Intro to WordCamp. Panel/Speaker TBD

Description TBD

Computer Science is a big part of web development and WordPress whether you know it or not! This talk will explain what Computer Science actually entails. You will see WordPress through the lens of someone with a Computer Science degree. We will talk about ways to describe code performance using Big-Oh notation comparing different post meta and taxonomy queries. We will also discuss concurrency as it applies to WordPress, specifically data races and how they can occur while counting post views.

This Talk Is For: Advanced Developers

What The Audience Will Learn: I work with WordPress all day every day. I also have a BS in Computer Science. I’ve noticed most WP developers don’t have computer related degrees. This talk will educate listeners on useful things in Computer Science that can make them better web developers: big O notation (performance measurements), search algorithms, data races, etc.

How to build your audience to create an online community or generate qualified business leads. Discussion about inbound marketing, how various online tactics work within this overall strategy to attract the right kind of traffic to a blog and what to do with that traffic once you have it.

This Talk Is For: Everyone!

What The Audience Will Learn: Most people who are interested in blogging have some general ideas about social media, email marketing, search engine optimization and so forth – this presentation ties all of that together with the big picture strategy of inbound marketing. I will cover the basic steps and how they all work together to deliver an online community for the writer (or business owner) to nurture. *identifying and speaking to a target market(s) *developing content – strategies for content creation aimed at the target audience. Where is content born. *Search Engine Optimization as it applies to inbound marketing (within this framework results are achieved with out 100% pure SEO) *Social media as neighborhoods for finding and attracting traffic/community building *email marketing to invite people to the community *Landing pages and calls to action – delivering content *synchronizing all the parts/tactics for ongoing, scalable growth. *long term relationships – the role of the blog (website) as a relationship (or lead) generation machine

The way we communicate has changed and the average person has an attention span of 9 seconds. Aggressive and salesy methods don’t work anymore when it comes to getting clients and growing your business.

Blogging presents an incredible opportunity to attract your ideal client through the content that you create.

The first step is choosing your ideal client profile or your niche market then it’s about leveraging “the buyer mindset” to create content that draws them into you instead of you having to chase them.

Imagine you’re the lightbulb and your ideal clients the moths – this how I have gotten clients over the past year and it has grown my business faster than I ever could have imagined.

I will teach you my proprietary process and more in this session.

This Talk Is For: Business Owners

What The Audience Will Learn: I teach business owners and entrepreneurs how to get more clients, find their niche and grow their business. I have a 10-step proprietary process that I teach to entrepreneurs in an effort to help them find their Perfect Marketing Equation. I teach entrepreneurs how to leverage their content so that they can attract more clients and grow their businesses. Leveraging the Internet creates a tremendous amount of opportunity that may businesses are leaving on the table. I teach them how to connect the dots in a way that makes sense and isn’t overwhelming.

This talk is for those who haven’t contributed to WordPress or would like a refresher.  I’ll talk about resources that have been made available to all of us including the Core Contributors Handbook, Make/Core, Trac, SVN or Git Repositories, Local Dev Environments, #wordpress-dev, wp-hackers, and wp-svn and how they all fit together.  I plan to submit a patch to a Trac ticket during the talk.

Do you want to sell a premium WordPress plugin but keep holding back because you think all the good plugins have already been written?  Maybe you have a solid plugin you’ve been working on, but are unsure how to navigate the logistics of selling it on your own website and building a business around your work.  Don’t let these things stop you.  Building a premium WordPress plugin business has its challenges, but it just might be easier now than it ever has been.  In this session, Matthew Muro shares lessons he’s learned from building, shipping, and maintaining his own plugin – Visual Form Builder Pro.  Matthew will provide a complete overview of the tools and techniques he uses to manage every aspect of his plugin business.  This includes concrete information on choosing an e-commerce platform, designing the plugin website, managing updates, and writing documentation.  You’ll also get some tips on pricing, support, staying motivated, and dealing with customer feedback

This Talk Is For: Developers

What The Audience Will Learn: The audience will learn just how easy it is to sell a plugin. At the end of the talk, the audience will know exactly which tools, methods, and services to use to sell their own plugin.

Description TBD

This Talk Is For: Business Owners

What The Audience Will Learn: How to better set Client expectations when working with Clients on WP projects

There are blogs in every sort of niche, but all successful blogs follow the same basic principles, most of which you learned in kindergarten. Find out what they are, and how they apply to blogging.

This Talk Is For: everyone, but especially those new to blogging, or those who are trying to get more/re-focused with their blogging

What The Audience Will Learn: Whether you blog for business or pleasure, you will learn tips on improving your blog and your blogging – from design to writing.

In the 2008 presidential race, the Obama campaign used a/b testing to increase their email sign-up rate by 40% which gave the campaign an estimated additional 2.8 million email address and $60 million. Learn the principals and tools of a/b testing and how to use them on your site. We’ll look at some case studies of sites that have made use of these tools and what they learned. We’ll also look at what tools are available for us to use and run a test or two.

This Talk Is For: Everyone!

What The Audience Will Learn: By attending this talk, the audience will learn why their site should be using a/b testing and how to make it happen.

Whether you’re too professional (focusing on the tiny details until they’re just perfect) or not professional enough (letting your customers drive the bus), the result is the same: you can lose your shirt. The concept is called overshoot, and more often than not, you’ll find yourself doing it one way or another. Come hear how you can stop it, and can regain those lost profits.

This Talk Is For: everyone!

What The Audience Will Learn: My hope is an “aha” moment for everyone in the room, as they first see themselves in the problem stories I tell (of myself), and then see the issues for what they are – not being enough of a professional, or being too much of one. Then we’ll look at the “goldie locks” version of getting it just right.

Building a website for a client is a lot different than building a product like a theme or a plugin for mass consumption. How do you reach your intended audience? How do you package your product? How do you manage sales, support and internal administration? I’ll be using some personal and shared examples of things to consider when structuring a business around a product. Learn from our mistakes to avoid making your own!

This Talk Is For: Business Owners

What The Audience Will Learn: I’d like the audience to consider their options and needs for selling a product, as opposed to individualized service.

There have been many industry leaders talking about their ideas for how web design is changing. Most of the talks center around the idea of getting out of Photoshop and designing in the browser. Over the last year, I’ve made a considerable effort to put this into practice. As of right now, I’ve designed 8 websites fully in browser. There’s been lots of problems, but there’s been even more rewards. Hopefully, I can share with you some experiences where I’ve had great results and places where it didn’t work so well.

This Talk Is For: Designers

What The Audience Will Learn: I hope that I can show you some of the pros and cons of designing in the browser as well as giving you some tips that I’ve learned along the way.

Find out the number one reason why folks who have failed at previous corporate jobs or have various interests can succeed at freelancing. (like me!)

This Talk Is For: Everyone!

What The Audience Will Learn: Personality traits and characteristics, plus WordPress plugins, web tools and apps needed to be a freelancer.

Custom post types can be a pretty robust tool for managing and presenting different types of content but don’t let them fool you. They’re capable of so much more. In this presentation, think outside the box and learn to look at custom post types in a new light. With just a little help, your custom post types can become powerful organization tools to help you build strong information architecture and increase usability.

This Session is for: Everyone!

The Audience Will Learn: A richer understanding of custom post types and how powerful they can be when used as a tool to organize and categorize content.

Description TBD

Moderated By Brian Krogsgard

This Talk Is For: Business Owners

What The Audience Will Learn: Insight from some incredible people in the WordPress Industry

It’s no secret that the world has gone mobile. Responsive web design is taking the web by storm as a preferred choice in catering to mobile users. Are you ready to integrate responsiveness into your workflow? Ready or not, here are 5 things you’ll need to know!

This Talk Is For: Designers

What The Audience Will Learn: After this talk, the audience will have a firm grasp on what responsive web designs means. The 5 things we’ll cover are: 1. Starting With a Fluid Foundation 2. Having Flexible Content 3. How to Use Media Queries 4. What “Mobile First” Really Means 5. How Javascript Helps

WordPress is an amazing platform with thousands of plugins themes and options- how do you know if adding a new plugin adds to your website experience or takes from it. In this action packed 30 minute presentation you will learn how to understand what real life visitors do on your website. You’ll understand the following concepts: How to install Google Analytics in WordPress Visits/Visitors/Percentage of New Visitors Time on Site and Pages per Visit Bounce Rates and How to Impact Them Determine where your visitors come from and if your marketing is working

This Talk Is For: Business Owners, Users

What The Audience Will Learn: The audience will learn how to put themselves in their visitors shoes – resist installing plugins or flashy content for the sake of having it. They will be able to ask the right questions to help improve their website traffic, lead capture, registration or “check-out” rates.

In this presentation, we will explore how blogging has changed the face of international documentary and journalism in the past decade, particularly via the accessibility of the personal blogs of journalists, world travelers, and other global experts. The modern mediasphere has become characterized by interactive technologies, and nowhere is this more apparent than in international documentary and journalism. While readily available photographic coverage has in some cases removed a sense of wonder from the world, the newfound ability to see crises and geographies through first-person blogging has created a culture of heightened global awareness. Even more important is the abundance of media that never makes it to the printed (or virtual) front page. This talk will cover ethical and artistic issues related to blogging, in particular those addressing crisis, conflict, and socially sensitive situations. The talk is organized by sub-topics from global news: politics, crisis, music, design, photography. In each section, a popular headline article by a given media producer is presented, followed by an exploration of further coverage on personal blogs. In each section, an ethical or quality issue is also addressed.

This Talk Is For: Everyone!

What The Audience Will Learn: The audience will walk away with a better understanding of the importance of using WordPress and other blogging platforms to read beyond the front pages of international media coverage.

This talk is designed to give developers an light primer into the different ways of using command line to develop and manage WordPress projects. It will briefly cover what command line is and common commands as well as a cursory introduction to version control as well as WordPress specific programs like WP-CLI.

This Talk Is For: Developers

What The Audience Will Learn: While several of the tools in the talk could be talks by themselves, I believe that the command line can be a large barrier to entry to learning to utilize tools like version control and I think that a primer on how to use it will be of use for developers looking to make the jump into using more advanced development methodologies.

The mobile explosion has turned designing for the web into much more than just designing for desktop. Responsive Web Design offers a flexible solution for delivering consistent content and experiences across a world of devices. In this talk, we’ll go over the incredible growth in mobile and tablet platforms, the basics of how responsive web design works, and get a peek at a web that many people don’t think about–a life below 960 pixels.

This Talk Is For: Beginners and people who create content for the web

What The Audience Will Learn: How to think about the web responsively.

Blogging is one of the greatest revolutions in publication since the printing press. It has given the ability to publish and be heard to essentially everyone with access to a computer. Almost all of the filters or barriers between a person wishing to share their thoughts, and display them in public, have been removed. Computers and the internet have given everyone the opportunity to have their voice heard. But with this opportunity comes responsibilities and liabilities. You decide to blog about a bad experience you had at a restaurant which then reads your review and decides to sue you for defamation. Or someone makes a comment on one of your blog posts that attacks a politician. That same politician decides to come after you instead of the commentator. You decide to tweet about something that a local business gave you as a free trial – and the FTC decides to open an investigation file. All of the above are worst case scenarios that are unlikely to happen. But at the same time, it makes sense to take some basic, and generally easy, precautions to familiarize yourself with laws and make sure you are complying with them.

This Talk Is For: Everyone

What The Audience Will Learn: Familiarize themselves with: * Laws that affect hosting and operating blogs. * A basic overview of copyright protection. * 1st amendment protection / CDA Section 230 protection from other’s speech on your blog. * Compliance with FTC regulations governing disclosure of affiliate systems.

Learn about how human-centered design can help improve your web designs. Basic design, problem solving, inspiration, color theory, design terminology, and web usability will be discussed.

This Talk Is For: Developers, Users

What The Audience Will Learn: Basic design, problem solving, inspiration, color theory, design terminology, and web usability will be discussed.

“The Loop” lies to us all, don’t let it trick you. An intervention with the loop is past due. Lets walk through mastering its evil ways together. What is the best way to loop? Should you use get_posts, WP_Query or query_posts? Why does pagination break? How do you loop at all and what is the loop? How can you optimize the loop and decrease load time? Get the most out of the loop! In this talk we will master the backbone of WordPress. Together and answer these important and overlooked questions in turn.

This Talk Is For: Developers

What The Audience Will Learn: Learn how to use WP_Query and why it is superior to get_posts. Learn why query_posts seems like the devil. Learn some advance query filtering and sorting. Learn how to do pagination right. Learn how to get custom data out of your post types and use that data to build some gravy loops. Learn all this is 30 minutes you say? Oh yeas you can!

At some point, every web developer will be called upon to develop an ecommerce site. But understanding all the pieces that must come together for an ecommerce site to function can be a challenge, especially if you’re just starting out. This talk will offer a broad overview of the ecommerce process, covering the basics of how ecommerce works, options for payment processing, a comparison of WordPress ecommerce plugins, and a bunch of tips and tricks.

This Talk Is For: Everyone!

What The Audience Will Learn: The audience will gain an overview of how ecommerce works with an overview of shopping carts, payment gateways, and merchant accounts.

Ever wished you could use your smart phone to unlock a door at the office or home? In this session you’ll learn some ways WordPress can be integrated with embedded systems and how WordPress user permissions can be extended to cover all sorts of interesting scenarios. There will even be a working demo, minus the actual door.

This Talk Is For: Everyone

The Audience Will Learn: How to open doors with WordPress. Practical application of the extensible nature of WordPress.

What’s the point of having a great looking website if your content isn’t awesome as well? At its core a website is about content, that’s what people are there for and its what you want to deliver. Content strategy is about matching up the content people are looking for on your site, and the content that you want to deliver to them. Because WordPress is so flexible with so many options for themes and plugins it is a great platform to build your content strategy on. This talk will cover content strategy in general and then focus on the implementation of a great content strategy on WordPress.

This Session is for: Business Owners, Users

The Audience will Learn: The basics of content strategy. How to implement a content strategy using WordPress. Themes and plugins to consider when implementing a content strategy.

Here is a series of Awesome Lightning talks!!

Cliff Seal

Sheree Martin

Kathryn C. Lang

Micah Wood & Aaron Reimann

Ashley Hill

Learn how to use WordPress! In this two-block session, we will go through how to set up WordPress and cover many basics such as:

1. Configuring your site
2. How to choose a Theme
2. What are Widgets and how can I use them?
3. What are plugins and what are some useful ones that I might use?

This Session is for: Beginners

Learn how to use WordPress! In this two-block session, we will go through how to set up WordPress and cover many basics such as:

1. Configuring your site
2. How to choose a Theme
2. What are Widgets and how can I use them?
3. What are plugins and what are some useful ones that I might use?

This Session is for: Beginners

What’s standing in the way of the best ideas for your company? Fear. Maybe you’re afraid of being wrong, of causing dissension, of wasting money; maybe you put yourself out there before and don’t want to spin your wheels again; maybe your marketing strategy is full of false starts. Don’t let your fear keep you from your best insights! Using principles of better decision making and data analysis, we can create new ways to let ideas prove their own worth through honesty and experimentation—and we’ll discuss how to do just that. Learn how to identify and counteract your own biases, establish more useful research, parse through data effectively, and mitigate your risks without sacrificing potential successes. You’ll be able to apply these principles to many aspects of your business (marketing, product creation, UX improvements, and more), so that you can be brave enough to leap. Let’s learn how to be fearless together; because we deserve it.

This Session is for: Everyone!

The Audience Will Learn:  How to identify and counteract your own biases, establish more useful research, parse through data effectively, and mitigate your risks without sacrificing potential successes. You’ll be able to apply these principles to many aspects of your business (marketing, product creation, UX improvements, and more), so that you can be brave enough to leap.

Have you ever made changes to a theme that gets regular updates? Did you ever modify a theme and break it? Make changes and get the horrible “blank page”? The solution is making child themes. Here is how and why to do so.

This Talk Is For: Advanced Users

The Audience Will Learn: How to make a child theme. I have dealt with clients that modify themes and break the them, or get a theme 20 versions back and then want to update it. Most WP users don’t know how to make modifications correctly and safely, and after this talk it will show them how to make a child theme and target elements and make the CSS changes they want to make.

Understand the do’s and don’ts of running a freelance WordPress business. Learn what tools to use to handle clients, from the initial lead email/phone call, to the final invoice getting paid. Understand the important components of a contract, and how to create them. You may be freelance, but business is business. Organize your finances and keep business funds separate. Learn how to use tools to help you with managing your business, even some that are available on your WordPress website. What are the Pros and cons of outsourcing. And finally, when to say no.

This Session is for: Anyone

The Audience will learn: Information and tools to use so new businesses and freelancers will learn how to start their businesses the right way. And they’ll gain insight into what to do, but also what not to do.

Building a loyal community can make or break your business. In this presentation, Syed Balkhi, founder of WPBeginner, will share tips, tricks, and strategies he used to leverage the power of people to build a successful million dollar business. Learn about how to build a community from real-life experiments and case-studies.

This session is for: Business Owners

The audience will learn: The importance of community & how to build one.

Developing or maintaining plugins that are used by large audiences requires a certain degree of fool-proofing and forward-thinking. Beyond best practices, there are a number of architecture considerations that impact ease of maintenance, usability and your ability to provide higher levels of support. We will explore a number of high-volume plugins and what they have done to simplify the maintenance and support processes.

This Session is for: Advanced Developers

The Audience Will Learn: How to step up their game and create plugins at a more professional level.