Sessions

Presented by Peter DeHaan in Track 1.

Setting up your WordPress site is just the first step. The next challenge is filling it with useful, helpful, and interesting content that will engage readers and keep them coming back. This session will cover pointers from veteran blogger, author, and publisher Peter DeHaan to help beginners minimize frustration and existing bloggers to be more effective in what they write.

Presented by Andy Keson in Track 2.

Website traffic is the most important element to a great ecommerce website. Visits from customers with problems that can be solved by your product are essential to the justification of the website and survival of your business. There are several methods that can be used to accomplish this goal. The bad news is that the things that work today may not work tomorrow.

Presented by Kyle Maurer, Topher DeRosia in Track 2.

Topher DeRosia and Kyle Maurer have both been using WordPress, building sites, launching plugins, working for software companies, working for themselves, speaking at WordCamps, organizing events, teaching WordPress beginners, blogging, programming, googling, mowing, daydreaming, fixing the world’s problems and trying to understand how caching works for quite a while now. They’ve learned a lot and want to share.

For this session, both Topher and Kyle will be ready to answer all of your questions. They’re hoping you bring both a few easy ones as well as some real head scratchers. All topics from absolute beginner to super advanced are completely welcome and there are definitely no stupid questions. Bonus points if you show up prepared with your list of questions. If you run out of questions, the guys will chat about some of the more frequently discussed and debated topics they’ve encountered over their years of learning and teaching others.

Presented by Steve Grunwell in Track 3 – Developer.

Computers have one job: to read and process data. One job, and sometimes they *still* need help!

Structured data puts you in control, ensuring that search engines and other parsers aren’t misreading your information. Get your events recognized as events, your business address as a location, and those product reviews working to attract customers!

Implementing good, structured data is also the first step into the Google Knowledge Graph, the Holy Grail for content marketers. Better yet, with modern standards, it’s easier than ever before to get started!

Presented by Brian Richards in Track 1.

Learn how to put out fires faster than ever!

Web development is an expensive process. One of the most costly aspects of building and running websites is finding and handling bugs. It’s expensive to site owners because it costs them uptime, credibility, and revenue. It’s expensive to developers and agencies because its time that could better be spent solving new and more interesting problems.

Nobody enjoys being halted by a bug. Not even people (like me) who enjoy solving puzzles and fixing things.

In this talk we’ll review several options and opportunities that exist to make our debugging process faster and more effective. Specifically, we’ll look at several tools and how to use them along with several valuable debugging techniques that help us put out fires faster than ever. Everyone, regardless of skill level, should walk away from this talk with at least one new thing to add to their debugging toolkit.

Topics covered:
– Using the right tool for the right job (a close look at several useful debugging tools)
– PHP-specific techniques
– JavaScript-specific techniques
– WordPress-specific techniques
– Permanent debugging via automated testing
– Additional resources

Presented by Ross Johnson in Track 1.

If you look at the WordPress landscape whether plugin, theme, service or agency there is a lot of discussion about features. The REST API, Zapier integration, multiple sliders, wooCommerce integration, uptime monitoring, varnish support…

Features are sexy and at face value more features sound better. Yet the opposite is often the case. In fact you can provide powerful solutions that your customers and clients love with less features and more design.

In this talk I discuss using design as a way of standing out amongst the crowded WordPress eco-system.

Presented by Matt Christensen in Track 3 – Developer.

This talk will discuss the use of material design within WordPress. I will go over some pre-built libraries and where they stand out or fall short. In addition, how to do material design the proper way based on current material design standards. I will discuss pitfalls I have had in developing material design in my own work.

Presented by Nicole Paschen Caylor in Track 3 – Developer.

You will learn how to teach children ages 4-7 basic computer science concepts and why this type of learning is important. We will focus on free tools you can do one on one so you can go home tonight and start your child on a new learning path.

Presented by Leeann Drees + Laura Eagin in Track 2.

The dream of freelance life comes crashing down when you realize you’re a finite resource. Your time is precious. You took on too many projects. You can never get away from work 24/7. You see no way out. What will happen when you get sick?

Laura and Leeann learned how to scale the freelance life when they formed a business partnership. They run a small web development studio in Detroit known for their friendly approachable vibe and for building beautiful custom websites.

They’ll answer the big questions that hold us back from scaling up. How does a freelancer become a boss? Who does what? Can I outsource all the busy work? How does one find the right partner anyway?

Presented by Shelby Elliott & Tracy Apps in Track 1.

Shelby takes true joy in good, rule-abiding design techniques… andddd Tracy likes to break all the rules just to see what happens. Yet somehow, when they put their hearts, minds, and instincts together on projects, it’s magic . So, which design method is the best? Well, both, of course. This talk will cover all of the important rules of design, as well as when and how to break them, so you can take your work to the next level.

Presented by Mike Hale in Track 1.

Growth Hacking isn’t just a buzzword, and it’s not just for startups. You can use the same tools and tactics to attract more readers to your blog, users for your app, and customers of your products. In this session you’ll learn what growth hacking is (and isn’t) and how you can become a growth hacker too. We’ll also cover tools and plugins you can easily integrate with WordPress to power your site and grow your business.

Presented by Stacy Vanden Heuvel in Track 3 – Developer.

Information on WordPress Plug-ins that will save you time and money. Join us for Plug-ins: The WordPress Box of Chocolates to solve a diverse set of solutions. There are plug-ins for virtually every purpose you can image, but this course gives you the jump start on finding them. I have compliled information on what to look for and beware of when choosing them. Join me to discuss plug-ins and share ones that you find valuable or those which should be avoided.

Presented by Wally David in Track 2.

Beginners or creative professionals looking for an internal process for rapid web development. Tips for managing team based design workflows in a small to medium environment or as a freelancer.

We’ll talk through the seven stages starting with the Kick Off/Site Outline, covering all the elements of a successful website (SEO, development, design, and branding) and ending with a successful launch that focuses on a happy client and keeps all of the internal problems where they belong: internal.

Presented by Jeff Large in Track 1.

Successful business owners know how to use their resources wisely. Recycling content saves you time, maximizing your marketing impact, and provides more value to your audience. In this session, we’ll cover methods and best practices for making your content go further than ever before.

Presented by Dan Kaufman in Track 2.

Facebook Ads a phenomenal tool (when you know what you are doing). I will walk through the fundamentals to setting up your campaigns for success and scaling from $5 a day to $1000 a day profitably…

Presented by Sara Dunn in Track 2.

Are you running from project to project with no steady income in between? Two years ago, I was too. Stressed out from constantly selling and supporting, I decided to make ongoing service packages a mandatory part of our website projects, and it transformed my agency. In this session, learn how working with clients on an ongoing basis is better for client satisfaction, client relationships, your quality of work, and your bottom line.

Presented by Mike Reid in Track 2.

Learn how to animate elements and photos on your WordPress sites to create things that really engage your users. A review of popular tools and methods for easily adding animation to your WordPress site, specifically CSS and JavaScript-based animations. Open source tools and frameworks will be used for easy integration.

Presented by Frederick Polk in Track 3 – Developer.

Learn how to use Underscores to build your very own WordPress theme. We will cover what is Underscores, what makes up Underscores, a few practices, and how to add & extend Underscores to build a WordPress theme that does not suck. We will also cover how to use CSS, JS, to add to your Underscores theme.

Presented by Steve Persch in Track 1.

Speed is one feature many stakeholders assume they will get but do not always ask for. In fact, you are more likely to hear your stakeholders ask for features or functionality that will make the site slower. As the person or team developing the site you must often protect the speed of the site. This session will look at key areas in a site architecture where speed may suffer and how to structure your project to ensure they stay fast. Specifically:

– Setting and tracking performance budgets so that everyone can see how speed is changing over the life of a project.
– Analyzing the benefits of third-party integrations and ads that can kill front-end performance.
– CSS and JS organizations and minification strategies that your team will use.
– Identifying which places in a system can be cached aggressively.
– Debugging problem code and queries.
– Uncovering the non-technical forces (team dynamics, dysfunctional stakeholders) that influence site performance.

Presented by J Andrew Scott in Track 3 – Developer.

This talk explains how my company came to be using the WordPress API as a back-end for its mobile apps and the insights that we have gained in the process. This is a real-world case study, focusing on architectural decisions and performance concerns at large scale.