Let’s Build Our First Plugin!

If you’ve ever wanted to build your own plugin for WordPress, this is the session for you. We’re going to start from scratch and work our way up.

First, we’ll take a look at the basic requirements of a plugin. Next we’ll take our example plugin idea and break it into the various components and steps that we’ll need. We’ll code up the plugin together and install it on our sites, debugging any problems that arise. Finally, we’ll look at ways that we could further extend our plugin.

This tutorial assumes some HTML and CSS knowledge, but you don’t already need to be familiar with writing PHP or JavaScript.

The steps that we’ll work through include:

• Setting up a folder and PHP file for our plugin
• The plugin file header and what it does
• Creating a README file
• Adding a menu item and sub-menu item in the dashboard for our plugin settings
• Creating a plugin settings page, settings sections, and individual settings with the Settings API
• Using WordPress hooks to enqueue scripts and styles, and display output for the user
• Moving our plugin settings into the WordPress Customizer
• Preparing our plugin for translation and future updates

• Slides

I will share recommendations for improving each step of the web design process so that your clients are happier, feel more confident, are able to communicate better, and have more fun. I will explain how making basic tweaks to an existing process can mean a smoother process and more referrals at the end of the day. I will go from improving lead forms all the way to follow-up emails months after launch.

• Slides

Our success as freelancers is built upon the lessons we’ve learned from our biggest mistakes. In this talk, Nathan draws on more than 20 years experience in the web business to share 10 important lessons he had to learn the hard way and common mistakes we all can avoid. Each lesson is summarized in a succinct, proverbial statement and then unpacked with examples that will make you laugh, cringe and think.

• Slides

You’re a WordPress developer who wants to use object-oriented programming in their next project. You’re already familiar with concepts like inheritance. The issue is that you’re not sure how to apply those concepts to design classes that feel useful.

This isn’t something to feel ashamed about! In fact, it’s a common problem when trying to use object-oriented programming with WordPress. It’s hard to know how to design classes that work well with WordPress.

Well, you’re in luck! This is what we’ll go over during this talk.

We’ll start by going over the prevalent class design in the WordPress ecosystem. We’ll analyze what it’s doing and why it leaves you feeling unsatisfied.

Then we’ll look at how object-oriented programming expects you to design classes. We’ll finish by looking at strategies that you can use to design classes. This should let you finally design classes that feel meaningful to use!

• Slides

Do you feel that part of your mission as a WordPress website designer is to enlighten and empower your clients? Sure, our bottom line is to build excellent websites that serve business goals, but we can build a better partnership and trust with our clients if we educate them along the way. How can we do this without wasting hours explaining basic concepts over and over? In this session we will discuss the website owner’s bill of rights and ways to bake the education into your client onboarding process.

We will cover types of content to leverage, email workflows, and recommended wording in contracts and project emails.

Suggested Questions:
Can we measure the results of this time we invest in educating clients?
What if my client says, “I don’t care to learn about the website. That’s YOUR job.”?
Is there any proof that this adds to client satisfaction with our work?

As independent professionals and business owners, we are in the unique position of being able to control our own schedule. However, we often find our own health and fitness takes a back seat as we pursue success in our careers. How do we take care of ourselves while working in an industry that often glorifies late nights, long hours, unhealthy food, and being sedentary for long periods of time? How can we fit healthy decisions into a variable lifestyle that often includes industry events, travel, inconsistent schedules, and client deadlines? Learn some real tips you can implement today that will help you take care of your body and mind. And, if you’re feeling adventurous, join me over the lunch break for a fun group exercise activity learning a bodyweight routine that you can do anywhere!

Most of you have probably heard that “your network is your net worth”. A strong and powerful network is indeed a game changer to attract higher-paying and more dynamic clients.

But how can you build a powerful network when you are not from a famous and rich family?

In Cindy’s talk you will learn: How to evaluate the strength of your current network?  Key Principles of influence. How to develop a concrete plan to develop authentic win-win strategic relationships that will catapult your goals? 

This workshop will take a deep-dive into local environments for WordPress development including editors, server tools, debugging and more with a focus on productivity and best practices. Tools presented will be done so on Linux and Mac but should be usable on Windows as well.

• Slides

Tired of Contracts talks that start with “I’m not an attorney, but…”

Rian Kinney IS a Florida attorney here to answer your entrepreneurial questions.

As a freelancer, should you incorporate? What business entity should you choose? Can you use a template? In this talk you will learn what clauses are “boilerplate” and you should have in your contracts. Other legal questions and issues that will be addressed are e-signatures, credit card processing fees, privacy policies and terms of use.

There will be time for you to ask questions. 

In this talk, I’ll discuss my time working at Walt Disney World in multiple roles, and apply the famed “Disney Basics” to working with web clients as a freelancer or customer-facing team member.

• Slides

Webpack is an awesome tool that can simplify your development workflow by allowing you to easily define dependencies for your site, theme or plugin and generate static assets that are ready for production. What makes it so great? The ability to define workflows based on filetype and then easily customize how those files come together.

If you are using Grunt, Gulp, or another tool to combine and minify your JavaScript and CSS, you will be pleasantly surprised at the power that Webpack can provide. While not touted as the simplest tool, it is not as complicated as it first seems.

Come learn the concepts behind Webpack, get started with a sample Webpack config customized for WordPress development and open up a whole new world of JavaScript for the browser.

Whether you are working as a freelancer, or as part of a team, chances are that communicating with customers falls somewhere in your job description. As a website developer, you love the part of your job where you get to develop – but you also need to develop communication and project management skills to help you stay on top of projects, interact with your customers, and make sure that projects don’t spiral out of control or take more money or time than you budgeted.

In this talk, we will discuss the basics of project management. You’ll learn techniques for getting a project started on the right foot – things like making sure that your customer contracts are crystal clear, and setting up clear timelines and project milestones. You’ll also learn how to handle scope creep, and how to deal with projects that have fallen off course.

• Slides

Do you constantly feel like you are hacking code together? Do you find it difficult to maintain, adapt or even read the code you’ve written previously? Chances are, you are not taking into consideration some of the basic principles of software architecture. Come learn how some simple habits and changes in perspective can transform you from a 1x developer to a 10x developer!

• Slides

We’ve all experienced the feast and famine of running a business. There will be times where we are swamped with work, and times where there’s no work coming in at all. What if there were a way to ease the pain of both? In this talk, you will learn how you can prepare for the famine without breaking your back from the feast. All by diversifying your income streams.

• Slides

By now we’ve all heard of how important privacy is on the web. As site owners we have the responsibility of protecting both our own privacy and the privacy of our users. This talk will cover basic technologies to improve the privacy of your WordPress site as well as how to address topics of privacy above and beyond the security protections you’re already implementing.

• Slides

Mark will delve into the best new (and old!) tools for WordPress development, including editors, local dev environments, unit testing suites, and build tools. Tools he will cover include git, VS Code, XDebug, Local by Flywheel, and WP-CLI.

• Slides

We explain what exactly Web Accessibility (Section 508 and WCAG 2.1) is and why it matters for WordPress developers and agencies. Then we offer our 11 step process that we as WordPress developers can incorporate into your process of building and designing websites to help you become compliant. Over 30% of the internet runs on WordPress so we can really make a difference!

Post or page? Block or custom field? Locked templates or a block party? With Gutenberg now in the hands of millions, many developers are struggling with a difficult decision: do we give the authors full control over style, layout and structure? Or lock the content entry down and “save them from themselves”? Most of the time, the right answer lies someplace in between. But finding that happy medium with so much choice can be a daunting and confusing process. Enter Content Architecture! A website’s content architecture determines how successfully your clients can use the WordPress site that you built for them. It determines how flexible the content is, where and how it can be reused and syndicated. It supports the organization’s internal content strategy and workflow. Simply put, a good content architecture can make everyone’s lives easier.

In this session, we will explore the process of content architecture and modeling in today’s WordPress world. You will leave with a solid process for discovering and building the best possible website into WordPress. We will review the different content, relationship and metadata formats in WordPress, and then look at patterns for different use cases.

Modern browsers, JavaScript libraries, and CSS3 have made it easier than ever to create exciting, dynamic animated experiences within web interfaces. But we have also seen the unfortunate side effect of trying to do too much: websites that are resource hogs, eating up bandwidth and slowing load times to a crawl, all for effects that are ultimately just there for the “show” factor. This talk will discuss how to use these animation skills for good: to establish context, convey status, give feedback, and yes, even add a little delight. Along the way, we’ll discuss the principles of animation that guide everything from your favorite feature films to the actions of a button on your screen, and learn how deliberate animation choices can improve the experience for your user.

• Slides

• Slides

Let’s look at your Death Star (or website) from the rebel (or hacker) perspective and how they find the exhaust ports which can ruin everything you’ve built.

This will be a hands-on look at web security from the hackers perspective, showing you how these various attacks occur. I’ll demonstrate real world hacking of a WordPress site to show you just how easy it is to write insecure code and also how easy it is to write secure code.

From this session, you should gain practical tips to secure your site, your users, and their data. Armed with this you can hopefully keep those pesky rebels from foiling your attempt at intergalactic domination.

Here’s an idea: what if the boost your revenues and profit margins need is better UX?

Many business owners want to know if more business know-how would increase revenue and improve their bottom lines. For this reason, they sign up for business seminars, night courses or online MBAs.

Running a wide-reaching WordPress plugin company has taught the Caldera WP team many things about managing successful products, revenue and bottom lines. One of the things that we’ve learned is that MBAs are out, and UX is in.

We’ll go over key concepts of the field of UX and how those key concepts are crucial to a successful business that competes globally in 2019. We’ll examine overlaps between business education and user experience education, how we applied those overlaps to the release of the 2.0 version of our large WordPress plugin, and how you can do it, too.

First, I promise you I was never a disco fan. (You’re over 50 if you got that joke.)
But I gotta say. Gutenberg has changed everything, and I’m over the moon.
Standard layouts with grids of posts? Done in a couple of hours.
Wild and crazy layouts, with all kinds of things going every which way? Again, Gutenberg’s the star!
And not just in experimental for-designers’-eyes-only pages.
But home pages. Archive pages. Pages of posts. Single posts. Even WooCommerce product pages!
Yup. I said it. WooCommerce. Product. Pages.
So let’s get visual!

In this talk Chris will help store owners and store builders understand the psychology of how to help a buyer make a decision, rather than letting the plugin they’re using dictate what the page looks like. He’ll talk about how you create a product page that helps you sell more – from what to include, where to included it, and how to use everything at your disposal to create a winning product page.

• Slides

With the new Gutenberg editor, the possibilities for visually striking and engaging storytelling in WordPress have grown exponentially. For marketing content creators, journalists, and bloggers, harnessing the power of Gutenberg can improve the effectiveness of your messages, elevate your designs, and save you time.

This talk will include an overview of marketing and content creation trends, as well as an introduction to block-based design, and how to make it work for blogs and content-heavy sites.

Key takeaways: In this talk, you’ll learn about current marketing trends in content design and how to put them into practice on your own site using Gutenberg. You’ll be introduced to wireframing content with a block design and how to find and use popular third-party blocks. I’ll share blogging and page design tricks that make the most of block design and can help your content pop and help your site be more successful.

Clients want to work with quality WordPress developers. They want to know that they can get their project done on time, within budget, and that the proposed solution is going to be effective. 

Project management aside, writing quality code is the key to delivering on all three of these expectations. If you write poor code, it is going to be harder to read and understand. As a result, it will take longer (and cost the client more money) to add new features. A lack of consistent quality also results in more bugs and a decreased effectiveness of the solution you are creating.
WordPress has a set of coding standards that are designed to provide a consistent level of quality for those who are contributing code to WordPress. However, it just got a lot easier to apply those standards to your own projects. Whether you are creating a theme or writing a plugin, you can leverage an “automated code mentor” to help you provide consistent quality to your clients.

Come learn how you can leverage the WordPress Coding Standards and automation to help you become a quality developer that clients can trust.

Haven’t you wished you could ask any question to an “expert” at WordCamp? Problem is that many talks have short Q&A sessions – and while we encourage speakers to visit the Happiness Bar after the talks, it’s still difficult to ask sometimes. Also there could be someone ELSE in the room that has a great answer, or would love to bond over the subject you’re interested in.

This “Ask The Expert” session is focused on answering YOUR questions:

One person knowledgable in a particular field
No slides, no prepared presentations
Approx 30 min of that person answering as many questions as possible
Think of this as a mini-town hall or a Reddit “AMA”.

Stay tuned for more information about the speaker and questions that could you ask!

Continuous changes within the WordPress interface occasionally lead to a major change that affects not only what you see, but also how you use the application. One of the main WordPress modules is the TinyMCE text editor that includes all the basic functions to create or edit your post or pages in WordPress. With the update of WP 5.0 a new experience or functionality for word processing is added.

What are the blocks in WordPress? In this talk we will review in depth the new interface of the content editor and its functions. We will learn to use these blocks as design patterns to create more interactive and flexible content and we will talk about the possibilities with this change.

Mascots play a key role in the community. Also, anyone can make a wapuu.

• Slides

Content is King and is found everywhere we look. Now more than ever, we must create quality content that connects with our readers in the many different platforms that they get acquainted with your writing. This talk is for anyone desiring to craft content with more heart, which tells the right story that you wish to convey to your intended audience. Whether you are writing content to sell, persuade, entertain or content that is more academic in nature, you need a structure that will allow you to create purposeful content reliably.

The power of WordPress is not in the software but in the people that choose to use it to change their world for the better, both for themselves and those around them. HeroPress tells the stories of those people.

Have you ever wanted to start a blog, but were too reluctant because you don’t have writing skills?

In this talk, I’ll share different types of blogs you can start that can be fun, authentic and engaging to your audience – without being “spammy” – even if you’re not a traditional blog writer.

Starting with WordPress as our platform, we’ll talk about picture blogs, poetry blogs, vlogging, blogs that showcase your favorite things and so much more. I’ll visually demonstrate some simple examples of what those blogs could look like, then take you step-by-step with simple instructions you can use to start a blog today!

How we get and interact with data in WordPress is changing dramatically as of WordPress 5.0 and the release of the new Data API.  The Data API is built with the Redux state management library (although no experience with Redux is necessary). The Data API allows developers to get data from WordPress and dispatch actions using JavaScript in ways that were not possible before.  The Data API is the future of how to interact with data in WordPress using JavaScript and React and is an essential skill for any serious WordPress Developer. In this talk, educator Zac Gordon, will go over how the Data API works, what options are available and some important things to know.  We will also look at how you can use the Data API to manage state for your own WordPress plugins.

How Color Works for You – The Psychology of Color. How do the primary, secondary and tertiary colors that make up the color wheel affect us? Which color(s) will have you jump at a product verses color(s) that either makes you stop and think about the product or even walk away from a product? What happens when we combine different color combinations incorrectly?

WordPress Plugins can help your website’s functionality and enhance the experience for your website.

In this lightning talk, I’ll talk about three plugins that will help your website’s SEO strategy, as well as how many plugins does your site actually need.

Do you have a blog but but aren’t seeing the results you want? Maybe you know you need to blog to drive traffic to your site, but don’t have time to dedicate to it unless you can practically guarantee it will generate new business. Or, are you’re just not sure what to write about to generate the leads you need.

In this session, you’ll learn how to turn your blog content into a conversion goldmine with a clear content strategy and structure designed around your services and ideal client.

• Slides

Extending WordPress above and beyond the core functionality is part of what makes WordPress so powerful. However, the sheer number of plugins available can be overwhelming. A strategy for evaluating plugins makes both developing managing WordPress easier.

In this presentation, attendees will learn strategies for evaluating one plugin over another, the key factors to consider, and what tools support those strategies. Are paid/premium plugins better than free? How do users best manage plugins and updates? How can a non-developer tell if a plugin may have security risks? If a plugin is abandoned, how can someone easily migrate to another plugin taking all of their data easily with them?

Attendees will also receive a plugin evaluation checklist they can take home to help choose plugins that fit their project’s objectives.

• Slides

WordPress is about community, but what do you do if no community exists where you are? Hear how one WordPresser took matters into her own hands and created a community in her city from the ground up. One year in, the community is starting to come into its own and the organizer has learnt lots of lessons that can help other WordPressers do the same. In this talk, the lead organizer for Kingston WordPress will share the lessons over one year of building the community, how the community has grown and its plans for the future. Attendees will learn how they can start a community in their city and not lose hope.

The new WordPress editing experience is a major disruption (but ultimately a positive one) for any developer whose plugins or themes intersect with the editor UI. While existing shortcodes and metaboxes may still work (if you’re lucky), the sooner you can transition to native Gutenberg UI components the better.

David Carr will use the example of RSVPMaker, a plugin he has supported since 2006, to share the learning process of turning shortcodes into Gutenberg blocks and gradually learning how to tap into the strengths of the Gutenberg UI framework. As a writer and editor who codes on the side, he had made some use of JQuery but had to climb a steep learning curve to come up to speed on “modern JavaScript” with node.js and React. His goal with this talk is to help you climb that learning curve faster.

Recently, David has released a couple of Gutenberg-specific plugins, Floating Callout and My Marginalia.

For those of us that rely greatly on Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) for customizing our themes, the release of Gutenberg was and still is scary at times.

Have no fear! acf_register_block() allows you to create your own Gutenberg blocks using just Advanced Custom Fields.

You will learn:
– ACF & it’s awesome capabilities
– How to create Gutenberg blocks with ACF
– A few other handy ACF tips & tricks

Slides | Github Gist

• Slides

It is well known in the software and website development world that scope creep is the primary cause of projects running over time and budget. At the very least, uncontrolled scope creep will impact your project profit margin as you try and accommodate both legitimate and impractical client requests for change.

In this presentation, we will discuss how to minimize scope creep by acknowledging and planning for change instead of penalizing the client for it. We will cover the elements of a good change control plan and how acknowledging change up front can actually set you ahead of your competition and get you more clients.

Yes, we all know podcasts are hot right now. Everyone’s listening and many people have gone down the path of launching their own. But what really defines a “successful” podcast? Have people in the WordPress space truly found ways to capture the attention of an audience (and make it financially sustainable)?

Join Joe, Christie and a fantastic panel featuring (a way cooler) Joe Casabona, Windy Pierre and Santiago Leon on the WPMRR WordPress podcast live from #WCMIA as they discuss their own journeys podcasting and you get an insider’s perspective.

WordPress just got a brand new Executive Director, but Josepha is not new to WordPress or this work. Join long-time contributor John James Jacoby in an interactive conversation with Josepha Haden as they discuss leadership, the WordPress ecosystem, and what the future might hold.

Description Coming Soon.

Once you are up and running, what are differing ways to expand your Business Development Growth. Our experts have years of experience in strategy and in practice of this topic, we will cover Growth stories and take audience questions submitted through the Slack channel before and during the Session around:

• What are the less obvious ways to grow Sales once you have found your flow?
• What are some advanced processes to deal with the volume in Growth?
• …More to Come

We’ve assembled proven experts in the areas of sales growth, scaled customer management operational growth, pricing, vendor, contract negotiation, and team growth strategies to donate their time to share their wealth of knowledge and though stories of how they grew and made years worth of mistakes. This will be a guided, best practices for growth panel talk with moderated audience Q&A with well known and respected leaders Chris Lema of Liquid Web, Colin Dowling of Raincloud, Pat Ramsey, and Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite & ZenFounder.

ADVANCED BUSINESS TRACK SPEAKERS

Chris Lema

Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.

Colin Dowling

“All else being equal, people will buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends.”

Colin is currently the CEO of RAINCLOUD, a B2B outbounding engine focused on helping digital agencies, SAAS providers, and hosting companies fill the funnel with great future prospects. RAINCLOUD’s singular focus is getting more of the right client to know your business exists then putting you in a position to be top of mind when the time is right. We can’t control when someone will need the service or product you offer, but we can insure that when they need it they will think of you.

Former VP of Channel Sales for Liquid Web
Former VP of Sales for Media Temple (a GoDaddy company)
First Enterprise & Agencies Executive at WP Engine
Former VP of Sales at ISON Managed IT Services

Pat Ramsey

Pat Ramsey oversees all aspects of the technology group at Crowd Favorite as Director of Technology. He brings over 20 years experience in web development, including higher education, government and enterprise digital implementations. Active in technology communities since the early 2000s, Pat is one of the founders of the Austin WordPress meetup, having worked with WordPress since 2004, integrating it into higher education IT and faculty publishing systems. He’s also been a trainer and advisor for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU.

Scott Mann

Scott is the Founder and Creative Director of Highforge, an Orlando-based service agency focused on helping medium and enterprise businesses lead and succeed online. He’s an Emmy- winning commercial writer that’s sold millions in projects and generated hundreds of millions in new revenues for clients since 2001. He’s been managing commercial WordPress projects since 2009. He loves to solve problems, make clients happy and help creatives achieve their destinies. He digs racquetball, travel backpacking, scuba, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, festivals, Bob’s Burgers, fine tequila and a non-profit called Be the Match that helps save lives. Ask him why.

Twitter: @cscottmann 

HOST

Karim Marucchi

Karim Marucchi is the CEO of Crowd Favorite and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group. In the past 20 years, his career path has encompassed a variety of opportunities including founding startups, working for large web agencies and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in taking digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the necessary foundation and institutional knowledge in leading Crowd Favorite into the growing multinational organization it has become today.

The main focus of this talk is showcasing JavaScript features added after the ECMAScript2015 (ES6) release. We’ll cover some of the useful innovations and syntactic improvements in ECMAScript <2016,2017,2018,2019> releases and demonstrate how they enable us to achieve more with less code.

• Slides

WordPress Skills Speakers

Samientha Tellus

Samientha Tellus, a senior at Lauderhill 6-12 who is passionate about computers and coding. I’m pursuing a Computer Science degree after high school.

Amaya Matias Medina

Amaya Matías Medina is a fifth-grade student at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston. She has successfully completed The Hour of Code, Learning.com Digital program, and several other Coding trainings and is a beginner WordPress user. Amaya and her fellow classmates participated in Day of the Girl, hosted by the United Nations, and was featured on NBC 6 and Our City Media with her classmates for their involvement with Robotics.

Amaya has been coding for two years and is part of the VEX Robotics Team at her school, which, thanks to outstanding guidance from her teachers, teamwork and exceptional coding skills, won first place at the Broward VIQC Elementary Tournament and was awarded the Excellence Award and the Teamwork Champion Award. Amaya loves coding, robots and she wants to study Robotics.

Aidan Lacayo

Aidan Lacayo is a sixth grade student at Falcon Cove Middle School in Weston, Florida.  Aidan participates in his school’s science competition class and is enrolled in the Broward County Public School’s Elements of Mathematics Foundations (EMF) advanced mathematics curriculum.  Aidan’s current favorite class in school is debate.  During the summer he will attend Eckerd College for a Duke Tip summer camp program. Aidan plays tennis and enjoys playing the electric guitar.  He is currently a member of a music  band named Inspiration.

Andrew Lacayo

Andrew Lacayo is a fifth grader at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston, Florida.  Andrew is active in his school’s VEX Robotics and SECME teams and plays the piano.  Andrew is on student council, recently completed a semester on the school’s morning announcements team, and is a best buddy at his school.  His favorite subject in school is science and he enjoys sketching and video games.

Alicia Eugene

Edward Pratt

Edward began learning how to use WordPress his tenth-grade year. He attended many WordPress workshops which was sponsored by his Oracle club at school. He was then able to use his knowledge with WordPress during a summer internship he had with the Yeager Companies. He also participated in a competition within his Oracle club where he was placed in a team and had to develop a website, a WordPress powered blog and an application using the Agile Process(Scrum). Edward describes his WordPress experience as interesting and fun. During his learning, Edward has successfully learned how to use HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, and Python. Prior to him joining the Oracle club, he was learning how to make animations and has also participated in a Drone Competition FAU High School. Edward is also a very active person and takes part in his school’s activities. He is a member of his school’s Yearbook club, T.V Production club, NHS, L.I.N.K.S club, Chess Club, and T.U.G.A. On his days off, Edward can be seen reading, drawing, playing music, hanging out with friends, going to the gym or writing a poem. He also enjoys going for walks and admiring nature’s beauty. He aspires to travel the world and enjoy life.

Victoria Dameus

Victoria Rollie Dameus, a senior at Lauderhill 6-12 STEM-MED magnet school, arrived from Haiti in 2013. She managed to develop her leadership role as the Secretary of National Honor Society’s Lauderhill 6-12 chapter, a lead anchor and writer of the school’s television production studio, Copy Editor of the Yearbook club, and Vice President of Future Educators of America’s Lauderhill 6-12 chapter. It was her active involvement in the coding group that propelled Victoria forward. As if learning English as a third language was not enough to keep her occupied, Victoria found the time to learn HTML, HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap, Python, SQL, JavaScript, and PHP. This opened a new world for her. Identifying problems and developing computer science solutions came naturally for Victoria, her work has gained the attention of the South Florida community and she has already made a footprint of her unique user experience web style. Virctoria’s determination to lead by example has provided Victoria with 1st place recognitions for Human Capital Management Jr. End of the Year competition and the Yaegar Redesign Project and 2019 NCWIT Aspirations in Computing National Award winner.  Her community involvement led her to present at the 9th and 10th annual WordCamp Miami where as part of a panel discussion she shared her insights on web tools and publishing in the 21st century.  She parlayed these experiences into a summer job at Conceptual Communications. She also has an AWS Certification.

From Managing new FTE’s , Contractors and Partner Relationships to finding ways to get deliverables out the door faster, growth does not have to be linier. Our experts have years of experience in strategy and in practice of this topic, we will cover Growth stories and take audience questions submitted through the Slack channel before and during the Session around:

• Just throwing bodies at a problem can make it worse, what are some strategies and executable actions to safely deal with production growth?   
• Can you find growth partners without giving up or our Sales or profit?
• …More to Come

We’ve assembled proven experts in the areas of sales growth, scaled customer management operational growth, pricing, vendor, contract negotiation, and team growth strategies to donate their time to share their wealth of knowledge and though stories of how they grew and made years worth of mistakes. This will be a guided, best practices for growth panel talk with moderated audience Q&A with well known and respected leaders Chris Lema of Liquid Web, Colin Dowling of Raincloud, Pat Ramsey and Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite & ZenFounder.

ADVANCED BUSINESS TRACK SPEAKERS

Chris Lema

Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.

Colin Dowling

“All else being equal, people will buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends.”

Colin is currently the CEO of RAINCLOUD, a B2B outbounding engine focused on helping digital agencies, SAAS providers, and hosting companies fill the funnel with great future prospects. RAINCLOUD’s singular focus is getting more of the right client to know your business exists then putting you in a position to be top of mind when the time is right. We can’t control when someone will need the service or product you offer, but we can insure that when they need it they will think of you.

Former VP of Channel Sales for Liquid Web
Former VP of Sales for Media Temple (a GoDaddy company)
First Enterprise & Agencies Executive at WP Engine
Former VP of Sales at ISON Managed IT Services

Pat Ramsey

Pat Ramsey oversees all aspects of the technology group at Crowd Favorite as Director of Technology. He brings over 20 years experience in web development, including higher education, government and enterprise digital implementations. Active in technology communities since the early 2000s, Pat is one of the founders of the Austin WordPress meetup, having worked with WordPress since 2004, integrating it into higher education IT and faculty publishing systems. He’s also been a trainer and advisor for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU.

Scott Mann

Scott is the Founder and Creative Director of Highforge, an Orlando-based service agency focused on helping medium and enterprise businesses lead and succeed online. He’s an Emmy- winning commercial writer that’s sold millions in projects and generated hundreds of millions in new revenues for clients since 2001. He’s been managing commercial WordPress projects since 2009. He loves to solve problems, make clients happy and help creatives achieve their destinies. He digs racquetball, travel backpacking, scuba, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, festivals, Bob’s Burgers, fine tequila and a non-profit called Be the Match that helps save lives. Ask him why.

HOST

Karim Marucchi

Karim Marucchi is the CEO of Crowd Favorite and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group. In the past 20 years, his career path has encompassed a variety of opportunities including founding startups, working for large web agencies and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in taking digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the necessary foundation and institutional knowledge in leading Crowd Favorite into the growing multinational organization it has become today.

The key take away would be: For any modern web app, learn how to deal with things happening “at the same time “ and even eliminate time as a concern.

This talk will take a deep dive into core asynchronous patterns in JavaScript, comparing the tradeoffs of callbacks, promises and async/await (potentially streams/observables if time allows) and demonstrating how each pattern builds on top of the previous, improving our async handling capabilities.

The goal is to show how we can use these patterns to write cleaner and more reliable (concurrent) code and demystify concepts like the Event Queue, Single-threaded, Run to Completion and Non-Blocking.

• Slides

This talk will discuss several different types of ecommerce, ranging from self-hosted to SaaS offerings. Within those we’ll take a look at some specific implementations like Shopify and BigCommerce on the SaaS side, WooCommerce, Ninja Commerce, and BigCommerce on the WordPress side, as well as some options like Magento and UberCart on the self-hosted non-WordPress side.

Ecommerce is a large, impactful part of what you do on the Internet, and every decision should be backed up by hard data, so there are no guesses.

• Slides

Everyone knows their WordPress site needs to be secure from hackers, but do you know just how to get there? In this talk I will cover a range of tips and tricks you can use to secure your WordPress site to help stop hackers from getting in. I will cover security hardening techniques along with things like password security and security monitoring regimes. Once finished, you will have a better understanding of your WordPress security posture and steps you can take to help mitigate security risks. 

• Slides

OK, so you have new sales and the people and partnerships to deliver them, what about the paperwork, people/partner management and Client Management and support that keeps you in business? Our experts have years of experience in strategy and in practice of this topic, we will cover growth stories and take audience questions submitted through the Slack channel before and during the Session around:

• Some of the unintended Operational hiccups caused by hyper-growth in your companies structure  
• Serving more service clients or more product customers, how does your organization need to pivot
• Post Sales Support for both Services and Products is not a linear curve in growth, what are the warning signs and how can you deal with it effectively.
• …More to Come

We’ve assembled proven experts in the areas of sales growth, scaled customer management operational growth, pricing, vendor, contract negotiation, and team growth strategies to donate their time to share their wealth of knowledge and though stories of how they grew and made years worth of mistakes. This will be a guided, best practices for growth panel talk with moderated audience Q&A with well known and respected leaders Chris Lema of Liquid Web, Colin Dowling of Raincloud, Pat Ramsey and Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite & ZenFounder.

Advanced Business Track Speakers

Chris Lema

Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.

Colin Dowling

“All else being equal, people will buy from their friends. So make everything else equal then go make a lot of friends.”

Colin is currently the CEO of RAINCLOUD, a B2B outbounding engine focused on helping digital agencies, SAAS providers, and hosting companies fill the funnel with great future prospects. RAINCLOUD’s singular focus is getting more of the right client to know your business exists then putting you in a position to be top of mind when the time is right. We can’t control when someone will need the service or product you offer, but we can insure that when they need it they will think of you.

Former VP of Channel Sales for Liquid Web
Former VP of Sales for Media Temple (a GoDaddy company)
First Enterprise & Agencies Executive at WP Engine
Former VP of Sales at ISON Managed IT Services

Pat Ramsey

Pat Ramsey oversees all aspects of the technology group at Crowd Favorite as Director of Technology. He brings over 20 years experience in web development, including higher education, government and enterprise digital implementations. Active in technology communities since the early 2000s, Pat is one of the founders of the Austin WordPress meetup, having worked with WordPress since 2004, integrating it into higher education IT and faculty publishing systems. He’s also been a trainer and advisor for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU.

Scott Mann

Scott is the Founder and Creative Director of Highforge, an Orlando-based service agency focused on helping medium and enterprise businesses lead and succeed online. He’s an Emmy- winning commercial writer that’s sold millions in projects and generated hundreds of millions in new revenues for clients since 2001. He’s been managing commercial WordPress projects since 2009. He loves to solve problems, make clients happy and help creatives achieve their destinies. He digs racquetball, travel backpacking, scuba, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, festivals, Bob’s Burgers, fine tequila and a non-profit called Be the Match that helps save lives. Ask him why,

Host

Karim Marucchi

Karim Marucchi is the CEO of Crowd Favorite and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group. In the past 20 years, his career path has encompassed a variety of opportunities including founding startups, working for large web agencies and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in taking digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the necessary foundation and institutional knowledge in leading Crowd Favorite into the growing multinational organization it has become today.

React is most popular JavaScript library and We will show how easy and fast you can build simple React App form scratch with help from Redux. React is amazing library for creating highly reactive and super fast javascript driven web applications. This is amazing because JavaScript runs in the browser and it allows you to create super fast web apps that feel like mobile apps,(user don’t have to wait for reload ).

We will show you how to build components, react router and how to use Redux for better state management.

We are now living in the age of the internet where mass amounts of information live. We are dawning on an era where college degrees are worth less and skills are increasingly worth more. We now have the ability to teach ourselves almost any subject. We can take advantage of that in regard to learn new coding languages and technology. I can give you resources that will assist you in that endeavor.

This Privacy and Security panel includes a cross-section of industry experts, with diverse Open Source backgrounds, from hosting and security companies to a privacy attorney that will discuss the biggest challenges and tips when dealing with privacy and security for you and your clients in the rapidly changing privacy and security landscape. Join us for a live Q & A and receive takeaways you can implement immediately.

This panel discussion is for YOU, to get your questions answered! If you would like to submit your privacy and security questions before, or during the panel on Sunday, March 17th. Go to: www.sli.do or download the Slido app and look for Event: WordCampMiami Event Code: #Privacy

Privacy and Security Panel Speakers

Chris Teitzel

Chris is the founder of Lockr, a company focused on making secrets management simple and affordable. He’s been involved in WordPress and Drupal for a number of years and is a founding member of the Cross-CMS Privacy Working Group bringing together WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Umbraco, and Typo3. Chris is also appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

Tony Perez

Tony is the GoDaddy General Manager (GM) responsible for the Security Product Group and Sucuri Brand. He oversees the Certificate Authority (CA), Content Distribution Network (CDN), Website Application Firewall (WAF), Website Backups, Monitoring, DNS and Incident Response Product and services. He is the former CEO/Co-Founder at Sucuri and US Marine.

Chris Wiegman

A veteran of the WordPress world who has been developing plugins and sites for over a decade. Currently working on helping other developers succeed at WP Engine.

Pat Ramsey

Pat Ramsey oversees all aspects of the technology group at Crowd Favorite as Director of Technology. He has over 20 years of experience in web development; including higher education, government, and enterprise digital implementations. Active in technology communities since the early 2000s, Pat is one of the founders of the Austin WordPress meetup, having worked with WordPress since 2004, integrating WP into higher education IT and faculty publishing systems. He’s also been a trainer and advisor for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU, advocating for accessible web design.  

Host

Rian Kinney, Esq.

Rian Kinney, founder of eCommLegal and The Kinney Firm, is a US Privacy and Tech Attorney, assisting businesses of all sizes from freelancers to enterprise. She is currently representing and working with some of WordPress’s biggest names.

Rian holds the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ CIPM and CIPP/E Designations and has spoken at conferences all over the US and Europe on issues ranging from contracts, CYA’ing your site, to ethics, and privacy.

There is something frightening about building a real product for real people to use. Somehow I fought through symptoms of imposter syndrome that left me feeling incredibly insecure about my talents as a designer and developer. However, with a supportive community and the magical capabilities of React I launched my first product this year.

This talk will highlight significant technical details building a membership directory with React and headless WordPress. Along the way, I’ll divulge challenges I faced as a newbie, some successful moments, embarrassing decisions, and a few inner narratives from a developing Full-stack Product Designer. This talk is a reminder to myself that the journey continues. I want to transparently share my journey with an audience that I value.

After three years cleaning up hacked sites, Kathy Zant has seen some things. In WordPress Security 101, you’ll hear some fascinating stories of how hackers get into WordPress websites and what we find in a hacked site. These stories will entertain, but also give you a solid foundation for making good security decisions for your WordPress sites.

• Slides

Key take away will be what the differences and similarities are between Gatsby.js and React.js.

• Slides

Following our in-depth, What You Need to Know about Privacy and Security in 2019 Panel, we will be taking pre-submitted questions and live questions from the audience.

If you would like to submit your privacy and security questions before, or during the panel on Sunday, March 17th. Go to: www.sli.do or download the Slido app and look for Event: WordCampMiami Event Code: #Privacy

Join us to get your privacy and security questions answered for industry-leading experts.

Privacy and Security Panel Speakers

Chris Teitzel

Chris is the founder of Lockr, a company focused on making secrets management simple and affordable. He’s been involved in WordPress and Drupal for a number of years and is a founding member of the Cross-CMS Privacy Working Group bringing together WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Umbraco, and Typo3. Chris is also appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

Tony Perez

Tony is the GoDaddy General Manager (GM) responsible for the Security Product Group and Sucuri Brand. He oversees the Certificate Authority (CA), Content Distribution Network (CDN), Website Application Firewall (WAF), Website Backups, Monitoring, DNS and Incident Response Product and services. He is the former CEO/Co-Founder at Sucuri and US Marine.

Chris Wiegman

A veteran of the WordPress world who has been developing plugins and sites for over a decade. Currently working on helping other developers succeed at WP Engine.

Pat Ramsey

Pat Ramsey oversees all aspects of the technology group at Crowd Favorite as Director of Technology. He has over 20 years of experience in web development; including higher education, government, and enterprise digital implementations. Active in technology communities since the early 2000s, Pat is one of the founders of the Austin WordPress meetup, having worked with WordPress since 2004, integrating WP into higher education IT and faculty publishing systems. He’s also been a trainer and advisor for Knowbility’s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU, advocating for accessible web design.  

Host

Rian Kinney, Esq.

Rian Kinney, founder of eCommLegal and The Kinney Firm, is a US Privacy and Tech Attorney assisting businesses of all sizes from freelancers to enterprise. She is currently representing and working with some of WordPress’s biggest names.

Rian holds the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ CIPM and CIPP/E Designations and has spoken at conferences all over the US and Europe on issues ranging from contracts, CYA’ing your site, to ethics, and privacy.

• Slides

As an educator in South Florida for the Past 25 years, it is important to share the impact of WordCamp Miami with others who are not in education and how it can lead to other opportunities for our community and youth.

Predictive Communication is the process of anticipating when a customer might have a question or concern and reaching out to them at that moment. The concept of anticipating potential questions or concerns is an area that can set organizations apart by developing a stronger brand loyalty and relationship with customers.

This session covers four phases to consider with Predictive Communication. While the session is designed with marketing in mind, the concept also applies to personal relationships. Instead of presuming the recipient will know what you expect to happen, reach out and share.

• Slides

A personal story about how stress and workload overload can kill us.

Building an agency is challenging work. It’s even harder when you scale from startup to over $1M in revenue in two years. In this lightning talk, Zach Stepek, CEO and co-founder of Mindsize, will share some of the things he’s learned during his journey of exponential growth.

Your home page is where most visitors to your website will land when they first become aware of you and your website.  This is why you want your home page to make a great first impression, so a casual visitor becomes a repeat reader of your blog and perhaps even turn into a customer.

In this talk, discover the four key components of a website home page, learn how to create and assemble them into an effective home page that makes you proud. 

Vue JS is a progressive JavasScript framework. It’s easy to learn, versatile and performant. It can be used for building entire Single Page Apps or it can just be sprinkled into any web app to add responsive functionality. In this talk I’ll walk you through setting up a simple Vue app and explain all the things that make up a Vue component and it’s easy to follow templating syntax.

By the end of this talk I hope you’re ready to jump in and try some Vue!

Whether you’re a part-time freelancer, a full-time entrepreneur, or in charge of pulling in sales for your growing company, you can use the principles of persuasion to help you increase your business.  Anthony will cover not only the essential principles of persuasion, but he’ll show you how to apply them to your business to help you be more successful.