we develop are usable by others. We will finish with an open discussion on how cultural institutes can maximize their use of WordPress. While the case study will focus specifically on a visual arts museum, the lessons learned and tools used can be applied to any WordPress-driven website rollout.

June 30, 2015 — Für mittelgroße und größere Webprojekte ist eine solide Planung sehr wichtig. Für kleine Projekte auch. Im Alltagsgeschäft geht dieser Aspekt oft unter, die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Kunde, Designer und Coder verläuft improvisiert bis chaotisch. Irgendwer macht irgendwann ein Strukturdiagramm, der Designer entwirft etwas Hübsches und der Coder schraubt es zusammen. Kurz vor Launch kommt der Kunde mit seinen Inhalten.

Das kann gut gehen. In der Regel führt dieser Ablauf aber zu jeder Menge Missverständnissen und Wiederholungsschleifen. Kunde, Designer und Coder sind gestresst, Kosten laufen auf und die Zeit wird knapp.

In ihrer Präsentation spricht Kirsten darüber, welche Schritte notwendig sind, um mit den Herausforderungen zurechtzukommen, denen wir täglich bei der Planung von Web-Projekten begegnen.

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April 26, 2015 — Over the past decade we’ve continually refined our process for dreaming, planning, designing and creating WordPress-powered sites, and we’d love to share our process with you. We believe proper planning makes the entire process go much smoother. Join us as we walk through our steps for creating a polished website.

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August 11, 2014 — If you are a WordCamp organizer in pre-planning or active planning, join us for our bi-weekly WordCamp Organizers’ Orientation and hangout.

August 9, 2014 — Provides a blueprint for investing your time and money wisely to end up with a site you love that is also useful, effective and easy to manage. This talk is about finding a good developer, asking the right questions, and what you as the site owner should be prepared to contribute.

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December 14, 2009 — Scott Ellis teaches an effective way to organize the myriad of content that will make up your website and keep things logically organized, consistent and on message.

September 26, 2009 — Aaron Hockley talks about the numerous steps used during the recent launch of SocialPhotoTalk.com, including planning and site setup, theme and plugin configuration, launch steps, and basic publicity.

Video production by Joe Christensen of Blaze Streaming Media.