The Future of WordPress
presented by Scott Berkun
In an entertaining 40 minutes Berkun will attack the idea of the future of WP using four wildly different lenses: 1) Revolution 2) Death and the dead 3) Platform and 4) Best of the Rest. He might be entirely wrong, but it’s sure to be fun, provocative and make you think differently about what the future of WP should be.
Writing Plugins for N00bs
presented by Niall Kennedy
Niall gives an overview of how using and developing plugins can extend and enhance your WordPress-based site.
WordPress, Audience Engagement and SEO
presented by Vanessa Fox
Vanessa Fox speaks about the prevalence of search engines as the basis of web browsing, the importance of drawing traffic to your site, and methods for building an audience.
Why We Turned Microsoft Office Into a Game
presented by Daniel Cook
Daniel Cook discusses using game mechanics to teach users how to learn features and controls in applications. What the Office Labs team did can provide inspiration for engaging users with your new product or website.
Abstract Your Code!
presented by Michael “mitcho” Erlewine
Writing code isn’t just about getting the job done, it’s about getting the job done right. In addition to being easier to read and maintain, one great advantage to writing properly abstracted code is that it is then easy to open-source it and give back to the WordPress community. Come learn about some best practices for writing portable, modular WordPress code and later open-sourcing that code as a plugin. Learn about the experiences of other programmers who have done client-sponsored open-source WordPress work and the benefits they reaped.
Bodysurfing the Blogosphere: How an Audience-Distributed Film Won Big
presented by Karl Fogel
In 2009, QuestionCopyright.org helped filmmaker Nina Paley release her award-winning feature film “Sita Sings the Blues” under a free license, with a completely open source economic model. The film is now an audience hit, online and in theaters, and the free license has resulted in more money for Paley than any traditional distributor offered. This talk is an in-depth look at how the blogosphere drove the film’s popularity, and how disintermediation technologies allowed audiences to connect directly to the artist and support her.
Living with Our Computers… and Keeping it Healthy
presented by John Ford
Co-dependency in any relationship can be tough to swallow – especially if you have commitment issues. And, sure, we’ve heard it all before – you’re “so devoted to one another,” yet you still turned your head when the sexy new model came along, didn’t you? Join us for an intimate look at how we love our computers and why we need to reconnect with each other.
User Experience the WordPress Way
presented by Jane Wells
Jane Wells uses real examples to demonstrate how to best design your WordPress user experiences to mesh with those of the core software and fulfill the expectations of your users.
State of the Word
presented by Matt Mullenweg
Matt discusses the year past and what’s ahead for the WordPress community.
WordPress: A Key Link in Blogging’s Evolutionary Chain
presented by Scott Ronseberg
Blogging’s been around 10 or 15 years depending on who’s counting. Hooray for us — we have a history! But how did we get here, anyway? Why did blogging evolve the way it did — and where does WordPress fit in to that story? Scott Rosenberg – tech writer, Salon.com cofounder, and longtime blogger — will look to blogging’s past to try to understand where it’s going.
Free software and your freedom
presented by Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman will speak about the Free Software Movement, which campaigns for freedom so that computer users can cooperate to control their own computing activities. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, often erroneously referred to as Linux, specifically to establish these freedoms.
Lightning Sessions
(listed in order)
Right to Left languages support in WordPress
presented by Yoav Farhi
In this short session you’ll learn how to make your WordPress theme or plugin work with languages written from right to left, such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi.
A Critical Analysis of the SEO of WordPress.com
presented by Stephan Spencer
When it comes to search engine optimization, the learning is in the doing. This is where the rubber meets the road. How better to get a crash course in the practical application of SEO than to see tactics, techniques and tools applied to a site we all know and love — WordPress.com. Stephan will deconstruct the WordPress.com home page and a representative sampling of internal pages from an SEO perspective. From this you’ll walk away with valuable lessons to apply to your own blog/site.
WordPress, Freedom of Speech, and Revolution in Kyrgyzstan
presented by Rinat Tuhvatshin
Presentation about how Kloop Media integrated WordPress and new educational methods to create service that became vitally important for protection of freedom of speech and development of journalism in turbulent environment of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Children are the future.
An introduction to rapid theme development using WordPress Child Themes.
presented by Allan Cole
As a self-employed front end web designer, I am mostly concerned with layout, visual aesthetics, and clean markup. For most Front-end designers, working with PHP, and WP database queries can often interrupt our workflow and slow down our delivery times. In this short but sweet session I will show you how you can use WordPress Child themes and Frameworks to quickly design amazing-looking, well-coded sites with out losing your head trying to figure out WordPress template tags.
Mall Rats
presented by Dan Milward
A fun, quick and smart presentation on WP e-commerce. Features a tour of the new 2010 e-Commerce child theme made for Automattic and a first hand demonstration on how easy it is to setup shop using WordPress. The session will also include some giveaways and canonical nature of the latest release of the popular plugin.
A Grammar Checker for the Web
presented by Raphael Mudge
You may know After the Deadline as the intelligent proofreader used on WordPress.com. Did you know you can use it all over the web? Raphael will show After the Deadline for Firefox and also preview After the Deadline for Google Chrome. You’ll tweet with confidence, share with correct spelling, and send emails with correct grammar.
Improving Your Comments with IntenseDebate
presented by Michael Koenig
If your blog is the venue, then your comments are the party. No one likes a dull party, so get rid of your boring vanilla comment system and install IntenseDebate, Automattic’s very own super-charged distributed comment system. Michael will give you the insider tour of IntenseDebate, and show you how ID can increase your reader engagement, make your blog more social, and boost your pageviews.
