Presented in Marketing (Room 215).

Some of our experienced marketers will answer your questions.

Presented by Sherri Renner in Business (Room 213).

Using the web for business? What you need to know about virtual accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Presented by Young McQueen in Marketing (Room 215).

Are the marketing concepts that were successful in the pre-internet world valid today?
This question is investigated and amplified. Attendees should be able to answer for themselves at the end.

Presented by William Jackson in Marketing (Room 215).

Social Media has revolutionized the world and it forever changes how generations will communicate and associate. The diversity of platforms, apps, tools and even virtual reality (VR) is influencing learning in transformational ways that change the paradigm of human interactions, relationships, sexual compatibility, gender identity and basic skills in communication interpretation. If you’re not connected in some way you are missing out on exposure that influences professional and social growth.

Presented by Nathan Ingram in Business (Room 213).

In the life of most freelance business owners, there is an ongoing battle between strategy and execution. We struggle with trying to improve our business with better systems and processes in the middle of the chaos of daily activity. This talk offers a simple strategy that you can implement to move your business forward in the middle of the whirlwind.

Presented by Chris Edwards in Marketing (Room 215).

Want a better way to manage Google Analytics, AdWords and other 3rd Party Tags? Google Tag Manager allows you to more easily implement event tracking, conversion rate optimization scripts and other services onto your page. Create triggers that fire “tags” based off simple conditions, without needing any coding knowledge. In this talk, we will learn the benefits of using Google Tag Manager on your WordPress site. We will also cover optimal setup, debugging and use cases.

Presented by Arun Kumar Dabas in Using WordPress (Room 201).

Learn about tools to track and improve website load speed, search ranks, and website traffic.

Presented by Jay Owen in Business (Room 213).

96 percent of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Why is that? How can we prevent it? What makes a business last the test of time? Learn tools, habits, and ideas from over 20 years of business experience to help your business grow and last.

Presented by Scott Mann in Marketing (Room 215).

Get your notepads ready. This will be 45 minutes of non-stop digital, real-world marketing tactics and strategies from a 15-year veteran to help you and your clients achieve new levels of greatness.

Presented by Laurie Marion in Using WordPress (Room 201).

This is a case study of how a WordPress blog changed the world.

In 2014 a group of citizens from neighborhoods surrounding a 21-acre forest in suburban Atlanta formed an alliance to save the forest from development. A WordPress blog (http://briarlakecommunityforest.org) was a key strategic component of their successful advocacy effort that resulted in the creation of Briarlake Forest Park. The blog form afforded an ideal way to present timely messages that moved the advocacy effort forward – it allowed for both in-depth analysis and instantaneous communication to an audience of at least 1,500 concerned neighbors.

This talk will highlight key posts in the blog, explaining how presenting this information at this particular time in this particular way made an impact within the county government that ultimately resulted in the decision to save the forest.

Presented by Scott Anderson in Business (Room 213).

Throughout my years of assisting owners, I have noticed that many developers will design a user’s website for quick cash and dump it onto the cheapest hosting provider, leaving customers without long-term support and chances for success. The goal of this session is to cover high-level issues sometimes overlooked when developing a website for the client. These issues include choosing a proper host, maintaining communication with a client, backing up your website, maintaining updates to a website, and also small decisions that can make your long term support of a client easier and more successful for both parties involved.

This session is geared towards developers as we cover how to keep a healthy workflow in longer term project management. General users can also benefit from attending to get a better understanding of services they should be looking for (ex: evaluating hosts, recovery plans and more).

Presented by Lauren Jeffcoat in Using WordPress (Room 201).

In this presentation I will be debunking the biggest myths about our beloved WordPress CMS. I will cover some of the most common misconceptions about WordPress that may have kept users from diving in to give it a try. Think WordPress isn’t strong enough, fast enough, secure enough, or powerful enough? Join me as I discuss these non-issues and give WordPress skeptics a reason to take another look at the most popular CMS.

Presented by April Wier in Business (Room 213).

Build relationships and make more money! Warm leads hold you in higher esteem, are easier to convert, and stay customers longer. People send clients to people they know, like, and respect. Beyond that, there are some practical steps you can take to increase the amount of referrals your peers and clients send to you.

This session includes action items and a case study on a successful referral partnership.

Presented by Steve Burge in Marketing (Room 215).

Matt Mullenweg recently said that, “Google’s annotations, comments, and real-time co-editing are years ahead” of WordPress.

Automattic released a direct integration between Google Docs and WordPress. We’ll take a look at how that plugin works, and also look at the WordPress-native options for collaborative writing. We’ll cover ways to improve your publishing workflow, including the PublishPress plugin, and other tools for content teams.

Presented by Erix Chavez in Using WordPress (Room 201).

Whether your motivation for blogging is a passion for your niche, promoting a business or monetizing an affiliate site, reaching your target audience requires you to know the basic elements of search engine optimization. Combining WordPress, the Yoast plugin and a couple of other tools I can show you how to reach your target audience without having to break the bank on expensive ads.

Perhaps you have heard that content is king but having the correct writing strategy will determine if your site is ranking on Google or not. The purpose of this topic is to teach bloggers the basic elements of search engine optimization such as keyword density, siloing, proper usage of tags, and how to take advantage of the WordPress.com to Google Docs extension.

Presented by David Laietta in Using WordPress (Room 201).

The world of the internet is built on openness. From the open source tools used to build the web to the free speech that we enjoy in the United States when it comes to what we post, there is little filter for a determined individual of even relatively limited means.

Let’s talk about the basic techniques that we can use to secure those means. There are a variety of reasons that you would want to secure your website, browsing, and communications. These include hackers looking to use your website and computer for nefarious purposes, scammers looking to extract money from you and your customers, all the way up to state-sponsored actors with specific agendas.

Let’s set up a more secure version of our websites, our businesses, and ourselves together.

Presented by Dwayne McDaniel in Business (Room 213).

It is 2017 and time to make the robots do all the things we can make them do. Machines can do just about anything as long as you give them the properly formed instructions. Fortunately for us WordPress allows us to give these instructions in an easy to learn and very robust manner called The WP-CLI. It is the fastest way to install, activate and update any theme, plugin or just about anything else in your WordPress site.

In this presentation we will demonstrate a simple install script that will have a fully functioning, customized WP website in about the same time than it normally takes download the WordPress.zip file. We will also look for how third party tools and hosts are leveraging the WP-CLI to make your life as a developer even easier.

Walk away with:
– A new appreciation for the command line.
– The desire to script ‘all the things’ to save time.
– Knowledge of serious time saving tools.
– Ideas about how to automate your processes to be more productive and profitable.

Presented by Alexander Sanfilippo in Using WordPress (Room 201).

In this session we will learn how to make your WordPress blog successful and stand out among the rest.

Presented by Laura Lane in Business (Room 213).

Mental health disorders, statistically speaking, continue to increase across the U.S. and the world. It is not surprising, then, that the healthcare industry increasingly includes mental health as part of overall health. What is surprising is how short, easy practices that can be done at home will do just the trick to maintain well-being. WordPress professionals need to take care of their mental health too. This talk is about the particular hazards to mental health that a WordPress professional might face as well as simple practices to address them. Some of the hazards include: sitting for too long, social isolation, home/office boundaries, poor sleep, and stress of financial self-sufficiency. While many professionals face hazards, WordPress professionals who work for themselves can experience these challenges all at once and in an overwhelming way. Some simple mindfulness practices include body scan and breathing. Laura will also share local resources for getting help when a person’s daily functioning is at risk.

Presented by Chris Cano in Marketing (Room 215).

Whether you own professional video equipment or use a smartphone, you have everything you need to create videos that build an audience and drive people through your marketing funnel. Learn about the three stages of a marketing funnel and how to craft video messages for each stage. You’ll hear tips about the best WordPress video plugins and insights on how to incorporate video into your blog or website.

Presented by Sheila Oliver in Using WordPress (Room 201).

The “Settings” section of WordPress tends to be overlooked by most beginners. After all, you want to get your website up and running as fast as possible. The Settings Administration Screen contains all of the settings that define your blog as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site. They are important for the health of your website. In this session, we’ll look at best practices in configuring these settings. Topics include setting your site title and tagline (and why it’s important), determine whether to show a static page or your posts on the home page, control who gets to comment on your site, and more.

Presented in Marketing (Room 215).

Some of our experienced marketers will answer your questions.

Presented by Sherri Renner in Business (Room 213).

Using the web for business? What you need to know about virtual accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Presented by Young McQueen in Marketing (Room 215).

Are the marketing concepts that were successful in the pre-internet world valid today?
This question is investigated and amplified. Attendees should be able to answer for themselves at the end.

Presented by William Jackson in Marketing (Room 215).

Social Media has revolutionized the world and it forever changes how generations will communicate and associate. The diversity of platforms, apps, tools and even virtual reality (VR) is influencing learning in transformational ways that change the paradigm of human interactions, relationships, sexual compatibility, gender identity and basic skills in communication interpretation. If you’re not connected in some way you are missing out on exposure that influences professional and social growth.

Presented by Nathan Ingram in Business (Room 213).

In the life of most freelance business owners, there is an ongoing battle between strategy and execution. We struggle with trying to improve our business with better systems and processes in the middle of the chaos of daily activity. This talk offers a simple strategy that you can implement to move your business forward in the middle of the whirlwind.

Presented by Chris Edwards in Marketing (Room 215).

Want a better way to manage Google Analytics, AdWords and other 3rd Party Tags? Google Tag Manager allows you to more easily implement event tracking, conversion rate optimization scripts and other services onto your page. Create triggers that fire “tags” based off simple conditions, without needing any coding knowledge. In this talk, we will learn the benefits of using Google Tag Manager on your WordPress site. We will also cover optimal setup, debugging and use cases.

Presented by Arun Kumar Dabas in Using WordPress (Room 201).

Learn about tools to track and improve website load speed, search ranks, and website traffic.

Presented by Jay Owen in Business (Room 213).

96 percent of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Why is that? How can we prevent it? What makes a business last the test of time? Learn tools, habits, and ideas from over 20 years of business experience to help your business grow and last.

Presented by Scott Mann in Marketing (Room 215).

Get your notepads ready. This will be 45 minutes of non-stop digital, real-world marketing tactics and strategies from a 15-year veteran to help you and your clients achieve new levels of greatness.

Presented by Laurie Marion in Using WordPress (Room 201).

This is a case study of how a WordPress blog changed the world.

In 2014 a group of citizens from neighborhoods surrounding a 21-acre forest in suburban Atlanta formed an alliance to save the forest from development. A WordPress blog (http://briarlakecommunityforest.org) was a key strategic component of their successful advocacy effort that resulted in the creation of Briarlake Forest Park. The blog form afforded an ideal way to present timely messages that moved the advocacy effort forward – it allowed for both in-depth analysis and instantaneous communication to an audience of at least 1,500 concerned neighbors.

This talk will highlight key posts in the blog, explaining how presenting this information at this particular time in this particular way made an impact within the county government that ultimately resulted in the decision to save the forest.

Presented by Scott Anderson in Business (Room 213).

Throughout my years of assisting owners, I have noticed that many developers will design a user’s website for quick cash and dump it onto the cheapest hosting provider, leaving customers without long-term support and chances for success. The goal of this session is to cover high-level issues sometimes overlooked when developing a website for the client. These issues include choosing a proper host, maintaining communication with a client, backing up your website, maintaining updates to a website, and also small decisions that can make your long term support of a client easier and more successful for both parties involved.

This session is geared towards developers as we cover how to keep a healthy workflow in longer term project management. General users can also benefit from attending to get a better understanding of services they should be looking for (ex: evaluating hosts, recovery plans and more).

Presented by Lauren Jeffcoat in Using WordPress (Room 201).

In this presentation I will be debunking the biggest myths about our beloved WordPress CMS. I will cover some of the most common misconceptions about WordPress that may have kept users from diving in to give it a try. Think WordPress isn’t strong enough, fast enough, secure enough, or powerful enough? Join me as I discuss these non-issues and give WordPress skeptics a reason to take another look at the most popular CMS.

Presented by April Wier in Business (Room 213).

Build relationships and make more money! Warm leads hold you in higher esteem, are easier to convert, and stay customers longer. People send clients to people they know, like, and respect. Beyond that, there are some practical steps you can take to increase the amount of referrals your peers and clients send to you.

This session includes action items and a case study on a successful referral partnership.

Presented by Steve Burge in Marketing (Room 215).

Matt Mullenweg recently said that, “Google’s annotations, comments, and real-time co-editing are years ahead” of WordPress.

Automattic released a direct integration between Google Docs and WordPress. We’ll take a look at how that plugin works, and also look at the WordPress-native options for collaborative writing. We’ll cover ways to improve your publishing workflow, including the PublishPress plugin, and other tools for content teams.

Presented by Erix Chavez in Using WordPress (Room 201).

Whether your motivation for blogging is a passion for your niche, promoting a business or monetizing an affiliate site, reaching your target audience requires you to know the basic elements of search engine optimization. Combining WordPress, the Yoast plugin and a couple of other tools I can show you how to reach your target audience without having to break the bank on expensive ads.

Perhaps you have heard that content is king but having the correct writing strategy will determine if your site is ranking on Google or not. The purpose of this topic is to teach bloggers the basic elements of search engine optimization such as keyword density, siloing, proper usage of tags, and how to take advantage of the WordPress.com to Google Docs extension.

Presented by David Laietta in Using WordPress (Room 201).

The world of the internet is built on openness. From the open source tools used to build the web to the free speech that we enjoy in the United States when it comes to what we post, there is little filter for a determined individual of even relatively limited means.

Let’s talk about the basic techniques that we can use to secure those means. There are a variety of reasons that you would want to secure your website, browsing, and communications. These include hackers looking to use your website and computer for nefarious purposes, scammers looking to extract money from you and your customers, all the way up to state-sponsored actors with specific agendas.

Let’s set up a more secure version of our websites, our businesses, and ourselves together.

Presented by Dwayne McDaniel in Business (Room 213).

It is 2017 and time to make the robots do all the things we can make them do. Machines can do just about anything as long as you give them the properly formed instructions. Fortunately for us WordPress allows us to give these instructions in an easy to learn and very robust manner called The WP-CLI. It is the fastest way to install, activate and update any theme, plugin or just about anything else in your WordPress site.

In this presentation we will demonstrate a simple install script that will have a fully functioning, customized WP website in about the same time than it normally takes download the WordPress.zip file. We will also look for how third party tools and hosts are leveraging the WP-CLI to make your life as a developer even easier.

Walk away with:
– A new appreciation for the command line.
– The desire to script ‘all the things’ to save time.
– Knowledge of serious time saving tools.
– Ideas about how to automate your processes to be more productive and profitable.

Presented by Alexander Sanfilippo in Using WordPress (Room 201).

In this session we will learn how to make your WordPress blog successful and stand out among the rest.

Presented by Laura Lane in Business (Room 213).

Mental health disorders, statistically speaking, continue to increase across the U.S. and the world. It is not surprising, then, that the healthcare industry increasingly includes mental health as part of overall health. What is surprising is how short, easy practices that can be done at home will do just the trick to maintain well-being. WordPress professionals need to take care of their mental health too. This talk is about the particular hazards to mental health that a WordPress professional might face as well as simple practices to address them. Some of the hazards include: sitting for too long, social isolation, home/office boundaries, poor sleep, and stress of financial self-sufficiency. While many professionals face hazards, WordPress professionals who work for themselves can experience these challenges all at once and in an overwhelming way. Some simple mindfulness practices include body scan and breathing. Laura will also share local resources for getting help when a person’s daily functioning is at risk.

Presented by Chris Cano in Marketing (Room 215).

Whether you own professional video equipment or use a smartphone, you have everything you need to create videos that build an audience and drive people through your marketing funnel. Learn about the three stages of a marketing funnel and how to craft video messages for each stage. You’ll hear tips about the best WordPress video plugins and insights on how to incorporate video into your blog or website.

Presented by Sheila Oliver in Using WordPress (Room 201).

The “Settings” section of WordPress tends to be overlooked by most beginners. After all, you want to get your website up and running as fast as possible. The Settings Administration Screen contains all of the settings that define your blog as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site. They are important for the health of your website. In this session, we’ll look at best practices in configuring these settings. Topics include setting your site title and tagline (and why it’s important), determine whether to show a static page or your posts on the home page, control who gets to comment on your site, and more.

Presented in Marketing (Room 215).

Some of our experienced marketers will answer your questions.

Presented by Sherri Renner in Business (Room 213).

Using the web for business? What you need to know about virtual accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Presented by Young McQueen in Marketing (Room 215).

Are the marketing concepts that were successful in the pre-internet world valid today?
This question is investigated and amplified. Attendees should be able to answer for themselves at the end.

Presented by William Jackson in Marketing (Room 215).

Social Media has revolutionized the world and it forever changes how generations will communicate and associate. The diversity of platforms, apps, tools and even virtual reality (VR) is influencing learning in transformational ways that change the paradigm of human interactions, relationships, sexual compatibility, gender identity and basic skills in communication interpretation. If you’re not connected in some way you are missing out on exposure that influences professional and social growth.

Presented by Nathan Ingram in Business (Room 213).

In the life of most freelance business owners, there is an ongoing battle between strategy and execution. We struggle with trying to improve our business with better systems and processes in the middle of the chaos of daily activity. This talk offers a simple strategy that you can implement to move your business forward in the middle of the whirlwind.

Presented by Chris Edwards in Marketing (Room 215).

Want a better way to manage Google Analytics, AdWords and other 3rd Party Tags? Google Tag Manager allows you to more easily implement event tracking, conversion rate optimization scripts and other services onto your page. Create triggers that fire “tags” based off simple conditions, without needing any coding knowledge. In this talk, we will learn the benefits of using Google Tag Manager on your WordPress site. We will also cover optimal setup, debugging and use cases.

Presented by Arun Kumar Dabas in Using WordPress (Room 201).

Learn about tools to track and improve website load speed, search ranks, and website traffic.

Presented by Jay Owen in Business (Room 213).

96 percent of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Why is that? How can we prevent it? What makes a business last the test of time? Learn tools, habits, and ideas from over 20 years of business experience to help your business grow and last.

Presented by Scott Mann in Marketing (Room 215).

Get your notepads ready. This will be 45 minutes of non-stop digital, real-world marketing tactics and strategies from a 15-year veteran to help you and your clients achieve new levels of greatness.

Presented by Laurie Marion in Using WordPress (Room 201).

This is a case study of how a WordPress blog changed the world.

In 2014 a group of citizens from neighborhoods surrounding a 21-acre forest in suburban Atlanta formed an alliance to save the forest from development. A WordPress blog (http://briarlakecommunityforest.org) was a key strategic component of their successful advocacy effort that resulted in the creation of Briarlake Forest Park. The blog form afforded an ideal way to present timely messages that moved the advocacy effort forward – it allowed for both in-depth analysis and instantaneous communication to an audience of at least 1,500 concerned neighbors.

This talk will highlight key posts in the blog, explaining how presenting this information at this particular time in this particular way made an impact within the county government that ultimately resulted in the decision to save the forest.

Presented by Scott Anderson in Business (Room 213).

Throughout my years of assisting owners, I have noticed that many developers will design a user’s website for quick cash and dump it onto the cheapest hosting provider, leaving customers without long-term support and chances for success. The goal of this session is to cover high-level issues sometimes overlooked when developing a website for the client. These issues include choosing a proper host, maintaining communication with a client, backing up your website, maintaining updates to a website, and also small decisions that can make your long term support of a client easier and more successful for both parties involved.

This session is geared towards developers as we cover how to keep a healthy workflow in longer term project management. General users can also benefit from attending to get a better understanding of services they should be looking for (ex: evaluating hosts, recovery plans and more).

Presented by Lauren Jeffcoat in Using WordPress (Room 201).

In this presentation I will be debunking the biggest myths about our beloved WordPress CMS. I will cover some of the most common misconceptions about WordPress that may have kept users from diving in to give it a try. Think WordPress isn’t strong enough, fast enough, secure enough, or powerful enough? Join me as I discuss these non-issues and give WordPress skeptics a reason to take another look at the most popular CMS.

Presented by April Wier in Business (Room 213).

Build relationships and make more money! Warm leads hold you in higher esteem, are easier to convert, and stay customers longer. People send clients to people they know, like, and respect. Beyond that, there are some practical steps you can take to increase the amount of referrals your peers and clients send to you.

This session includes action items and a case study on a successful referral partnership.

Presented by Steve Burge in Marketing (Room 215).

Matt Mullenweg recently said that, “Google’s annotations, comments, and real-time co-editing are years ahead” of WordPress.

Automattic released a direct integration between Google Docs and WordPress. We’ll take a look at how that plugin works, and also look at the WordPress-native options for collaborative writing. We’ll cover ways to improve your publishing workflow, including the PublishPress plugin, and other tools for content teams.

Presented by Erix Chavez in Using WordPress (Room 201).

Whether your motivation for blogging is a passion for your niche, promoting a business or monetizing an affiliate site, reaching your target audience requires you to know the basic elements of search engine optimization. Combining WordPress, the Yoast plugin and a couple of other tools I can show you how to reach your target audience without having to break the bank on expensive ads.

Perhaps you have heard that content is king but having the correct writing strategy will determine if your site is ranking on Google or not. The purpose of this topic is to teach bloggers the basic elements of search engine optimization such as keyword density, siloing, proper usage of tags, and how to take advantage of the WordPress.com to Google Docs extension.

Presented by David Laietta in Using WordPress (Room 201).

The world of the internet is built on openness. From the open source tools used to build the web to the free speech that we enjoy in the United States when it comes to what we post, there is little filter for a determined individual of even relatively limited means.

Let’s talk about the basic techniques that we can use to secure those means. There are a variety of reasons that you would want to secure your website, browsing, and communications. These include hackers looking to use your website and computer for nefarious purposes, scammers looking to extract money from you and your customers, all the way up to state-sponsored actors with specific agendas.

Let’s set up a more secure version of our websites, our businesses, and ourselves together.

Presented by Dwayne McDaniel in Business (Room 213).

It is 2017 and time to make the robots do all the things we can make them do. Machines can do just about anything as long as you give them the properly formed instructions. Fortunately for us WordPress allows us to give these instructions in an easy to learn and very robust manner called The WP-CLI. It is the fastest way to install, activate and update any theme, plugin or just about anything else in your WordPress site.

In this presentation we will demonstrate a simple install script that will have a fully functioning, customized WP website in about the same time than it normally takes download the WordPress.zip file. We will also look for how third party tools and hosts are leveraging the WP-CLI to make your life as a developer even easier.

Walk away with:
– A new appreciation for the command line.
– The desire to script ‘all the things’ to save time.
– Knowledge of serious time saving tools.
– Ideas about how to automate your processes to be more productive and profitable.

Presented by Alexander Sanfilippo in Using WordPress (Room 201).

In this session we will learn how to make your WordPress blog successful and stand out among the rest.

Presented by Laura Lane in Business (Room 213).

Mental health disorders, statistically speaking, continue to increase across the U.S. and the world. It is not surprising, then, that the healthcare industry increasingly includes mental health as part of overall health. What is surprising is how short, easy practices that can be done at home will do just the trick to maintain well-being. WordPress professionals need to take care of their mental health too. This talk is about the particular hazards to mental health that a WordPress professional might face as well as simple practices to address them. Some of the hazards include: sitting for too long, social isolation, home/office boundaries, poor sleep, and stress of financial self-sufficiency. While many professionals face hazards, WordPress professionals who work for themselves can experience these challenges all at once and in an overwhelming way. Some simple mindfulness practices include body scan and breathing. Laura will also share local resources for getting help when a person’s daily functioning is at risk.

Presented by Chris Cano in Marketing (Room 215).

Whether you own professional video equipment or use a smartphone, you have everything you need to create videos that build an audience and drive people through your marketing funnel. Learn about the three stages of a marketing funnel and how to craft video messages for each stage. You’ll hear tips about the best WordPress video plugins and insights on how to incorporate video into your blog or website.

Presented by Sheila Oliver in Using WordPress (Room 201).

The “Settings” section of WordPress tends to be overlooked by most beginners. After all, you want to get your website up and running as fast as possible. The Settings Administration Screen contains all of the settings that define your blog as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site. They are important for the health of your website. In this session, we’ll look at best practices in configuring these settings. Topics include setting your site title and tagline (and why it’s important), determine whether to show a static page or your posts on the home page, control who gets to comment on your site, and more.

Presented by Laura Phillips in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Often times the terms UX and UI are used interchangeably when in fact they are two different things. In this session we will discuss what UX is, why it is important and some of the ways you can illuminate UX practices in your web project.

Presented by Adam Warner in Development (Room 201).

Do you have a plugin (or several) in the WordPress.org repository? Have you ever wondered how to turn your plugin development skills into a sustaining income-based business? Not sure how to go about it?

In this session, Adam details his story of creating a sustainable plugin business. He shares actionable advice that audience members can put into practice immediately to grow not only a user-base, but also a customer-base. Adam also explains the techniques he uses to guide free-users to premium product.

Attendees will learn everything they need to know to create a plugin that people will love, and recommend to others.

Presented by Ian Svoboda in Development (Room 201).

This talk will go over how to use gulp.js inside a “modern” WordPress theme development workflow. Using the wonderful features of javascript task runners, developers can quickly and easily develop beautiful themes using ES6, SCSS, and more.

Presented by Jean Perpillant in Business (Room 213).

Learn about the necessity of honesty with clients, from the discovery phase all the way to post-launch follow-ups. I’ll also discuss the outlines of introverts and extroverts and how this plays a role in choosing your next developer and choosing your next client.

Presented by Binod Purushothaman in Development (Room 201).

WordPress builds the pages viewed by your blog’s visitors with data retrieved from the database. This includes blog posts, comments, and information about the users who left comments on your blog. Hackers are more and more successful at putting spam and malware into the database behind your blog. Once they succeed in persisting unwanted content to the database layer, WordPress delivers it to the end browser – your customer, or blog reader.

This presentation addresses the following questions:
What are the common categories of undesirable persisted content?
Where in the database are these persisted?
How can you find these? Some successful strategies in detecting these.
What you can do about undesirable database content when you find it.

Presented by Mike Demo Demopoulos in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Do you know that if you have a picture of a duck the difference between having it face left or right can increase your conversions by 40%?

Think this sounds silly? It is, but backed by research. Spend some time to learn about what a/b testing is, what things to test, testing methodology and the best tools to use for your WordPress site.

Everyone will get a handout of the very same checklist I use when A/B testing our client’s sites. One of our clients, an insurance company, increased leads by making just a small 2px change.

Want your site to be tested live? Please tweet me your URL @MPMIKE with the hashtag #TESTME. Selected sites will get live feedback and examples.

When you launch a website, you are guessing. Sure the guesses are educated based on experience and data, but you can maximize your ROI with good A/B testing.

Presented by Ryan Plas in Development (Room 201).

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Learn how to use composer to manage third-party code and organize your wordpress projects.

Presented by Bobbi Sanderlin in Business (Room 213).

Using a basic pencil, I will provide several sales tips and tricks to help you sell anything as long as you believe in it. Remember, you have been selling all your life.

Presented by Lisa Melegari in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Anyone who’s used Yoast has faced the tedious process of struggling to get that green light. But SEO is not the same process for all pages, or even all types of websites. In this talk, Lisa will share the basic ins and outs of SEO and point out situations where the “green light” rules can be broken. She’ll also cover some helpful tools and tricks to get the most out of your SEO beyond Yoast.

Presented by John Tucker in Development (Room 201).

On a recent WordPress project, we needed to incorporate an interactive map with client geotagged content. Out first approach was to look for a WordPress plugin to accomplish this; but we did could not find any that supported the content structure and the styling requirements.

The final solution ended up being a fairly straightforward use of a custom post type, the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, and the Google Maps JavaScript API.

This talk provides a high-level overview of the steps we used to build out the interactive map and how this approach can be used to solve many other similar types of problems.

Presented by Alex Mangini in Business (Room 213).

In today’s crowded theme market, it’s harder than ever to stand out and sell copies of your theme at scale. Couple that with the advent of page-builder plugins and it’s easy to lose morale as an aspiring theme shop owner in today’s market.

My talk will focus on strategies I’ve personally used to make a full-time living from my theme business and to prove that *today* has never been a better time to be in the theme business.

I’m not going to tell you the “must-have” features every theme needs to have (though I will briefly highlight some) but will instead show you a different way to view the premium theme market that just doesn’t get talked about enough in the circles of WordPress.

Presented by Georgina Lewis in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

This session explores the intricacies of Keywords that you ‘think’ is right based on client direction vs. actual industry leaders and your competitor. We explore building intellectual data analysis, utilizing keyword performance algorithms and how to best exploit the data to drive traffic for your website, blogs or social platforms. Attendees will learn data-driven, repeatable, easy-to-use methods.

Presented by Jeff Bowen in Development (Room 201).

Have you wanted to play with React, but didn’t know how to get started on a “real” project?
Do you want to add some flair and interactivity to your site, but love your theme and don’t want to start over from scratch?
Are you curious what all the fuss is about the WordPress REST API?

Tool up to create some custom pages! Whet your whistle for modern front-end development & get a taste for WordPress as an “App Platform.”

You’ll learn how to:
* Build a single-page application on top of your existing WordPress
* Start hacking on React / JSX components and figure out what to do with component state and properties
* Interact with some standard REST API endpoints from your application, and add some new ones!

Presented by Kenny Harper in Business (Room 213).

Attract more profitable clients and have more fulfillment by leveraging the concepts in this high energy and engaging presentation. This session shares digital marketing strategies to build and attract the attention of your ideal clients to generate more profit in the process.

This presentation is not a one way conversation, it is designed to be entertaining and engages the audience to deliver practical information and inspirational action items.

Presented by Steven Buchko in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Many people design their websites to be aesthetically pleasing; however, they often times design them in such a way that they are hard for the users to use from a functional standpoint. This talk will cover how to conduct customer interviews to determine what is most important for users and strategies to get to the root of customer problems.

Presented by Jodie Riccelli in Business (Room 213).

This session will cover the importance of communication and problem solving and how it relates to making a client, a client for life. Touching on Sales, Discovery, and Scoping; this talk will highlight the importance of connection in a digital industry.

Presented by Gary Ritzenthaler in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Attend this talk to learn seven basic design principles that will immediately make your blog or website look better. Make your blog posts clearer and your sales pages more focused. Understand why one theme looks better than another and how to customize your theme in ways that look the best. A little good design goes a long way!

Presented in Business (Room 213).

Have questions weighing on your mind about business and WordPress? Ask your questions to a panel of experts.

Presented by Laura Phillips in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Often times the terms UX and UI are used interchangeably when in fact they are two different things. In this session we will discuss what UX is, why it is important and some of the ways you can illuminate UX practices in your web project.

Presented by Adam Warner in Development (Room 201).

Do you have a plugin (or several) in the WordPress.org repository? Have you ever wondered how to turn your plugin development skills into a sustaining income-based business? Not sure how to go about it?

In this session, Adam details his story of creating a sustainable plugin business. He shares actionable advice that audience members can put into practice immediately to grow not only a user-base, but also a customer-base. Adam also explains the techniques he uses to guide free-users to premium product.

Attendees will learn everything they need to know to create a plugin that people will love, and recommend to others.

Presented by Ian Svoboda in Development (Room 201).

This talk will go over how to use gulp.js inside a “modern” WordPress theme development workflow. Using the wonderful features of javascript task runners, developers can quickly and easily develop beautiful themes using ES6, SCSS, and more.

Presented by Jean Perpillant in Business (Room 213).

Learn about the necessity of honesty with clients, from the discovery phase all the way to post-launch follow-ups. I’ll also discuss the outlines of introverts and extroverts and how this plays a role in choosing your next developer and choosing your next client.

Presented by Binod Purushothaman in Development (Room 201).

WordPress builds the pages viewed by your blog’s visitors with data retrieved from the database. This includes blog posts, comments, and information about the users who left comments on your blog. Hackers are more and more successful at putting spam and malware into the database behind your blog. Once they succeed in persisting unwanted content to the database layer, WordPress delivers it to the end browser – your customer, or blog reader.

This presentation addresses the following questions:
What are the common categories of undesirable persisted content?
Where in the database are these persisted?
How can you find these? Some successful strategies in detecting these.
What you can do about undesirable database content when you find it.

Presented by Mike Demo Demopoulos in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Do you know that if you have a picture of a duck the difference between having it face left or right can increase your conversions by 40%?

Think this sounds silly? It is, but backed by research. Spend some time to learn about what a/b testing is, what things to test, testing methodology and the best tools to use for your WordPress site.

Everyone will get a handout of the very same checklist I use when A/B testing our client’s sites. One of our clients, an insurance company, increased leads by making just a small 2px change.

Want your site to be tested live? Please tweet me your URL @MPMIKE with the hashtag #TESTME. Selected sites will get live feedback and examples.

When you launch a website, you are guessing. Sure the guesses are educated based on experience and data, but you can maximize your ROI with good A/B testing.

Presented by Ryan Plas in Development (Room 201).

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Learn how to use composer to manage third-party code and organize your wordpress projects.

Presented by Bobbi Sanderlin in Business (Room 213).

Using a basic pencil, I will provide several sales tips and tricks to help you sell anything as long as you believe in it. Remember, you have been selling all your life.

Presented by Lisa Melegari in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Anyone who’s used Yoast has faced the tedious process of struggling to get that green light. But SEO is not the same process for all pages, or even all types of websites. In this talk, Lisa will share the basic ins and outs of SEO and point out situations where the “green light” rules can be broken. She’ll also cover some helpful tools and tricks to get the most out of your SEO beyond Yoast.

Presented by John Tucker in Development (Room 201).

On a recent WordPress project, we needed to incorporate an interactive map with client geotagged content. Out first approach was to look for a WordPress plugin to accomplish this; but we did could not find any that supported the content structure and the styling requirements.

The final solution ended up being a fairly straightforward use of a custom post type, the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, and the Google Maps JavaScript API.

This talk provides a high-level overview of the steps we used to build out the interactive map and how this approach can be used to solve many other similar types of problems.

Presented by Alex Mangini in Business (Room 213).

In today’s crowded theme market, it’s harder than ever to stand out and sell copies of your theme at scale. Couple that with the advent of page-builder plugins and it’s easy to lose morale as an aspiring theme shop owner in today’s market.

My talk will focus on strategies I’ve personally used to make a full-time living from my theme business and to prove that *today* has never been a better time to be in the theme business.

I’m not going to tell you the “must-have” features every theme needs to have (though I will briefly highlight some) but will instead show you a different way to view the premium theme market that just doesn’t get talked about enough in the circles of WordPress.

Presented by Georgina Lewis in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

This session explores the intricacies of Keywords that you ‘think’ is right based on client direction vs. actual industry leaders and your competitor. We explore building intellectual data analysis, utilizing keyword performance algorithms and how to best exploit the data to drive traffic for your website, blogs or social platforms. Attendees will learn data-driven, repeatable, easy-to-use methods.

Presented by Jeff Bowen in Development (Room 201).

Have you wanted to play with React, but didn’t know how to get started on a “real” project?
Do you want to add some flair and interactivity to your site, but love your theme and don’t want to start over from scratch?
Are you curious what all the fuss is about the WordPress REST API?

Tool up to create some custom pages! Whet your whistle for modern front-end development & get a taste for WordPress as an “App Platform.”

You’ll learn how to:
* Build a single-page application on top of your existing WordPress
* Start hacking on React / JSX components and figure out what to do with component state and properties
* Interact with some standard REST API endpoints from your application, and add some new ones!

Presented by Kenny Harper in Business (Room 213).

Attract more profitable clients and have more fulfillment by leveraging the concepts in this high energy and engaging presentation. This session shares digital marketing strategies to build and attract the attention of your ideal clients to generate more profit in the process.

This presentation is not a one way conversation, it is designed to be entertaining and engages the audience to deliver practical information and inspirational action items.

Presented by Steven Buchko in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Many people design their websites to be aesthetically pleasing; however, they often times design them in such a way that they are hard for the users to use from a functional standpoint. This talk will cover how to conduct customer interviews to determine what is most important for users and strategies to get to the root of customer problems.

Presented by Jodie Riccelli in Business (Room 213).

This session will cover the importance of communication and problem solving and how it relates to making a client, a client for life. Touching on Sales, Discovery, and Scoping; this talk will highlight the importance of connection in a digital industry.

Presented by Gary Ritzenthaler in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Attend this talk to learn seven basic design principles that will immediately make your blog or website look better. Make your blog posts clearer and your sales pages more focused. Understand why one theme looks better than another and how to customize your theme in ways that look the best. A little good design goes a long way!

Presented in Business (Room 213).

Have questions weighing on your mind about business and WordPress? Ask your questions to a panel of experts.

Presented by Laura Phillips in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Often times the terms UX and UI are used interchangeably when in fact they are two different things. In this session we will discuss what UX is, why it is important and some of the ways you can illuminate UX practices in your web project.

Presented by Adam Warner in Development (Room 201).

Do you have a plugin (or several) in the WordPress.org repository? Have you ever wondered how to turn your plugin development skills into a sustaining income-based business? Not sure how to go about it?

In this session, Adam details his story of creating a sustainable plugin business. He shares actionable advice that audience members can put into practice immediately to grow not only a user-base, but also a customer-base. Adam also explains the techniques he uses to guide free-users to premium product.

Attendees will learn everything they need to know to create a plugin that people will love, and recommend to others.

Presented by Ian Svoboda in Development (Room 201).

This talk will go over how to use gulp.js inside a “modern” WordPress theme development workflow. Using the wonderful features of javascript task runners, developers can quickly and easily develop beautiful themes using ES6, SCSS, and more.

Presented by Jean Perpillant in Business (Room 213).

Learn about the necessity of honesty with clients, from the discovery phase all the way to post-launch follow-ups. I’ll also discuss the outlines of introverts and extroverts and how this plays a role in choosing your next developer and choosing your next client.

Presented by Binod Purushothaman in Development (Room 201).

WordPress builds the pages viewed by your blog’s visitors with data retrieved from the database. This includes blog posts, comments, and information about the users who left comments on your blog. Hackers are more and more successful at putting spam and malware into the database behind your blog. Once they succeed in persisting unwanted content to the database layer, WordPress delivers it to the end browser – your customer, or blog reader.

This presentation addresses the following questions:
What are the common categories of undesirable persisted content?
Where in the database are these persisted?
How can you find these? Some successful strategies in detecting these.
What you can do about undesirable database content when you find it.

Presented by Mike Demo Demopoulos in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Do you know that if you have a picture of a duck the difference between having it face left or right can increase your conversions by 40%?

Think this sounds silly? It is, but backed by research. Spend some time to learn about what a/b testing is, what things to test, testing methodology and the best tools to use for your WordPress site.

Everyone will get a handout of the very same checklist I use when A/B testing our client’s sites. One of our clients, an insurance company, increased leads by making just a small 2px change.

Want your site to be tested live? Please tweet me your URL @MPMIKE with the hashtag #TESTME. Selected sites will get live feedback and examples.

When you launch a website, you are guessing. Sure the guesses are educated based on experience and data, but you can maximize your ROI with good A/B testing.

Presented by Ryan Plas in Development (Room 201).

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Learn how to use composer to manage third-party code and organize your wordpress projects.

Presented by Bobbi Sanderlin in Business (Room 213).

Using a basic pencil, I will provide several sales tips and tricks to help you sell anything as long as you believe in it. Remember, you have been selling all your life.

Presented by Lisa Melegari in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Anyone who’s used Yoast has faced the tedious process of struggling to get that green light. But SEO is not the same process for all pages, or even all types of websites. In this talk, Lisa will share the basic ins and outs of SEO and point out situations where the “green light” rules can be broken. She’ll also cover some helpful tools and tricks to get the most out of your SEO beyond Yoast.

Presented by John Tucker in Development (Room 201).

On a recent WordPress project, we needed to incorporate an interactive map with client geotagged content. Out first approach was to look for a WordPress plugin to accomplish this; but we did could not find any that supported the content structure and the styling requirements.

The final solution ended up being a fairly straightforward use of a custom post type, the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, and the Google Maps JavaScript API.

This talk provides a high-level overview of the steps we used to build out the interactive map and how this approach can be used to solve many other similar types of problems.

Presented by Alex Mangini in Business (Room 213).

In today’s crowded theme market, it’s harder than ever to stand out and sell copies of your theme at scale. Couple that with the advent of page-builder plugins and it’s easy to lose morale as an aspiring theme shop owner in today’s market.

My talk will focus on strategies I’ve personally used to make a full-time living from my theme business and to prove that *today* has never been a better time to be in the theme business.

I’m not going to tell you the “must-have” features every theme needs to have (though I will briefly highlight some) but will instead show you a different way to view the premium theme market that just doesn’t get talked about enough in the circles of WordPress.

Presented by Georgina Lewis in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

This session explores the intricacies of Keywords that you ‘think’ is right based on client direction vs. actual industry leaders and your competitor. We explore building intellectual data analysis, utilizing keyword performance algorithms and how to best exploit the data to drive traffic for your website, blogs or social platforms. Attendees will learn data-driven, repeatable, easy-to-use methods.

Presented by Jeff Bowen in Development (Room 201).

Have you wanted to play with React, but didn’t know how to get started on a “real” project?
Do you want to add some flair and interactivity to your site, but love your theme and don’t want to start over from scratch?
Are you curious what all the fuss is about the WordPress REST API?

Tool up to create some custom pages! Whet your whistle for modern front-end development & get a taste for WordPress as an “App Platform.”

You’ll learn how to:
* Build a single-page application on top of your existing WordPress
* Start hacking on React / JSX components and figure out what to do with component state and properties
* Interact with some standard REST API endpoints from your application, and add some new ones!

Presented by Kenny Harper in Business (Room 213).

Attract more profitable clients and have more fulfillment by leveraging the concepts in this high energy and engaging presentation. This session shares digital marketing strategies to build and attract the attention of your ideal clients to generate more profit in the process.

This presentation is not a one way conversation, it is designed to be entertaining and engages the audience to deliver practical information and inspirational action items.

Presented by Steven Buchko in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Many people design their websites to be aesthetically pleasing; however, they often times design them in such a way that they are hard for the users to use from a functional standpoint. This talk will cover how to conduct customer interviews to determine what is most important for users and strategies to get to the root of customer problems.

Presented by Jodie Riccelli in Business (Room 213).

This session will cover the importance of communication and problem solving and how it relates to making a client, a client for life. Touching on Sales, Discovery, and Scoping; this talk will highlight the importance of connection in a digital industry.

Presented by Gary Ritzenthaler in Design / Optimization (Room 215).

Attend this talk to learn seven basic design principles that will immediately make your blog or website look better. Make your blog posts clearer and your sales pages more focused. Understand why one theme looks better than another and how to customize your theme in ways that look the best. A little good design goes a long way!

Presented in Business (Room 213).

Have questions weighing on your mind about business and WordPress? Ask your questions to a panel of experts.