Featured Speaker: Al Davis

“I’ve spoken at numerous WordCamps over the years and am currently working on an book for new users to WordPress. I work exclusively in WordPress and have been for some time, whether as a developer, college educator or building a telco grade platform based on WordPress.”

View Al’s speaker profile.

Presentation: WordPress 101

This presentation is aimed at those who are new to WordPress and want to get a guided headstart. We’ll be looking at the WordPress landscape, some basic terms and terminology that will really help you get started, and tips and tricks acquired over years of teaching WordPress in a classroom setting.

Featured Speaker: Karl Groves

“An unstoppable force for change and thought-leader in an industry regarded for saying “No”, I’d rather lead by example in saying “Yes, and here’s how…”. I seek to offer solutions to complex problems relating to universal usability. Together we can meet both our goals: your business goals and my goals to lead the way in accessible user experience.”

View Karl’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Next-gen A11y Testing Tools

Since the invention of the Web, we’ve never experienced the kind of explosion in new techniques for developers to ensure efficiency and quality of their work – from JavaScript task runners to unit testing & acceptance testing, to continuous integration and automated build & deploy systems. Modern web developers can and should leverage these toolsets to make their work better. This talk will discuss how Tenon.io uses many of these tools to create our product – an automated web accessibility testing API.

Featured Speaker: Stéphane Boisvert

Stéphane works for Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com as a VIP Engineer helping sites stay secure and optimized. He was formerly senior advisor for the Federal Liberal party for 4 years leading the party’s growth in online data acquisitions and donations.

View Stéphane’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Everything you know about AB testing is wrong

“This talk is more advanced than most testing talks in that it goes in depth on why you need to be careful about statistical significance and not getting caught up in early results.”

Featured Speaker: Kate Newbill

“In 2011 I began offering managed WordPress hosting, creating a protected place for website owners. In 2013, I expanded my services to include prevention and recovery for those who had been hacked.

I do what I do because I care. I love taking care of the business you love so you can stay focused on the work that delights you.”

View Kate’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Disaster-Proof Your WordPress Site

How much money and credibility would you lose if your website went down for a week? A day? An hour? Let’s take a look at some of the most common things that can go wrong with a WordPress site and discuss plans and processes to prevent disaster.

Featured Speaker: Tammie Lister

“I am a theme wrangler at Automattic based in the UK. I am lucky enough to spend my days arm deep in themes. I am a themer at heart and passionate about everything theme. I am an admin for the WordPress theme review team and love working with new and old reviewers.”

View Tammie’s speaker profile.

Presentation: Level up: review themes on WordPress.org

“I will go through how to become a review and the tools you need. I’ll look at the world of theme reviewing. I’ll give some tips on how to refine your skills as a theme reviewer so you can be the best reviewer you can be.”

Featured Speaker: Joe Rozsa

“I’m a print designer at heart, but quickly came to the conclusion that I needed to also be able to design for the web. I’ve been a designer for 25 years and now own and operate my own design studio Trailer Trash Design.”

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Presentation: Congratulations! You’re having a WordPress site!

“This session compares having/launching and new WP site to having a baby. There are so many unknowns that you need to find out about both. It’s a fun, light-hearted session about not getting frustrated. No one really knows how to change a diaper, but they learn quickly. The same holds true with many things associated with a new WP site. Hopefully by the end of the session, I give new users hope that the frustration is only temporary.”

Featured Speaker: Roy Sivan

“I am a developer, I am a car fanatic, and I like long walks on the beach at sunset because I live in Southern California. JavaScript is my passion, and WordPress is where it all began. Nowadays I work with WordPress trying to build things that no one would think to, helping bridge the gap between the developers and designers who use it.”

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Presentation: WordPress and Client Side Web Applications

“My presentation will focus on the merits of client side applications, why they are “better” in some regards, and why it is helpful to use them in certain use cases. I will go into more detail about how to build one using WordPress utilizing AngularJS code and the JSON REST API (WP-API).”

Featured Speaker: Matt Smith

Matthew Smith completed his Ph.D. in 2012 while working as a researcher in the Data Mining Lab since September 2004. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from BYU in December 2004 and defended his M.S. Thesis on “Implicit Affinity Networks” in December 2006. He is currently working on his Ph.D. Dissertation on “Social Capital in Online Communities.”

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Presentation: Multilingual WordPress – How to make your WordPress site multilingual

This session will cover how to…

  • Compare plugin options to install that enable multilingual functionality
  • Ensure your themes, plugins, and content are multilingual ready
  • Translate a theme or plugin into a new language
  • Send content to a translation services provider when needed
  • Use typical workflow for translating posts, pages, menus, and other types of content
  • Understand typical translation and editorial workflows
  • Leverage machine, professional, and community translation

Featured Speaker: Brian Rotsztein

As an experienced Internet marketing entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and author, Brian has spent much of the last 17 years helping companies excel online. He’s the head of well-established brands such as UniSEO (a boutique Internet marketing agency) and RedstoneX.com (a web design and online marketing company), where he brings a hype-free, seasoned approach to working with clients.

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Presentation: Grow Your Audience with Savvy Content Marketing Tactics

“Content marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in the online world and for good reason. Properly implement, content marketing plans can increase search engine visibility, social media networking, brand awareness, personal branding and sales, while decreasing costs. WordPress is a great platform that businesses and bloggers can harness to achieve these objectives. Topics such as social influence, guest posts, and social signals for SEO will be discussed. Key plugins and relevant online tools will also be highlighted.”

Featured Speaker: James Archer

James Archer is the Chief Creative Officer at Crowd Favorite. He’s a future-focused optimist who loves identifying problems and designing solutions for companies that make a difference.

James Archer is founder of Forty, a creative firm that’s been designing rich, emotional, and effective experiences for over a decade (using primarily WordPress). I’m future-focused optimist who loves identifying problems and designing solutions for companies that make a difference.

Over the years he’s worked for clients like Microsoft, Motorola, Walmart, and Yahoo, and has spoken at many conferences and workshops.

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Presentation: The Human Side of UX Design

“I’ll explain why empathy and emotion are crap-tons more important to overall user experience design than parallax, front-end frameworks, and even the hamburger icon. I’ll also explain why design is too important to leave to the designers, and why developers, and others should be directly involved in the process.”