🇺🇸 WordCamp Miami 2020

The best way to promote your business is through speaking. What happens if you are not invited to speak at an event? You should create your own. They will learn the best practices in this event.

Everyone goes through a journey in their development career and everyone travels at a different pace. Obstacles exist along the way but they can all be overcome. Each step of your career has different expectations from others. Certain qualities will help you along the way including self reflection, asking questions, and taking on change. We will discuss my development career including the funny stories, the mistakes, and the take aways you can apply.

This talk goes over the different stages of a developers career between Jr and Lead. Advice will be given on the most important things people can focus on at every step. I have had incredible mentoring throughout my career and would like to give back in this talk detailing what works, what mistakes were made that could be avoided, and what I now look for in developers at different stages of their career.

A user experience is a holistic metric wherein all ships rise with the tide, but it’s not just that one bad feature cancels out a good – the ecosystem is complex: slow internet connections test your users’ patience as much as civic policy, or even that morning’s traffic, determines your market-fit from one day to the next. Service Design is about understanding how the sea rocks the boat. This talk is an intro that will make a case for thinking, organizing around, and designing services as good business strategy, and how the art of providing a good UX is the practice of good service design.

Do you constantly second guess yourself, or are in fear of being found out that you are a fraud and “they” should have hired someone else? Those are classic symptoms of the Impostor Syndrome. A lack of self-confidence is a key reason for the perpetuation of this condition. Learn how to identify signs of the Impostor Syndrome in your life and how to fight back with 7 Audacious Confidence tools you can employ to defeat those pesky symptoms holding you back from achieving your dreams.

In this session we will explore a very underrated, unknown but important type of caching that is available to you out of the box in WordPress: transients. We will explore what it is, how can it benefit your site and of course, how to use with practical examples.

“When designing WordPress themes, one of the biggest challenges stems from a core component of WordPress itself: the ability for site owners to change, modify, and build new content themselves. After all, modern web content needs to be flexible and evolving, but not everyone is a developer who can build custom layouts to fit each use case.

As content and functionality become even more modular thanks to advances like the Gutenberg editor, theme designers will have to accommodate even more flexible ways of visualizing and presenting information. How do we anticipate and accommodate the needs of a constantly evolving website while providing visual solutions that are clean, thoughtful, and consistent?

In this talk, we’ll discuss the principles of Atomic Design, how to stop thinking of your content as “”pages”” and “”posts”” in favor of the concept of “”building blocks,”” and how to extend this mindset to utilize the potential of Gutenberg as it is now, and where it might be going in the future.”

CSS Grid Level 2 is here, are you ready? No, it is not Bootstrap (that’s a framework!) no, it is not Gutenberg (an awesome editor). It is a game changing technology that’s already on all of your browsers!

You’re a content creator (whether you know it or not).  But it’s time to stop creating content for content’s sake and to start creating content that benefits your bank account.  In this lively session, Anthony will show you how to streamline your content creation process, how to be clever in producing and distributing your content, and how to focus your content creation on building your business and your brand. 

What happens when you upload an image to your website? Why you should or should not care? How I trimmed back my upload directory.

You’ll learn how to use RSS feeds, API integrations, and other techniques and services that create automated content for your site. These techniques aren’t designed to help you create a content mill, but rather to deliver tons of valuable content to visitors without the need to endlessly be blogging and writing articles.

Running a business is not easy. We have skills as developers, designers, marketers and writers, but this does not mean that we have skills as business owners. Just like learning to code often involves breaking things, learning to run a business involves making mistakes: some small and some that keep you up at night. As a self-taught WordPress professional and business owner, I have made some mistakes that still haunt me today, but which ultimately have made me a better entrepreneur and a better person. By sharing my experiences, I hope to help some of you avoid making the same mistakes I made.

With all of the new passed and proposed privacy laws, it is clear that what it means to have a website that collects personal information is changing. Attendees of this talk will learn (1) which websites need a Privacy Policy, (2) why Privacy Policies are important, and (3) why web professionals should be the ones to talk to their clients about privacy.

The ElePHPant has yet again learned some new tricks. PHP 7.4 is out and chocked full of new tools for developers to use.

Let’s take a quick look some of these new tools, how we can use them, and how they cna make our code better/faster.

Learn how modern WordPress sites have evolved by adopting best practices from the fastest growing open source software communities. We’ll demonstrate how everyone from the absolute beginner to the seasoned developer can learn new tricks and approaches to improve their workflow and become more productive by using the JAMstack.

Whether you build Themes, Plugins or Headless WordPress, whether you use PHP, JavaScript or something else, your products can be more flexible, resilient and organized using an Atomic Design approach. Codebases organized using Atomic Design are easy to navigate when you come back nine months later or hire new developers. Suddenly change requests will come with less sting and the iterative next version without scrapping everything will look less daunting. In this session we’ll talk about splitting Atomic components, best practices and common issues and mistakes.

Most eCommerce sites running on WordPress start the same. A theme, a few plugins and a lot of hope. Overtime the site endures updates, new features, design changes, getting hacked, and if good fortune should strike: A spike in business. Many of the most successful sites have similar stories. Unfortunately without proper planning, managing something that seemed so simple a few months ago can become a major headache when the checkout button is being clicked frequently enough. Understanding how things can go wrong, and even more-so knowing how to avoid some of the more common mistakes can be the difference of putting out fires versus growing your business.

In client services, it’s easy to talk about “things” that can fix client’s problems – WordPress, a page builder, a plugin, a new theme, etc. Clients may even tell you they want a new WordPress site. Your job is to figure out what that problem is, what’s really going on, why are they asking for help, and then once the problem is identified, to present a solution. This session will look at this scenario and we’ll go through ways to shift our thinking when talking to new clients. We might look at how to frame the conversation, why it’s important to learn the “why” behind the client being there, what are ways to measure success, and who the true audience is.

Google is yet again changing how they search and display. Will cover precise SEO tech you need to have in your page for 2020, including mobile, local, speed, 1st byte, how to voice search, better tagging for Google, new Google Event and Job Blocks, Answering a Google Question, mass page generation and posting on GMB and Google Search Console. Will also cover my experience working on a dozen sites, several with millions of impressions and what works now!

Securing WordPress can sometimes feel like a moving target. With 0-day vulnerabilities popping up even in reputed plugins and themes, you can’t always ‘beat the hackers to the draw’.

While exploits target specific versions, strategies used by hackers to attack at scale remain the same. In this talk, We will review common approches used by hackers to hack WordPress sites and learn how to block them.

We will also look at actionable steps site owners can take to secure WordPress sites without degrading user experience.

Writing persuasive copy on demand is hard, but it doesn’t have to be – I’ve developed a 5 step framework for helping to get past mental blocks and barriers that helps you write words designed to get your audience’s attention and engagement.
Persuasive copy is just clear intentions communicated so the end user knows how it benefits them.  Following this framework you will answer the critical questions your readers will have when reading your page.
5-steps for writing copy that persuades – 

1. First Impressions – If it begins with a stare, what is the first impression you want to give your reader?
Eyes scan the page to create a first impression, usually a bold headline inviting them to get to know more. 

2. Interest – What will make them interested?
This is when the user thinks to think themselves “You got my attention and I’m interested in discovering more.” 

3. Engagement – Now that we have them interested, what is the next action we want them to take?
We are now asking for them to take action after we made our intentions clear. 

4. Trust – How can we show them trust so that they feel comfortable taking action?
Elements of comfort that signals to the user I believe they will do good on their promise, usually social proof. 

5. Conversion – Once we’ve made our intentions clear and shown we can be trusted, what is the best way to ask them to take the next step?
This is when the users takes action on your promise because they trust you will deliver. With these 5 elements of landing page persuasion the conversion design framework begins.

Got a campaign coming up? Use the WWH method for designing focused and efficient plans for your marketing activities. We’ll cover the 3 pieces to the process with and a start to designing your own plan.
A template on how to implement the method into your campaigns.
You’ll leave this session with:
– An introduction to the WWH method,
– Details for implementing the method
– Decision-making resources for monitoring the campaign
– Template for designing your own plan

As an owner of WordPress agency, I have met many other WordPress people who really struggled with knowing their numbers. Coming into this business from a finance and marketing background, I had many tech struggles that the community helped me with and I, in turn, started helping them understand their money/cash flow. I will share the same easy to use method I taught them that will

Help attendees get a grasp of their spending
Be proactive in finding problems and opportunity
Reduce stress by understanding their cash flow
Be actionable through a template they can go home and start implementing immediately

It’s a passion project of mine to pass on my dad’s legacy by helping my community realize they can understand their money; the problem is not with them it’s that it was never clearly explained to them.

What I’ve learned is that we have so much to offer each other, so many different perspectives, talents, passions, and interests. Our aspirations are varied. Our inspirations are many. This talk will share data, anecdotes, clips, and conversation about who we are as individuals, and who we are as a community.

Thinking about building an eCourse for your brand? eLearning is a 20 billion dollar industry with low barriers to entry and exponential growth potential. In this talk, learn what plug-ins you need to take your website from landing page to an educational hub for paying students.

How to improve the experience of a user within a website, based on design, accesibility and user behavior. This will be based on best practices from marketing and UX design. Actionable tips that will improve your site interaction and lower your bounce rate.

Diversity and inclusion within the field of designing lead to more innovation through problem-solving, whether in service of business or society. Diversity in design means diversity of experience, perspective and creativity — otherwise known as diversity of thought — and these can be shaped by multiple factors including race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual identity, ability/disability and location, among others. How can we use design to enable more inclusive experiences for the users of our products?

WordPress changed the game for non-developers (and developers) to easily crank out and manage websites. Unless you’re in the business of giving away hugs and kisses for free, you need to leverage this power piece of code to attract potential leads and convert them into a full fledge lead that’s chomping at the bit to give you their money.
…and Carlos is going to show you how to get started.

This talk will cover the why and how on using Advanced Custom Fields Pro plugin to create their own custom Gutenberg blocks. Skipping the hassle of creating custom Gutenberg blocks with JavaScript and learn to create them using PHP. I will walk them through an easy demo that will display a few results.

What if businesses, planet earth, and the galaxy operated with the friendliness and openness of the WordPress community? We conquered the CMS market, why not take over everything else?

In this 30-minute talk and Q&A, Sebastiaan will take you on a journey to a 100% open-source world! How open source and, specifically, the WordPress community can protect us against the misuse of data, unfair distribution of wealth, and censorship from closed-source monopolies such as Facebook, Uber, and AirBnB.

Also included is a sneak peak at WordPress in 2030. Spoiler alert: the world will be cooler, fairer, and more inclusive than ever.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or employee, there will come a time when you are expected to speak in front of an audience. In this session, attendees will learn what to do Before, During and After presenting a talk. This session will include tips on preparation and practice, speech structure, using stories and humor to hold your audience’s attention, using visual aids effectively, minimizing the use of crutch words and controlling nervousness.

It’s all fun and games building and servicing others with creativity but what about being of service to the generation of creatives that come next? What if we could leave behind more than just Git commit messages and to-do lists?

In this session, Victor will discuss his journey from an on-premise, professional work environment to building and managing a remote team from his home office. The talk will discuss the challenges and successes of this transition and the lessons learned through lots of trial-and-error.

This lightning talk speaks about the impact of WordCamp Miami for youth in Stem in the South Florida Community: Academically, Socially, and Emotionally through STEM. This lightning talk will explore the resources, networking opportunities, and STEM-related speakers available to educators and students to thrust our youth’s future in business, entrepreneurship, and STEM careers.

Everyone goes through a journey in their development career and everyone travels at a First, I like to cover the importance of user-centered design and get the audience excited about it. Secondly, I go straight into some tips/experiential and interactive examples. Lastly, I want to get people out of their seat a little especially if it’s an after lunch talk. Design is collaborative and developers are totally capable of learning 1-2 impactful ways of keeping user needs in mind.

The #IamRemarkable initiative started in Google. It strives to empower women and underrepresented groups to speak openly about their accomplishments in the workplace and beyond, thereby breaking modesty norms and glass ceilings. At the heart of the #IamRemarkable initiative is a 90-minute workshop. This workshop will highlight to participants the importance of self-promotion in their careers and provide them with the tools to practice this skill.

Our goals:
Improve self-promotion motivation and skills
Change social perceptions towards self-promotion
Create a sense of community in which we uplift and support each other

You’re good at one thing, but your clients need help with all the things. Instead of losing business, win more business and make your friends win too with my guide to building strategic partnerships in the WP community.

The #SecureHer talk will introduce the importance of Cybersecurity to both thriving and up and coming female business owners who utilize the online marketplace to sell services and products. Jihana Clemetson will shed light on why women need to be knowledgeable on the advantages of being BOSSY and SECURE, while intensely going through common business faux pas within online business platforms.

– Within the discussion, we will also discuss the following
– What is cybersecurity
– Why female entrepreneurs are at a disadvantage as we speak (from a cybersecurity standpoint)
– How your online business/platform is at risk right now!
– The DIY approach to SECURING your business TODAY
– What tools are necessary to not only secure your business but your personal identity.

The block editor isn’t just great for interfaces. By saving data how you like & having granular control with rendering, end systems can do some really cool things. Power your social media by grabbing all quotes & images to post directly in social feeds for each post. Dynamically pull custom types into custom blocks so your user doesn’t have to jump around the admin. Build cool React admins with no reloads! There is so much more beyond the block!

Web design takes a different approach when creating websites for nonprofit organizations rather than a brick and mortar or eCommerce business. It is more than just driving traffic to a site but getting the visitor to buy into the story that the nonprofit is telling. In this presentation, I will discuss layout, buttons and plugins that I have found that work well for donation-based model websites. I will also share ways to create a user experience that increased donations and awareness. Proper theme selection, SEO, plugins all enhance the way we not only tell the nonprofit’s story but also build brand awareness and in turn a sense of comfort with the donor that they are supporting a cause whose story resonates with them.

“Matt Cromwell and Kim Lipari will speak on running a business that is “”support driven””. Matt brings years of experience in customer support from a product perspective. Kim serves clients always from a customer-centric, support-driven perspective.

Being support driven ensures your “”product”” always has a feedback loop, ensures your clients feel heard and get the results they need; and ensures that your leadership is always improving. “

#Abstract
Just because you’re a JavaScript developer it doesn’t entitle you to be a jQuery developer, or that you do React or Angular. This language-to-framework linkage has marked JavaScript developers for many years, and that’s all changing now.

What we have at our fingertips is a fast-paced, modern, multi-paradigmic, and feature-rich language that you can use to program everything and anything from toaster ovens to NASA space suits without (necessarily) reaching out to third-party code!

This presentation talks (only) about JavaScript. Attendees will gain an in-depth view of the new features, and how to use them to bring multiple paradigms (functional, reactive, meta, object-oriented, and more!) to life. They will also get a sneak peak into some new coding patterns and techniques.

#Tentative Outline
1. It’s all about prototypes
2. Mixin extensions
3. JavaScript is a lambda language
4. Algebraic data types
5. Linear async programming
6. Reactive state management
7. Typed JavaScript<T>

I’ve been speaking at WordCamps for about a decade now, and have given talks and sat on panels for just about every topic. I’ve run an agency, been a freelancer, been contracted as part of an in-house team, and built products for both general release and clients.

I will be discussing the AIDA Model and how it can be applied to interpersonal work relationships. The model is composed of four stages: awareness, interest, desire and action. It is used by marketers, to describe and observe a consumer’s journey from being aware of a product or service to purchasing the product or service.

In my opinion, it can also be applied to interpersonal work relationships to relieve people of work loneliness.

Has a client ever wasted your time in a consulting session? Ever had a one-hour consultation turn into 3? Have you experienced the sinking feeling that comes when you leave the consultation and realize you failed to ask a key question? This talk provides answers to these issues and more. Attendees will leave with a clear, memorable outline to manage the client consultation.

Key Takeaways:
1) Why you need a strategy for the initial client meeting
2) The purpose of the initial client meeting: what it is and isn’t
3) A memorable outline to manage it

You’ve created an amazing site for your client, which solves all of their business needs and is bringing in leads. Now what?

It’s easier to sell to an existing client than to find continually find new ones. In this session we’ll talk about some of the offerings that you can combine into ongoing maintenance packages for your clients. Whether you are a developer, designer, marketer, or have any other skill that you use for client websites, there is an ongoing maintenance offering that you can offer for recurring revenue. Even better, you stay fresh in their minds when it’s time for new projects!

Come learn actionable steps on how to create a recurring offering for clients, and how to deliver results that will keep them coming back and have them doing the selling for you through referrals.

One of the greatest benefits of using WordPress is that it’s open source and is constantly being improved by the community. However, few people know exactly what that process looks like.

When you identify a bug in WordPress, where does that information need to be reported? Who fixes it? And how does it eventually get sent out to 25% of the web in the next WordPress Core release?

In this talk, we’ll look at the progression of a bug ticket from beginning to the very end and see how the software we use every day is continually improved. Attendees will learn how they too can contribute to WordPress, even if they don’t code.

As business owners, we have big goals and dreams. To build a team, to launch a new product, to craft a business that works for us vs us being a slave to it.

Yet with all the noise of daily to-dos, the distraction of shiny objects, and the world telling us what we “should” be doing vs what we want to be doing it’s no wonder we stay stuck.

In this talk, explore the habitual patterns that keep us stuck and self-sabotaging our success.

You will learn how to determine what you really want in your business, how to chart a course to get there, how to stay laser-focused, and ultimately create a business you love.

A UTM allows you to track different links used in your marketing efforts across various ads, pieces of content and other mediums. UTM information is then picked up in your analytics platform to allow you to make better decisions on your ongoing marketing efforts. As a webmaster, you need to understand how to properly use UTMs as you promote your content across different mediums and networks. This talk’s goal is to cover everything from what a UTM is, how to create a UTM, and how to properly use UTMs to track traffic across all major analytics platforms. I will show you easy to use sites to create your UTMs as well as other tools for the power user.

There is a growing need for content creators from diverse backgrounds to tell their stories. To share their experiences and to encourage the need and acceptance for diversity and using the ability to speak, write, teach and deliver transformative content.

These stories are from the diverse backgrounds of men and women, culturally diverse backgrounds, gender neutral to gender specific. Youth, teens and young adults, American, African, Central American and European.

WordPress is a platform that allows and encourages the acceptance and tolerance of the human story. Share your voice.

As a site-admin-turned-developer, I know exactly how intimidating the command line can be…and exactly how valuable it is when working with WordPress. In this session I’ll demystify the command line and empower YOU to take advantage of some powerful tools in the WordPress ecosystem. With a basic grasp of the command line you’ll work more quickly, do more, and understand more of the tech behind your WordPress site.

We’ll cover:
* The basics of the command line: What’s a terminal? What’s a text editor? How do I navigate my file structure? How do I find files, remove files, all that fun stuff?
* What are file permissions?
* What’s the difference between SSH and SFTP?
* What is version control and how in the heck do you use Git?
* Why should I use wp-cli? And more importantly, *how* do I use wp-cli?
* How do I manage configuration via the command line?

It’s not a workshop, but bring your laptop if you’d like to follow along.

Note: This session focuses on *nix systems. That means Mac OSX, Linux, and other Unix-like systems. If you have a Windows machine, I recommend installing VirtualBox in advance of the session.

“Keeping your website secure is important. No one likes a site that has nasty code injections or looks like it’s been hacked. In fact, WordPress Security is one of the issues that continually needs to be taught to WordPressers around the world because for some people, their website is their livelihood.

I’m not here to make your head pop off with mind boggling hardening tricks. I’m here to give you an introduction to WordPress Security. I might make you laugh, but security is a serious matter. I will be covering a couple methods to secure your WordPress website, and even a couple beginner tips on what to do if your site has been hacked.

By the end of this session, I hope you find a security method that suits you, and are more aware of the importance of securing your WordPress website.”

Are you frustrated with your lack of lead generation success? Do you wonder why your marketing efforts aren’t producing more fruit and results? Are you confused with how to even begin marketing your company with videos? If so, you’re not alone, and Video Marketing Strategist & Expert Antoine Dupont, will show you the tools and techniques for creating remarkable videos in order to get more leads and grow your business.

There are many calendar and event plugins out there but which one to use? Let’s compare the top contenders with the pros and cons of each one and the questions to ask (your client or yourself) to narrow it down.

Do you create WordPress sites? Do you create WordPress sites for an audience other than yourself?

Then you already know a bit about designing for a user. Congratulations!

That also means that you have probably experienced the struggle of creating something for someone else. If you are also someone who creates WordPress sites for clients, now you have even more users to design for: the client and the client’s audience. Designing for a larger company or organization? Even more users and stakeholders to design for!

There is lots of information, tools, and tips about designing for the audience that visits a website (what I call the “external” audience) but we rarely hear about how to design the WordPress administration area for our other user, our client (the “internal” audience). Let’s change that and look at some solutions! From simple fixes to more complex custom coding within your theme, there are many ways we can make the experience for your client just as seamless and enjoyable as their site visitors.

Privilege in all its forms is a hot-button social issue throughout the political spectrum. Whether we see it or not, it informs everything we do, especially what we as developers build. Recognizing and acknowledging our privileges helps us build better websites and software. In this talk, I’ll outline the various privileges developers benefit from, how to recognize them, and how to factor them in to build software and websites that are truly for everyone.

In this session, we’re going to take an uncomplicated dive into modern web performance to learn how to identify and fix performance bottlenecks in your WordPress website through topics such as:

– Web performance metrics you should be measuring and how. Which are the most important and to optimize your site for each?
– How do browsers render web pages, and how you can use this knowledge to optimize the loading experience.
– What is the JavaScript main thread? How can can you optimize for this?
– WordPress performance plugins: What to look for when evaluating.
– How to identify and evaluate performant WordPress themes.

The importance to think about disability, what are the internet disabilities, how can we integrate accessibility first strategies to our digital process, how inclusive business is important to create websites, applications and digital documents.

A big wall of text scarces people on the Internet. Great featured images will draw them in. Break up the text with some visual clues and graphics. There are probably more reasons why it’s important to learn and review how you can work with images in WordPress.
The new block editor gives you so many more options to display and combinations to create a post or a page. It can be overwhelming.

In this talk, you learn how to use which block in which scenario and the various options for display. How to make your layout great on mobile screen. We’ll talk about some alternative ways, and weigh one solution over the other. We will cover inline image, image block, media+text block, cover, columns, gallery block. We discuss proper captions, linking and unique 3rd party blocks from the repository and discuss Block Patterns. There will be plenty of Q & A time.

Does your business seem to be growing so quickly, you can’t catch up?

Business growth is an exciting time, but it can be terrifying to grow from a one or two-person operation to a full team. Payroll, taxes, business expenses, price increases – and let’s not mention the elephant in the room: employee conflict and resolution.

In this talk, we will go over some of the common struggles that business owners experience during a growth or expansion period.

I will be covering Accessibility specific issues that Web Designers and Web Developers need to be aware of not only from an End-User stand-point but also with fellow developers in the community, business partners and potential clients.

An attendee can expect to get a much deeper than usual dive into the issues of bias, ignorance or simply unknowing facts about disabilities and how to offer solutions. Be it to realize how simple screenreaders are and that there are plenty free options or how to install a simple plugin that will improve accessibility across your site *tremendously* without causing much slowdown.

And of course good practices and that especially in an open source community like WordPress one should always consider accessibility for a simply superior user experience, thus happier end users, thus better converting metrics.

It can be hard at times to consistently come up with ideas for creative and valuable content for your audience. While using the 80/20 rule, your content efforts have to be in line with what people want to consume and in the ways they want to consume. This means multiple platforms and multiple media formats. This talk will show you why having a strategy is important, give you the tools you need, and teach you how to measure success.

With the explosive adoption of Smart Speakers, interaction with your content changes. On the internet, brand revolves around a URL, logo, color palette, font, images, etc., but when your audience is not looking at your content, traditional brand elements become invisible. In a voice-first world, what does your brand look like, (I mean, sound like)? This session explores the components of a verbal brand, the changes that Google, Amazon, Apple (and others) are making to support Voice Technology, and how you must prepare your brand for this new platform.

Writing your code is the easy part. Ensuring it all works when it is done, not so much. If your code is intended to last beyond the initial deploy you should be testing it. Even a single test is better than no test at all. This talk will walk developers through setting up testing on a WordPress project including automated tests for JavaScript, PHP and visual bugs that might otherwise pop up as your code evolves. In addition, we’ll discuss ways to integrate testing into your existing code so as to help make sure bugs and are regressions are a thing of the past and that your deployments are indeed bulletproof.

-The importance of social media and the impact in the world in the ability to connect people
-How to do the brainstorming in order to start planning name, logo and brand identity of the community
-How to plan the steps of creation not only short-term but long-term (How they can turn their community in their own business).
-How to execute and what are the KPIs that indicate that the community is having an impact.
-Marketing Tools they can use along the way in order to optimize and amplified the reach.