WordCamp Kochi 2017

In this talk, I will talk about the various developer tools that I use to increase my productivity as a WordPress developer.

This will be a talk more about my experience using these tools and detailing what worked and what didn’t work rather than just talking about these tools and giving an introduction.

Tools that I will be covering are.

– wp-cli – To efficiently interact with WordPress admin, even over SSH
– phpcs – To quickly catch any WordPress formatting or coding errors
– xDebug – To debug performance and other code issues
– vagrant – To setup proper local development setup
– phpunit – To run Unit tests
– IDE – PhpStorm and Vim

“Best Practices for Client and Project Management” is a subjective topic because everyone has a different opinion about how to develop the needed skills. Some place emphasis on professional training, while others find hands-on mentorship as a starting point.

I think that there is a much simpler way to get started.

After working for eight years with clients from small agencies to big corporations, and learning from all the mistakes, I found there are five basic questions that should be answered and introspected to make a client relation successful-

Who exactly is your client? A techie, manager, marketeer, or a user.
What is expected from you? Go beyond gathering requirements and find out what your clients’ & their customers` expectations are.
When do you plan to give ongoing demos, and delivery? Build predictability.
Why do clients send you those agitated mails? What is the real reason behind them?
Finally, I will speak about
How can you make this happen: by following the LED principal – Lead, Empathise, Document.

In my experience, answering these questions are building blocks for a successful client relationship- whether a small theme project or one with a huge scope. Because at the end of the day, we are humans dealing with humans.

This talk is intended for anyone who deals with client/customer management.

A talk about why local WordPress communities are important, and how it could help people learning more and share what they learn.

As Individuals and as institutions, it is essential to have our own first-hand mouthpiece in today’s world of communication. Whether we are journalists, teachers, artists or observers, having our own medium is exciting.

Earlier, there were barriers to create our own medium in terms of heavy infrastructure (printing press and broadcast equipment) and distribution (getting the reach). Today with platforms like WordPress.com, it is very easy to create our own medium and gain popularity with quality content and ideas being the prerequisite. I got the idea to speak on this since Kerala is known for its literacy and its vocal masses. The topic though is applicable universally 🙂

My talk would draw references from how i made my own community website, with zero starting investment and programming knowledge, and graduated it eventually to WordPress.org.

I will share quick ideas on how we can create our own medium on WordPress.com and then popularize it step by step towards making it a well read destination.

I ran a design agency successfully for 7 years and would like to share the insights on it which will help newbies and current developers transition from being freelancers to starting their own business.

Late last year, the world’s largest democracy woke up to demonetization, which gave a hard push into using digital transactions in everyday life. This talk examines its consequences on developers who have to now come up with fool proof ways so that India can pay it’s bills.

Dethroning the USA for the largest user base for Facebook with 195 million users, only 35% of the Indian population still has access to the Internet in 2016. However, with demonetization, the cash crunch has forced many people to migrate to digital transactions and e-wallets, giving a boost to the Internet infrastructure and consumption.

This talk is a necessary big picture conversation, long overdue, on how everyday developers can build safer and more accessible systems for public use without compromising on security. The focus will be on Web development and User Experience.

It will take on examples and observations faced in the digital landscape of India, where illiteracy, the language barriers, access to steady Internet and many other factors create complex problem solving challenges for developers, similar to many other developing countries. It will feature some of the ingenious solutions that can be emulated by others and a different viewpoint to some challenges that we’re still busy tackling.

This talk is especially meant for Front End Developers and Content Creators who are looking to expand their user base into South Asia and other emerging economies, and will be in a beginner level.

This talk would cover various aspects of website performance, and I’ll try to explain them in terms understandable to non-developers.

A lot of WordPress users have heard they need to “use a caching plugin”, and may even be using one without really understanding what it’s doing. It can be pretty technical, even for a lot of developers, so a lack of understanding leads to frustration when things go wrong.

I want to try and demystify it a little.

There are several different kinds of caching. What I’ll focus in this talk is specifically “page caching”. This is the kind of caching that plugins like LSCache WP, WP Super Cache, W3TC and others do.

Today’s technology and connectivity allow us to achieve the extraordinary. As well as enabling WordPress companies to access the best talents in the world, remote work is becoming an incredible opportunity to empower work-life balance and happiness at work. It is definitely changing the rules for the future generations.
However, it also comes with a big list of new challenges including miscommunication and isolation.
The aim of this talk will be to discuss the impact of a remote workforce in India, as well as sharing best practices and tools to succeed at online collaboration.

I will be talking about Creating MVP (Minimum Viable Products) with WordPress

His talk will cover all about what an MVP is, and why it is essential to build one –  when it comes to building a great product. In his talk, Amit will be discussing further about the work flow of creating an MVP, and on how to use WordPress to create MVPs with minimal investment.

In this talk, I explore how WordPress developers and agencies can benefit by building their products and services around the support they hope to provide for them, and show how support can be an investment if you think of it as branding through customer service.

Using real world examples from the support space, I look at how you can provide a great support experience for your clients by costing for support, charging for support and hiring for support.

As a community lead of Random Hacks of Kindness, Bangalore I have rich and beautiful experience of power of tech community willing to work for good (or hack for good). I would like to talk about Hacking for Humanity with WordPress.