Sessions

A panel discussion.

What the heck is content strategy? And why do you need one for your blog or business? We’ll talk about what this means, how to create a strategy that makes sense (and is super easy to understand), and a few important tips to keep in mind when deciding what kinds of content to create or publish on your WordPress site.

Keynote

This presentation will focus on why Page Speed matters from an SEO standpoint, including touches on User Experience, overall functionality, and brand perception. It will also provide some high-level tips on how to improve it, including specific areas to check on WordPress site for anything bogging it down.

You built your company, you have your website, and everything is looking great! But, you might be missing something- your compassion! Compassion is what drives companies and organizations to the right direction, no matter what you’re doing! It may be the small step to create a whirl of change for the people you serve. Follow Abbey Sager and her award-winning organization, Diverse Gaming Coalition, on how to shape your social media around kindness, boost your SEO with your philanthropy , and create an impact with your company.

Getting more traffic to your website is always a good feeling. But what are you supposed to do once you’re getting enough traffic but aren’t yet winning new customers? I’ll go over some best practices of what to do (and what not to do) in order to slowly turn new visitors into paying customers.

Let’s look at how far the Editor has come since the 1.x days, and where it’s headed in the future. Talk will explore how shortcodes, media, and other enhancements have improved the Editor for editors, as well as looking at what impact Gutenberg might have on the content production experience.

“Being too nice literally increases your chances of being hurt, used and or taken for granted.”

Nice people are reputed to finish last. In business, being nice can increase the chances of success, but being too nice can cause a business to fail when your service and skills are undervalued and profits are not achieved. We don’t want to burn bridges, but we need to stand our ground. Studies show that self-respect encourages respect from others. In this talk, we will review ideas and practices I’ve seen work in developing and conveying self-respect. When we don’t value ourselves and our work, we tend to charge too little for the work we do, and struggle with asking for what we are worth. Self respect includes establishing boundaries to manage client expectations. We will look at tools that help manage client expectations by improving communication, organizing workflows and detailing contracts. To that end, you’ll learn how to apply these tools to business practices—allowing you to be nice, but not too nice.

“Be nice. And if you can’t do that, just don’t be mean.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

This session is for users, designers, and developers who already know the basics of SEO. In this session, you will learn beyond-basic strategies for taking your SEO to the next level.

This session received a highly positive response at both WordCamp Philly and WordCamp NYC 2017. Some of the testimonials from that can be viewed here: http://pamannmarketing.com/internet-marketing-speaker/

And the slides can be viewed here: https://www.slideshare.net/pam4187/intermediate-seo-strategies/1

Join me on my journey from random note-taking and scattered doodles to an organized system of documentation. I have been on a personal quest to establish a healthy, productive habit of ritual documentation and journaling. Both for workplace projects and personal growth, I have been experimenting with and assessing different practices of recordkeeping and review with the end goal of reflection, archiving, and establishing workflows and protocols.

Drawing from concepts of software development, time management, and agile flows, I will lead you through what I have discovered and will share various tools and systems that have been beneficial along the way. Part demo, part open forum, this session will help you achieve your path to documentation Nirvana.

CSS Grids are here! In this talk, I’ll go over the basics of the new specification including:

* The history of layouts in CSS and how we got here.
* How CSS Grids differ from Flexbox.
* How to apply them to responsive design.
* Browser support.

Over the last couple of years, it has become harder in the WordPress space to just build something and expect it to sell. In this talk, I will review my own experience with creating courses and expecting people to just buy them. We’ll go over what I did right, what I did wrong, and what I’m working on to make my marketing plan better.

Extending your content in WordPress has gotten easier with the REST API now built into core, but the REST API isn’t the only way to get data out of your site. GraphQL is another powerful tool in a developers arsenal to make queries and make your content work in exciting ways. But with the REST API built into core, why use GraphQL?

We’ll analyze the differences between the REST API and GraphQL and look at the strengths and weaknesses of each. We’ll look at examples of how to query and extend each tool. This talk is a comparison of the two tools and will help developers and stakeholders understand each tool in order to make an informed decision on which one to use.

Assisting organizations that make this world a better place is highly inspiring and satisfying. But that can’t be the only reward when you give your professional best. In a nutshell: Birgit shares how to work with nonprofits and how to bring them into the best light online.

She discusses how you can build a donor/member-oriented website and how to incorporate the organization’s “bucket list” within the realities of budgets and capabilities.

You will learn about the wide range of online needs for various types of nonprofits and share info about plugins and tools to build useful solutions. You’ll walk way with the resources to connect with other nonprofit technologists and services.

Just because the organization is a nonprofit doesn’t mean you can’t make a living building effective websites with a notable online presence.

From a users standpoint. See the features of the Gutenberg Editor.

Go on the journey of “mere mortals” (someone without a computer programming background) on how they learned WordPress, designed two business sites and opened an on-line store with Woo Commerce. Your trip will guide you through the basics, identify tripping and stumbling points, direct you to where to get information, introduce you to the language of WordPress, where to “hotel” your site, and overview safety tips for your journey.

It can be difficult to be an introvert in an extrovert-favoring world, but there is nothing wrong with being an introvert and you don’t need to be an extrovert to succeed. Learn about the science behind introversion and extroversion and what advantages each has in today’s workplace. Then find out how Aaron has learned to leverage the strengths of his introversion as well as what he does to help him navigate the parts of the WordPress community and his career that are harder for him as an introvert.

An SEO plugin is a great help in tweaking your content to make search engines happy.
But it’s easier and more productive if you write for people first and then check for the machines.

Find out how to construct your content and then use Yoast SEO to CHECK your work rather than struggle to back fit changes to get to that green dot!

Users want web experiences that deliver ease of use. When developing robust WordPress applications that go beyond basic websites, mapping page flows before the design and development phases can eliminate costly time overages and provide a clear roadmap for building functionality.

In this talk, we will cover:

— The difference between site flows, user flows, task flows and user journeys, and when to use each.

— How working with a user flow can help you design and build better forms that collect actionable and highly usable data.

— How user flows help both the development process by defining technical expectations and identifying how data is collected and stored.

— How developing detailed microinteractions before the design and development phase can cut down on client ‘gotchas’ cutting down on changes and making subsequent project phases flow smoothly.