Sessions

Presented by Brian Richards, Kellen Mace in Annex (4th floor), Design.

Are you wondering what all the Gutenberg fuss is about? Interested in finding out what it takes to make a Gutenberg block? Do you like the keep up-to-date on the latest WordPress developments? If you answered yes to any of those questions, this session is for you! Brian Richards and Kellen Mace have teamed up show you the ropes on how to get on the Gutenberg bandwagon.

This session is part 1 of our 3-part Gutenberg track. Check out session 2: How to Build Your First Gutenberg Block and session 3: GutenPanel

Presented by Amit Rathi in Developer, Sunroom (3rd floor).

How to add ReactJS to your WordPress theme or plugin.

Presented by Birgit Pauli-Haack in Business, Penthouse (4th floor).

Help make the world a better place with WordPress.

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, share info about plugins, and learn about tools to build useful solutions. You’ll walk away 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.

Presented by Anthony Montalbano in Developer, Sunroom (3rd floor).

There so much power behind the WordPress REST API. This session will guide you through building a mini theme using the WordPress REST API. Learn how the REST API can be used not just in a theme, but for a mobile app, a plugin, a Gutenberg block, and beyond!

Presented by Brian Richards, Kellen Mace in Annex (4th floor), Design.

Learn how to write a WordPress plugin that registers custom Gutenberg blocks and build out those blocks to provide an instant preview/feedback as they’re being edited in the wp-admin, as well as how to render them on the front end of the site.

This session is part 2 of our 3-part Gutenberg track. Check out session 1: Introduction to Gutenberg Development and session 3: GutenPanel

Presented by Emerson Jeffries in Business, Penthouse (4th floor).

When you think of business structure, you may think of a business or financial plan. Although both of these documents are great, they still don’t necessarily give you a clear visual to generate sales and attract potential customers to purchase your products and/or services.

In this session, I will discuss how to transform and market your business on the web creating a name for yourself online. This strategy has been proven to generate sales and you’ll be guaranteed a successful online presence.

Presented by Brian Richards, RJ Mey, Adam Stogdill, Kellen Mace in Annex (4th floor), Design.

A couple months ago, the Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup held a session, led by RJ Mey, where he introduced us to Gutenberg and talked about the benefits and considerations that WordPress developers may need to consider with the upcoming release. The talk turned into a VERY lively Q&A session, so we decided to bring that conversation right into WordCamp Detroit.

This Gutenpanel, moderated by RJ Mey, will tackle some of the questions people have been asking about Gutenberg. We will have several developers who have experience with Gutenberg ready and able to answer your Gutenquestions!

This session is part 3 of our 3-part Gutenberg track. Check out session 1: Introduction to Gutenberg Development and session 2: How to Build Your First Gutenberg Block

Presented by Jeannette Washington M.Ed. in Developer, Sunroom (3rd floor).

One size doesn’t fit all! This hands-on discussion will address common misconceptions associated with programming while dyslexic. The surface will be scratched in distinguishing the varying features of dyslexia by providing a virtual experience. Additionally, strengths of dyslexic programmers will be exploited. Further, learn how you can be empowered to create Assistive Technologies (i.e., voice recognition, spell checking, data storage and visual modelling) that meet you wherever you are.

Presented by Hajj Flemings in Business, Penthouse (4th floor).

There are 28 Million small businesses that drive the American economy, 46% of small businesses have no websites. Cities are collections of neighborhoods – and neighborhoods are powered by small business. From coffee shop owners to fitness instructors the people we see in storefronts are building and reinforcing the unique character of our cities. Come listen to how WordPress.com and local independent developers are telling the stories of local small businesses in 2-hour increments. Come and join the revolution.

Presented by Kyle Maurer in Business, Penthouse (4th floor).

Everyone loves some handy tips and tricks, right? How about a huge list of all the ways I have personally improved my workflows, processes, production quality, and even lifestyle? I’ve been building WordPress sites, writing code, working remotely, and generally doing all things WordPress for years now and I’ve discovered a whole lot of cool stuff in that time. Come see the curtain get pulled back and learn which tools I value the most and the good habits I’ve developed which have made the biggest impact on my life.

Presented by Tessa Kriesel in Annex (4th floor), Developer.

Problem: You have a team of developers and you all work locally pushing up to one central development environment. Your client has been adding content to your live environment while your team is working away on other features. Your client decides they want to add calendar functionality to the site, which you can easily do with a plugin. However, configuring this plugin requires database changes. If you make any changes to your database, or even the development environment database, you are going to have to go make those changes again on the live site since they already have content in the site and you can’t copy over that entire database.

UGH! There has got to be a better way! We have all been in this situation more than once. So how do we get out of this situation?!

Solution: Configuration Management! We will talk about what configuration management is and how you can start to use it in your current workflow. We will also talk about WordPress plugins that make our lives easier by using similar methodologies.

Presented by Adam Stogdill in Design, Sunroom (3rd floor).

I’d like to showcase some easy ways to organize theme development and set developers up to start thinking of things in components for React/Vue/Js.framework of the week or getting set up for Guttenberg’s latest/greatest.

Presented by Tina Todorovic in Annex (4th floor), Design.

TBA

Presented by Katy Hinz in Design, Penthouse (4th floor).

Starting with discovery exercises like empathy mapping and user-journeys, learn how to bring together the UX and design phases to create a user-centric website. Get tips and best practices that push your site design to the fullest, yet keep your developers from hating you at the end of the day.

Presented by Philip Salatrik, Novella Chiechi, Aisha Blake in Annex (4th floor), Business.

From the outside, the tech industry can seem more like a walled fortress. It’s hard to know how to get started, how to get in, and what it’s like on the inside!

In this panel discussion, we’ll discuss three popular paths into the tech industry, and WordPress in particular: bootcamp, freelance, and traditional degree.

Together, we’ll answer questions and share insight on how we decided on our respective paths into tech, the job hunting process, and what it’s actually like on the inside.

By the end of this session, you will have a better idea of a possible path (or paths!) of your own into WordPress and larger the tech industry.

Presented by Kim Kachadoorian in Developer, Sunroom (3rd floor).

Many people assume incorrectly that any font or image they buy can be used on their WordPress site. However this assumption could end up costing you a lot of money. Learn the ins and outs of what you can and cannot do and how to protect yourself.

Presented by Matthew Perkins in Annex (4th floor), Business.

This talk is about 5 changes that we made as an agency from the time I arrived to today that have helped us grow our revenues and maintain a healthy income stream. They’re simple changes that help you work with the right clients for your agency. The ultimate goal is to stop chasing bad leads, getting bad clients, and keep consistent revenue coming so you’re not working project to project.

Presented by Seth Alling in Design, Penthouse (4th floor).

The ease of WordPress has catered to quick learners and do-it-yourselfers. It’s what makes WordPress so great and universal. However, many questions come with the DYI approach: What should I look for when selecting a theme? How I find good plugins to extend my site’s functionality? When is it better to hire someone else to develop my website? How can I prequalify a developer? Knowing the answers to these question can save you from a few headaches.

Presented by Kim Kaiser in Developer, Sunroom (3rd floor).

Web browsers limit the number of active connections for each domain, but browsers distinguish domains by name rather than by IP address. Domain sharding, in which content is split across multiple subdomains, may drastically improve the user experience of slow page load times for image-heavy pages, but only if your server has sufficient bandwidth. Uploading content to Amazon S3 and using CloudFront to serve images from multiple subdomains has been shown to be an effective way to use domain sharding. In addition, when images are uploaded to S3, a Node.js script is triggered which creates thumbnails and the larger web versions of the full sized, high resolution images. The final step happens during the creation of a WordPress custom post type, where the domain sharding is actually applied.

Presented by Allison Tarr in Developer, Sunroom (3rd floor).

Surrounded by constant workflow advancements, new frameworks, and version updates, tech culture often makes exhaustion a badge of honour. How do we best take care of ourselves when faced with obstacles like burnout, isolation, and uncertainty?

Whether you’re a remote employee, freelancer, or working within a larger tech team, striving towards a greater understanding of mental health supports the sustainability of both individuals and the industry as a whole. In this talk, I’ll discuss my own lived experience as well as examine the state of mental health awareness within tech.

Presented by Ross Johnson in Business, Penthouse (4th floor).

Trying to break out of the hourly trap? Love the idea of supplementing your client work with steady, reoccurring revenue? I was in your shoes three years ago when I launched my first successful product. Now we maintain around ten premium WordPress products.

In this talk I’ll discuss how to launch your first product including coming up with ideas, putting together a team, marketing strategy and what to expect.

Presented by Aisha Blake in Annex (4th floor), Design.

Your content is clear, your images are responsive, your code is clean, and your layout flows beautifully on all the most popular devices. You think you’re ready to launch, but you might have overlooked a crucial aspect of your website’s development. If it’s not easy for a person to access your content regardless of the way in which they use the internet, there’s still work to be done. Developing for accessibility should be part of the standard workflow, but it’s often given very little attention. This session will cover some of the low-hanging fruit that you can start picking today and take a deep dive into a few tools to help you build accessibility into your projects from the beginning.