Category: Regular Session

Far too often we build website from our own perspective. Putting yourself in your audiences’ shoes is much easier said than done. We’ll take a look at how visitors view your website and how to turn their frustrations into success.

Lessons learned from developing and maintaining the GitHub Updater plugin. How I deal with bugs, feature requests, issues, PRs, user support, and more.

Everything I learned about plugin support I learned in the operating room. Interacting with surgical patients and their families involves a similar skill set as maintaining an open source software project. I’m not so certain that the reverse is true so as the saying goes, “Don’t try this at home.” But come find out my surgical pearls to software support.

Background for this talk available on GitHub at [GitHub Updater](https://github.com/afragen/github-updater)

WordPress has always been about websites, but it’s not just about websites. It’s about freedom and possibility. When we build websites for ourselves and others we are democratizing publishing for everyone regardless of language, ability, or economic wherewithal.

At Automattic, we believe Inclusive Design is essential to this mission. We’re inspired by the work of Kat Holmes and her clear articulation of design as needing to be increasingly inclusive — especially in the technology world.

Inclusive Design is for those who want to make great products for the greatest number of people. A philosophy of openness that matches the freedoms of WordPress, yet also offers a practical approach to growing your business. To reach more people, to find a larger addressable market by recognizing exclusion and learning from diversity. As Kat says, “Solve for one, extend to many.”

In this talk I’ll share the most important principles of Inclusive Design illustrated with stories from product improvements in our work at Automattic for WordPress.com and Jetpack (https://design.blog/inclusive/).

Imposter Syndrome affects minorities and Women in Tech at a much higher rate than in other professions. Dashon Hawkins and Sheila Hoffman will share their own experience on this important topic.

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No Limits: You’re a dev rockstar and don’t know it. – Dashon Hawkins

This is a straightforward, looking from the outside in dive, that is designed to inspire and motivate all levels of developers especially those who have intermediate or advanced level skills in WordPress who at one time or another have felt or are currently feeling ‘Imposter Syndrome’. This is primarily fueled by some in the global web development community who look down their proverbial noses at WordPress/PHP development. We briefly explore the history of computer science covering such notables as the (grand)mother of higher languages and go into the core challenges that have faced the tech industry when it comes to the lack of diversity and openly discuss how to overcome barriers that we can together overcome in this market. This all leads to a shocking revelation at the end that is the focal point of that speaks to the power of redemption and triumph through many layers of adversity that should leave everyone in attendance encouraged to go further, dig deeper within themselves and share the message of empowerment to any and everyone they come across in the future in order to break the tech barrier. This is exclusive for WordCamp Phoenix to evangelize that Tech is for all.

Finding one’s strengths & defining a niche – Sheila Hoffman

Sheila started doing print design using rub-on transfer letters and cutting up magazines for paste-up fliers in the ’70s when she was running Recreation Centers for the US Army in Korea & Germany. She turned that into a business as a “graphic designer” in the ’80s when everyone was doing Desktop Publishing with Pagemaker. To keep up with the times she taught herself Frontpage and then NetObjects Fusion to make websites for her print clients in the ’90s. By the early 2000s she figured out how to add WordPress blogs to her HTML sites. And finally, she took a 3-hour workshop in WordPress and started creating WordPress websites for clients in 2010, initially with premium themes and pretty quickly using page builders, currently in Divi. This seems a non-traditional path into the WordPress community. How has being a self-taught woman of a certain age played into her career path? How does imposter syndrome impact this journey?

 

 

By most accounts, marketing automation is the greatest thing since… well, since email marketing. The ability to qualify leads and build demand in a fully automated workflow frees us marketers from the high-pressure requirements of constant writing, email development, and deployment tasks.

It also enables us to more appropriately personalize content and send messages that are both timely and relevant. In this session, Blast, Drip, & Nurture, we define the differences between email blasts, drip emails, and nurture emails and how you can use automated-marketing solution to subjugate these tasks for subscribers.