Information about each speaker at WordCamp Raleigh will be posted here as it becomes available.
Justin Sternberg
Justin is a developer lead at WebDevStudios, where they make awesome things with WordPress and deliver top-notch enterprise-level solutions to make their clients successful. He’s also a super-proud husband & dad of 3 delightful kiddos who make him tired and happy.
WordCamp Session:
Industrial Strength Debugging
Session Description:
Justin Sternberg and Rami Abraham will co-present on some of the debugging tips and tricks they’ve learned through the years, Rami with Javascript and Justin with PHP. This session will equip developers to code with confidence, and debug issues like a pro.
Track:
Developers
Jonathan Kay
Jonathan has spent his professional life as a Linux systems administrator and has focused the past half a dozen years on making his servers take care of many WordPress sites. Most recently he has developed WP Stagecoach to make staging site for WordPress simple. He somehow manages to get some work done despite the pets who constantly want all his attention all the time, and really enjoys his time outdoors in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with his standard poodle!
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @wpstagecoach
WordCamp Session:
Zen and the Art of WordPress Maintenance
Session Description:
WordPress is a fantastic platform to create your website or blog on, but like many good things in life, it does need some care to remain reliable and running at its best. I will cover some basics on what you need to do to take care of your WordPress site, what the best practices are for keeping it up to date, securing it, and how to make backups so if the worst happens, you will still have your data. I will discuss many options for services, utilities and plugins that will make having a WordPress site a pleasant experience for many years to come!
Track:
Beginners
Cole Watts
Serving as a Brand Strategist, Online Marketer, and Content Creator for many companies throughout the United States, Cole Watts comes from TheeDesign Studio, an award winning custom web design and internet marketing company here in the Triangle.
With over 5 years of experience in online marketing, Cole specializes in marketing strategy and content creation for clients both big and small.
Follow Cole on Twitter: @Cole_Watts
WordCamp Session:
Common WordPress Plugins You Should Be Using Right Now
Session Description:
With over 20000 WordPress plugins, how do you know what to use?
We’ll take a look at common plugins you should be using today and talk about their importance in the WordPress atmosphere.
Track:
Beginners
Tony Zeoli
Tony Zeoli is the founder of Digital Strategy Works, a 6-year old Asheville-based digital strategy consulting company developing elegant WordPress solutions with social media and SEO integrations for media and entertainment, restaurant, non-profit, and other small business and startup clients.
Tony has a solid background in product development, scrum/agile project management, information architecture, and content marketing, including search engine optimization and analytics. He has worked on hundreds of digital projects for startups and corporations, including Cablevision, the Associated Press, Target, WetSeal, 1-800-Flowers, Epic Records, Zondervan, Building Link, and UNC Chapel Hill.
In the past, Tony has presented at WordCamps NYC, Raleigh, and Asheville and he was the founding organizer of WordPress Westchester and WordPress Chapel Hill. Recently, Tony joined the All in One SEO team at Semper Fi Web Design to assist the company in a part time capacity as Community Manager.
Tony is also an accomplished house music DJ and founder of Netmix.com, where he hosts the Netmix Global House Sessions Podcast. He is also mixshow DJ and radio host of the Asheville House Music Society radio show on AshevilleFM.org at 103.3-LP FM in Asheville, NC.
Follow Tony on Twitter: @tonyzeoli
WordCamp Session:
Project Workflow: Building WordPress sites with virtual teams
Session Description:
In this talk, Tony will walk through a case study on how to architect, build, and manage complex WordPress websites with virtual teams while managing client expectations. In a project of this size and scope, there are many lessons learned about site navigation and usability, as well as getting the right design aesthetic to deliver an experience that matches an establishments branding.
Tony will work through all the stages of design, development, and production of PosanaRestaurant.com, a restaurant website for one of the top restaurants in Asheville. From the initial site architecture, design, and project management, to hosting, content migration, SEO and social media integration, Tony will give an end-to-end look at how to effectively plan and deliver a solution that gets winning results.
Also in this talk, Tony will show how his team and the restaurant owners were involved every step of the way as they planned and architected a custom restaurant menu system using Advanced Custom Fields and planned for heavy mobile responsive usage by analyzing Google Analytics statistics. And, show how simple placement and click tracking on a phone number helps the business understand how customers interact with its website to make reservations.
With social media a huge part of restaurant, bar, and nightlife marketing today, Tony will discuss how applying social meta information in All in One SEO Pack to suggest the right title, description, and image in a social share extends brand identity in social media.
Track:
Power Users
Ryan Hoover
Ryan is a developer for WP Engine in Austin TX. During the day he manages WP Engine’s corporate web properties and writes quirky plugins for the community. At night he’s active in the Austin WordPress community, as co-organizer of the Austin meetup group, the Austin WordCamps, and the San Antonio WordCamps. In those rare moments when he’s not staring at a glowing screen, Ryan enjoys time with his amazing wife Cousett and two dogs exploring Austin’s beer and wine venues.
WordCamp Session:
Answer the questions that actually matter with targeted analytics
Session Description:
You’re running a WordPress site and installed Google Analytics on it. But are you actually using all that data to increase your profits or drive more traffic to your blog? In this session, we will cover the fundamentals of smart analytics that answer the questions you should be asking. You’ll start by figuring out what questions you should ask to build a more effective WordPress site. For instance, do you care about pageviews or just conversions? And on what day of the week should you publish new blog posts to generate the most ad revenue?
Once the right questions are in front of us, we’ll get down and dirty answering them with Google Analytics. You will create goals and reports to answer your specific needs, not just look at how many hits you got last month. Finally, with questions and answers in hand, you will develop simple strategies to continuously improve your site by A/B testing key elements of your web strategy.
Track:
Power Users
Charlie Harper
With a passion for business development and web technology he founded WooshData. Web services grants Charlie the privilege to have a positive impact on the growth of companies in this era of e-commerce. His unique background of both business development and systems engineering allows him to dilute complex solutions into digestible understanding. Charlie has been working in IT and creating websites since 2002.
Follow Charlie on Twitter: @charlieharper
WordCamp Session:
From Shared to VPS. Scaling up for traffic and utilization.
Session Description:
What to consider about the VPS host you choose. Will you be able to vertically scale up and down in your new VPS hosting environment? Can you scale CPU and RAM without changing disk space so you can scale back? Don’t forget costs and bandwidth considerations. What if the site is too large for common popular migration tools? Learn how to use linux and mysql commands to move your website from one server to another. What are some basic linux commands you need to know and how to read the output to have a pulse on the health of your server. Don’t just rely on the graphs, because with great power comes great responsibility. I will show how to check for free memory, cpu, disk, etc. I will show you how to dig deeper into the mystery that is your web server.
Track:
Power Users
Dov Pinker
Dov Pinker manages Avalara’s partner relationships in NC, KY and TN. He speaks regularly at partner conferences and other events on the importance of sales tax compliance. Dov has been with Avalara for over two years and previously worked for Amazon, American Express and ChannelAdvisor.
Follow Dov on Twitter: @DovSPinker
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
Sales and use tax compliance is difficult to manage, especially if your process is manual. Determining which items are taxable in which states and maintaining rate tables is time-consuming and can get you in trouble with the state should an auditor come knocking. Join our partners in sales tax compliance as they team up with the “for dummies” folks for a fabulous hour of tips and tricks every business needs to manage their sales tax compliance, effectively and defensively.
Track:
Business
Ava Blade
I’m a digital brander, using technology to empower brands in the digital age. I do strategy and hands-on execution, through a fusion of business, creative, and technical capabilities. I build branded websites with WordPress.
Follow Ava on Twitter: @AvaBlade
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
This session is a practical guide for creating branded WordPress websites. I’ll cover the brand elements that are used to build branded websites, and provide a step-by-step guide for implementing these elements with WordPress.
Track:
Beginners
Lisa Arrington
Lisa is an Internet Marketing Manager at award-winning Raleigh agency, TheeDesign, where she helps clients (with WordPress sites) solve business problems through digital marketing solutions – SEO, social media, content marketing, inbound… The works.
Ever since buying her first domain in 2001, Lisa has been working with websites. In her professional life, she lends her coding skills and knowledge of marketing to companies ranging from a $1 billion dollar tech company to local mom ‘n pop shops.
WordCamp Session:
How to use WordPress to sell: Strategically aligning your website to the user
Session Description:
The main purpose of your website is to attract, engage, and convert! Whether a B2B tech company or B2C retailer, in the online realm, your website is essentially your sales person and must be optimized for both the search engines and your audience. So how do you use WordPress to help your website drive more business?
In this session, we’ll cover things like:
- Using your website to speak to your audience’s pains and eliminate buyer objections, while clearly articulating your value proposition.
- Tying in areas like social media, content marketing, and UI elements.
- Measuring success – interpreting the data to figure out what to do next.
In B2C, 95% of consumers go online to begin the buying process. And in B2B, a prospect has already gone through 50-70% of the buyer journey before ever making contact with a sales rep. These stats make it easy to see how neglecting to align the logistics, content, and configuration of your WordPress site could translate into lost revenue.
Track:
Business
Rob Delory
Rob has worked for multiple internet marketing companies in the Triangle talking with companies regarding their online strategy.
WordCamp Session:
SEO for Startups
Session Description:
Five things startups need to know, about SEO.
This is a talk for startup companies that want to know about getting their online marketing strategy off the ground:
- You are new, no one knows who you are.
- What do you need?
- Where do you go to get it?
- Where should you spend your time?
- What is your strategy?
* (Rob will be using examples of two business owners just starting out.)
-John the Plumber who is finally opening his own business
-Susan the scientist with a new product for the medical field
Track:
Beginners
Michael McNeill
Michael McNeill is a WordPress developer, consultant, and service provider who has worked with numerous companies ranging from the smallest startups to large corporations. He currently is a solutions engineer in the ITS Middleware division at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, helping to manage various critical campus applications, including WordPress. Michael also provides consulting services to many different clients across the Triangle through his consulting company MRMcDev.
Follow Michael on Twitter: @michaelrmcneill
WordCamp Session:
Developing WordPress on OpenShift
Session Description:
So you’re building a WordPress site for a customer, and you’re ready to show it off to your client. Maybe the customer needs to begin inputting content while development is still going on. Being able to quickly spin up a staging environment helps to keep your project moving. I’d like to introduce you to a great product, made by Red Hat, called OpenShift, that makes developing for clients so much easier. Openshift is a PaaS (Platform as a Service) that makes it simple to develop customer sites, offering full SSH access, version control using Git, both a command line and GUI interface, and it is free for the first 3 gears (applications). In this presentation, we will cover everything you need to know about how OpenShift can help you improve your development lifecycle.
Track:
Developers
Kelly Phillips
Kelly Phillips is the CEO of Boost Interactive Media and the creator of WP Plugin Coach, training to help you hit it out of the park with your WordPress Website. Her friendly, approachable style and talent for breaking complicated technology in to easy instructions have made her a hit with her clients and students.
You can attend her live courses or work with her online to learn exactly what you need to get that website into the game. She lives near Raleigh, NC with her son and husband.
Follow Kelly on Twitter: @kellyphillipsnc
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
Choosing a theme for your WordPress website can be tough. It’s easy to get sucked into the black hole of theme bells and whistles until the themes meld together in a never-ending black hole of options. Break the theme paralysis and learn how to choose a theme to match your website goals.
Track:
Beginner
Jordan Cauley
Jordan Cauley is a freelance developer and consultant providing development services using WordPress and other technologies. Jordan also provides consultation regarding development team creation, process development and creation of code standards and version control management methods.
Follow Jordan on Twitter: @jdcauley
WordCamp Session:
Building WordPress Projects in a Team
Session Description:
Learn how to hone build tools, project architecture and practices to make your whole team more productive. Discussion includes CSS architecture, JS best practices, process creation and GIT Branching strategies to reduce conflict and increase productivity and code oversight.
Ryan Duff
Ryan started using WordPress way back in the early days and has developed sites and plugins ever since. He focuses mainly on back-end technologies.
Over the years he’s spoken at various WordCamps and other non-WordPress conferences. He also runs the Harrisburg WordPress Meetup Group.
In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife and 2 daughters. In the summer months he tends to his garden to keep his sanity and also loves to cook BBQ on his smoker.
Follow Ryan on Twitter: @ryancduff
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
Plugin development is easy. I mean, you just write some code, throw it in a plugin file and activate it, right?
In this session I’ll cover some best practices on how to get started writing plugins. I’ll go over essentials of how things work as well as how to leverage hooks and filters when writing plugins for the masses.
Track:
Developers
Dylan Ryan
Dylan Ryan is a soon to be graduate of North Carolina State University. When he’s not busy with school, he’s busy working at The WP Valet where he provides support to companies who rely on WordPress to make their living. He enjoys building successful and not so successful plugins.
Follow Dylan on Twitter: @irkanu
WordCamp Session:
Nobody Tells This To Beginners
Session Description:
In my talk, I’m going to tell you the one thing I would tell myself, if I could go back in time. “It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions.” It’s going to take a while and that’s okay.
I’ll discuss why it’s healthy to burn through side projects and fail over and over. Have you ever wondered why you give up and end up failing? This talk will give you the courage and strength to continue your adventure into WordPress without wondering if you’re doing something wrong. I hope everyone who attends this talk will leave the room inspired to continue their journey with WordPress especially if they are facing difficult times.
Track:
Beginners
Lee Blue
Founder of Mijireh, Cart66, and Hurricane Affiliate Software, Lee has worked extensively with online security developing applications for e-commerce, electronic medical records, and bio-terrorism surveillance.
Follow Lee on Twitter: @leehblue
WordCamp Session:
Why Didn’t I Think Of That?
Session Description:
Avoid the subtle mistakes that will keep your online business from growing. Join Lee as he shares the top lessons he has learned from over 10 years of running online businesses covering tips from how to get people talking about your products to running a secure WordPress store.
Track:
Business
Adam Sewell
Adam Sewell is a father, husband, and entrepreneur. Most of his time is spent with his IT support company, MyGeek Technologies, and then split among his other projects, including tinyElk Studios, which develops plugins for WordPress and provides high end hosting for very large WordPress installs.
One plugin they’ve created is a ticketing system called Simple Desk.
Learn more about Adam at his website
Follow on Twitter: @adamsewell
WordCamp Session:
Be Your Own Sysadmin: (Good) $5 Hosting for WordPress
Session Description:
In this session will be be covering how to setup and secure a simple WordPress web server from scratch (and only for $5/month). We will be using NGINX, PHP-FPM, and MariaDB to configure a blazing fast WordPress VPS from DigitalOcean.
We’ll also cover a few tricks on how to handle lots of traffic from our little VPS. Bring your coffee (and I do accept beer as tips) and let’s talk system administration.
Note: Some Linux command line knowledge is helpful and will be required to get the most out of this session.
Track:
Power Users
Jeremy Davis
Publisher of the Triangle Career Development Newsletter, which informs you of upcoming tech conferences, meetings, and events in the RTP area. Lead organizer of BarCampRDU 2013. Jeremy works with the All Things Open conference organizers, and has developed WordPress solutions for numerous associations and managed events with thousands of attendees. Served on the Triangle Linux User Group Steering Committee. He is a US Marine Corps and Iraq veteran currently serving full time in the NC National Guard at the State Headquarters.
Recently redeveloped the online presence for the NC Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
Follow Jeremy on Twitter: @TriCareerDev and @jeremydavis0_0
WordCamp Session:
Organizing Events with WordPress
Session Description:
I will show you how to use WordPress to organize events. One of the most important items when organizing an event is a flexible form builder with powerful conditional logic capabilities and a payment gateway.
Forms can make the sponsorship and registration process very efficient. I will also cover Stripe, which is an awesome new payment gateway that allows you to accept credit cards fully integrated with your site with no monthly fee.
Finally I will cover some details about automating processes to promote the event and recognize the sponsors. I will leave some time for Q & A to discuss things like security considerations, anti-harassment policies, and lessons learned.
Track:
Power Users
Peter Baylies
Peter has always been a programmer, a childhood hobby led to a career that he is absolutely enjoying. He graduated from NC State University with a Computer Science degree, and worked as a web developer using PHP and MySQL until he found WordPress and fell in love with it. Peter works primarily on WordPress development at Rivers Agency.
Follow Peter on Twitter: @pbaylies
WordCamp Session:
Image Optimization For WordPress
Session Description:
Get your site speedy again by using images properly and efficiently! You will learn best practices for using the tricks of the trade to optimize images in your theme and in general on your site. Find out how to identify any problem areas and fix them, save on storage and bandwidth, and keep your website loading fast.
This talk covers how to use images properly, which image formats to use and when to use them, different techniques for optimizing image resources in your theme, and suggested tools and plugins for development and ongoing maintenance for the images on your website.
Track:
Power Users
Patrick Stox
Patrick is the Marketing Project Supervisor at TheeDesign, an organizer for the Raleigh SEO Meetup, and a contributing author for Search Engine Land for their All Things SEO column.
Follow on Patrick Twitter: @patrickstox
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
From redirects to insecure content to duplicate content, everyone screws up making a website secure. Even top-tier developers get this wrong, and the results can be devastating.
Learn how to secure your website without losing your rankings and become more trustworthy in the eyes of your visitors.
Track:
Power Users
Ray Mitchell
Ray is the owner of SixFour Web Design, which specializes in web design and marketing for small businesses and non-profit organizations. Active in the local community, Ray sits on the board of several community focused non-profit organizations, including the Triad Dream Center, the Rotary Club of Clemmons, and Outreach Alliance for Babies. He also serves as Digital Coordinator for Boundless Impact, a nonprofit organization that supports and promotes global engagement and connections between North Carolina communities and the world.
Follow Ray on Twitter: @sixfourweb
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
You need a website for your business, but what kind? Trying to run a business with the wrong kind of website is like trying to force a round peg into a square hole. Choosing the right website for your business’ needs is important. When you use WordPress in your business, it’s not just a website. Learn about the six different families of business websites and how the flexibility of WordPress can help you build a website that will help you get your business off the ground or grow into more profitability.
Track:
Business
Jen Riehle McFarland
Jen loves WordPress. She works for NCSU’s central IT group to provide web services for campus, which often come in WordPress form. She has been involved in several conferences, including helping out with past WordCamps and trying to develop new WordPress events for K-12 and higher ed specifically. She’s proud geek chick and beer fan.
Follow Jen on Twitter: @ncsumarit
WordCamp Session:
Making WordPress Work for Education
Session Description:
This is primarily to recap (and localize!) the ongoing national discussion about developing a “WordCamp-like” event specifically for higher ed and K-12. There’s a group focused now on trying to make this a possibility, ideally with both national and regional events.
I’ll also be recapping whatever I learn related to WordCamp at the HighEdWeb conference in Wisconsin, which takes place the week before WordCamp this year. So it’ll be pretty free-form but will provide information of interest and a starting point for conversation for those interested in WordPress and education.
Track:
Beginners
Andrea Olson
Andrea Olson, M.A., is a pioneer in helping parents reduce diaper dependence with any age child or baby, from birth through toddlerhood.
She has her Master’s Degree in Psychology and presently lives in Asheville, NC, with her husband and children. She is also author of The Tiny Potty Training Book, a simple guide to non-coercive potty training for toddlers 18 months and up. Andrea has built a community of raving fans and repeat buyers via her homemade WordPress site for over 5 years…her first year totalling over $45,000 in ebook sales from minimal marketing and a few coy tricks. Visit her at GoDiaperFree.com and her new site, TinyUndies.com, to see what she’s up to in the WAHM (work at home mom) world.
WordCamp Session
Using WordPress to Build a Community of Loyal Buyers and Raving Fans
Session Description
You don’t need a huge marketing budget or a complex website to create a nice living in your business niche of choice. Through community creation, actively driving traffic by genuinely helping others, and building a killer list via your WordPress-based site, you can create a small community of raving fans who become (and stay) your loyal buyers.
Track:
Business
Mike Schinkel
Mike is a WordPress Architect and serial startup entrepreneur whose guilty pleasure is developing software to empower himself and others to be more productive when building WordPress sites.
In 2010 Mike co-hosted The Business of WordPress Conference, in 2015 co-founded The Atlanta WordPress Coder’s Guild meetup and from 2009 on has spoken at multiple WordCamps in the Southeast as well as LoopConf 2015 in Las Vegas.
Mike has architected and co-developed a marketing intranet for a global soft drink leader, a content marketing website for a leading Texas-based computer vendor, a law firm CMS product for a New York specialty agency focusing on the top 200 global law firms and tens of other complex sites and applications, all based on WordPress.
Today Mike’s primary focus is on WPLib — a foundation library for complex WordPress applications — and helping agencies architect and build complex WordPress sites for their clients.
Oh and when he was a teenager he raced motocross, too.
WordCamp Session
Develop Complex WordPress Apps Without Fear of Failure
Session Description
“WordPress is great for blogs, but try to do more with it and it fails under it’s own weight.”
Or at least that is what many of WordPress’ critics will have you believe, in part because it is often true. When developers use for complex sites the unstructured approaches common with smaller WordPress sites, those large projects can quickly turn into a house of cards. The projects have bugs that are hard to contain, they go way over budget and they have a high risk of failure.
But that need not be the case. If you can write PHP is is far easier to build complex sites without fear than you might imagine.
The approach we have used very effectively for several years is to leverage “Model” objects for “business rules” such as running a WP_Query(), “View” objects to manage output escaping, and then small theme templates that only contain minimal PHP with the rest being focused on the HTML+CSS+JS needed to produce a stunning visual presentation. And we do is in very WordPress-ish ways because we do not try to replace WordPress conventions, we only augment them.
Once developers are exposed to this approach, they never almost want to develop in a haphazard manner again.
So this session will introduce PHP developers to a battle-tested set of conventions they will likely be very happy to use as well a lightweight PHP foundation library containing a handful of base-level code to support these conventions.
Or thought of another way, consider this a session a prerequisite to becoming a significantly better and more capable WordPress developer.
Track
Developers
Ben Meredith
Ben Meredith is a freelance WordPress developer and author of 2 free plugins on the WordPress.org repository that have been downloaded more than 35,000 times this year.
He’s a homeschool dad, leads the music at his church here in the Triangle, and is President and founder of BenandJacq INC providing WordPress services.
This year Ben is helping as Speaker Liaison for WordCamp Raleigh.
Follow Ben on Twitter: @benUNC
WordCamp Session:
Community in a nutshell: Getting more 5 star reviews in less time.
Session Description
Ever considered releasing a plugin on the WordPress.org repository? Ever wondered if there was a secret to getting highly engaged users and reviews? In this developer-focused talk we are going to pump the brakes on code-heavy content and instead hone in on how we as developers can get better reviews, better users, and even more (and recurring!) revenue from free plugins, using a few handy techniques.
I’ll share how my two free niche plugins have generated more than $5,000 in revenue this year, and how yours can too!
David Bentley
In 2000 David began a career in gun toting. First, 4 years in the Marines, next a Raleigh Police Officer, followed up by 2 years as a Security Contractor in Afghanistan. In 2009 he decided to shift careers completely and found himself living in Spain teaching himself graphic design.
One thing led to another and the low cost web design company, ZeroZen Design was born. In 4 1/2 years he and a team of 3 has worked with 560+ clients around the world building affordable websites anyone can manage. WordPress made it possible.
Follow David on Twitter: @techbentley
WordCamp Session:
“No-code” Millionaire: Leveraging WordPress to be a (non)Development Company or Freelancer
Session Description:
The tools are already here. The internet is different. Learn how to leverage what already exists to build a successful development company. From lead generation to recurring revenue, learn the blueprint to what works.
Track:
Business
Corey Freeman
Corey Freeman has been working with WordPress since 2004 and specializes in building sites with Headway Themes. She works full-time to teach users of all experience levels how to build and optimize websites.
Check out her website at Headway101.com and tell her WordCamp sent you!
Follow Corey on Twitter: @coreyfreeman
WordCamp Session:
How to Use Headway Themes to Build Custom Sites in Minutes
Session Description:
WordPress can do way more than blogging, especially with the help of theme frameworks. One framework, Headway Themes, allows anyone to build functional WordPress websites in just minutes! In this presentation we’ll take a look at the process of getting a site up with Headway.
Track:
Beginners
Micah Wood
Micah is an Atlanta-based, full-stack developer committed to continuously improving his craft and sharing his insights with the development community. He is currently the CTO at NewClarity Consulting, LLC which specializes in building websites and applications on the WordPress platform for enterprise clients. Learn more about Micah at WP Scholar.
Follow Micah on Twitter: @wpscholar
WordCamp Session:
Advanced Development Workflows
Session Description:
Learn what it looks like to work with a team of developers and have advanced workflows that include dependency management, task runners, automated testing, code review, multiple environments, build systems and automated deployments.
We’ll cover the high level concepts and reasoning behind each, as well as the tools available and how they can all work together.
Track:
Developers
Frank Corso
Frank is the founder and president of My Local Webstop and has been working with WordPress since 2009. He is the lead developer of Quiz Master Next.
He is an organizer of the Gainesville WordPress Meetup where he helps WordPress users of all levels. In his spare time, he is the host of The WP Report which is a weekly podcast about improving your WordPress site. When not focused on improving sites, he actively blogs and speaks about WordPress, Security, and Business.
Above all else, he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter.
Follow Frank on Twitter: @fpcorso
WordCamp Session:
Taking Your Product From Dozens to Thousands of Users
Session Description:
In this talk, we’ll go over several strategies and tools used to help take your plugin, theme, or other product from a few dozen users to thousands of users.
Track:
Business
Steve Mortiboy
Steve Mortiboy is the COO and Service Delivery Manager for Semper Fi Web Design. He leads the team that develops plugins such as All in One SEO Pack. He has been working with WordPress for over 5 years and devotes much of his time to helping people get the most from WordPress. He is also one of the organizers of WordCamp Raleigh and the Raleigh WordPress Meetup Group. When not hard at work he’s working on DIY projects at home or off traveling.
Follow Steve on Twitter: @wpsmort
WordCamp Session:
SEO for Business Owners: Understanding the complex world of Google search results
Session Description:
How many times over the last month have you received an email or call from an “SEO expert” telling you they can help you improve your ranking on Google? How often have you asked yourself “why doesn’t my site rank as well as this other guy”? We all understand how important it is to have a web presence for our business and to rank well on Google but it can be frustrating when trying to understand what SEO is all about and how to improve our rankings.
This session will demystify SEO and provide an insight into what search engines like Google are really looking for and what you, as a business owner, can do for yourself and where you might need some professional help.
Track:
Business
Calvin Powers
By day, Calvin Powers is an Acquisitions Editor at IBM developerWorks where he is the managing editor for their security zone and is a video and audio producer.
By night, Calvin is the host and producer of the Americana Music Show podcast, which features “hand-picked, road tested american music and interviews with your next favorite bands.”
Follow Calvin on Twitter: @cspowers
WordCamp Session:
Session Description:
WordPress is a powerful platform that can be used as a landing page/site for audio and video shows. But putting together all the nuts and bolts to turn the platform into an engine for building an audience takes a lot of work.
In this presentation, Calvin will walk through the “marketing funnel” he uses to build the subscription base for his podcast. He’ll then walk through the WordPress plugins, themes, and workflow necessary to implement the marketing funnel.
Track:
Power Users
Lisa Linn Allen
Lisa Linn Allen is Team Lead for the the Intranet at SAS, the largest independent software vendor in the Business Intelligence market.
She has worked on the SAS Wide Web since she marked up the first graphical version of its home page 18 years ago, and she is currently leading the team through the process of moving all employee-facing Intranet content into WordPress.
Follow Lisa on Twitter: @LisaLinnAllen
WordCamp Session:
Continuous Deployment: Code, Configuration and Content
Session Description:
When SAS – the world leader in Business Intelligence software – decided to overhaul its Intranet using WordPress as a CMS, the Intranet team first had to design an infrastructure that would allow us to deploy code, configuration and content across multiple installs of WordPress. Unfortunately, no one on our team had much WordPress experience and information on how to create such an infrastructure was difficult to find.
We successfully combined source control, dependency management, and a continuous integration and deployment server into a system that is modern and well suited to Agile development practices. I will talk about the challenges we faced in designing and implementing this system, the important concepts that helped with the design, and the specific technologies we used to make it work.
Track:
Developers