Chris Van Patten

I work with small and medium-sized businesses to create amazing web experiences, usually with WordPress. I’ve been working with WordPress for as long as I can remember and I absolutely love traveling to WordCamps around the US and Canada to share what I’ve learned!

Speaking Session

WordPress Project Management 101 in the Agency track.

I’ll be focusing on how you can manage a WordPress development project from start to finish: writing great proposals, working with project management software, learning to communicate with clients, and more.

What do you want people to learn from your presentation?

I hope people learn from my mistakes! I’ve been working with clients for almost a decade, and I’ve got a lot of experience that I hope people can use to improve their businesses and projects.

Why did you decide to speak?

Speaking is one of my favourite things to do—I love creating presentations and sharing my knowledge with people. Also: I spoke at WordCamp Toronto Developers in 2012 and was under the influence of some intense cold meds (November’s my season for sickness), and I wanted to see what a WordCamp Toronto was like sober!

What attracted you to WordPress in the first place?

It was easy to use and easy to hack on.

What’s your favourite WordPress plugin or theme, and why?

I don’t really have favourites, but I’ve been working with the JSON API and Edit Flow recently and they’re both amazing plugins. Really well built, thorough, and super useful for enterprise WordPress projects. Very excited to see the JSON API in core too!

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

I’m excited to have an excuse to visit Toronto again! I haven’t been in years, and it’s one of my favourite cities. Of course, getting to learn from amazing people in the WordPress community will be pretty great too!