Mindfulness – “The quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.”
Security can seem intimidating and complex for many, but we shouldn’t (can’t) let that stop us from doing everything we can to secure our WordPress sites and ourselves. After all, our websites are often part of our livelihood.
In this session Adam addresses the “big picture” of personal and website security and breaks down the fundamental tasks needed for a strong security plan online. He provides an actionable checklist on what audience members can implement immediately to better secure themselves online in addition to their WordPress websites.
After attending this session, audience members will have a better understanding of personal security online and how it affects website security as a whole, as well as steps they can take to mitigate risk in the future.
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Grow your business without going broke by building your team the right way !
Those of us who’ve grown know the dance all too well. We get too busy so we hire staff. We think .. yay! .. I’m touching XX% more money I must be making more .. until we look and the numbers and reality sets in … what the heck! … we are touching more and keeping less … where did we go wrong???
That is what this talk is about. The pitfalls and expenses of growing. From not knowing how long tasks really take because we never actually tracked our time to the overhead in management tools and lost billable hours. I share varies ways to grow your team from US based to oversees; contractor to employee to strategic partner. The possibilities are endless.
And the punchline … there is no “right way”. There is only the solution that works best for you!
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Many great projects, products, and companies have grown out of side projects or hobbies. Apple, Twitter, and even Gmail exist because someone dedicated their spare time to testing the waters. Most of your favorite WordPress themes, plugins, and websites were probably brought to life during someone’s day off.
But not all side projects need to be huge, life-altering excursions. Whether it’s building a WordPress plugin, learning a new software package, or building an entire website, they can be whatever you need them to be; from developing a new skill to bringing in extra income to simply having a little fun. Side projects can also be a great way to learn what you’re made of, try new avenues, and build relationships with other web professionals.
Join Rachel to discuss the pros (and cons) of side projects, learn about a few projects that turned into so much more, and hopefully leave with a few ideas of your own.
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Lunch:
Pick up your lunch in Stamm, then elect to either join a Birds of a Feather conversation (see location information below), or have a more free-form lunch wherever and with whomever you want.
Birds of a Feather:
The Birds of a Feather sessions are envisioned to augment the WordCamp 
experience and are by no means compulsory – if you are very interested in a topic, however, a Birds of a Feather session is a great way to dive deeper and meet others with aligned interests. Some of the gatherings have featured experts – people our organizing committee have identified as especially qualified to answer general questions and recommend general resources on a given topic. Other gatherings are more free-form discussion, featuring the questions and answers of fellow attendees. Please use this as a forum to engage in discussion, Q&A’s, trade resources, and network.
Birds of A Feather Topics:
Accessibility: Featured Expert: David Zulaica: Trail Room
Search Engine Optimization: Featured Expert: Fellene Gaylord Trail Room
Blogging Content Tips: Featured Expert: Eric Mann: Trail Room
Business Development: Featured Expert: Devra Polack: Thayer
Educational Technology: Featured Expert: Melissa Lim: Stamm West
The Future of WordPress – Diversity: General Discussion: Stamm West
How to ease content updates & prevent design blunders – Steven Quinn
Make the back end of your WordPress websites as easy to use as the front end while making your site a data-driven experience. We’ll explore different ways of using of custom post types, custom fields, and settings pages to make content editing and management as easy as possible while enforcing front end styling.
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Face your Fear of Niching – Ethan Clevenger
The idea of narrowing your business focus and positioning away from potential clients can be scary. It’s a fear that must be faced to maximize growth. While it’s natural to assume that becoming less of a generalist means doing less business, the opposite is usually true. By effectively positioning your business, you stand to grow exponentially.
This talk is great for owners of digital studios making WordPress sites but contains just as much value for other business owners trying to leverage their digital presence to grow their business.
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The Benefits of Continuous Integration – Andrew Taylor
Modern development is complex, with lots of tools to turn the code we write into the code used by the user’s browser. This can be a simple and minifying assets or as sophisticated as downloading dependencies and turning source code into production code.
In this session we will look at the top 5 benefits gained from adopting a Continuous Integration workflow to automate the build process, testing and deployment. Whether you’re a developer wondering why you should try Continuous Integration in the first place or a business owner wondering why you should let your team spend time on adopting a new process when the current one “just works” we’ll have answers for you!
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You work hard to create your content. So how can you maximize its impact on your bottom line? Through repurposing. If you have a blog, you already have a good start. Your next step is to take all that awesome original content and repurpose the heck out of it. In this session, you’ll learn from a prolific content generator: how to create and push out and manage your content; how to keep your freshest content up front and alive, find unique ways to get the most out of your existing content and identify the right channels for repurposing it.
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I’ve been blogging for 8 years and I have learned that when it comes to getting visits to my website, I had to do three things: (1) Narrow my niche, (2) Answer a question, and (3) gain a basic understanding of search engine optimization.
In this presentation, I would like to introduce the audience to 15 (or more) easy tips that they can apply immediately to improve the SEO of their WordPress blog. My tips will include:
Keyword research
Topics that answer questions
Best practices for headers
Guest posting and link backs
Digging deep into the analytics of a blog
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Think you need to hire a CTO and build custom tech to vet your next big idea? Think again!
Learn how startups can rapidly prototype and test their ideas before sinking thousands and millions into proprietary tech. We’ll look at a handful of active startups leveraging WordPress in a variety of industries, how they’re handling scaling, and starting to build their own infrastructure on top using APIs and React/Native.
Learn how you can launch and test your next big idea, applying the Lean Startup model, best practices and some cautionary tales.
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