We’re exited to announce another batch of excellent WordCamp Sydney presenters.
Cath Hughes
Cath Hughes is a Sydney-based web designer, WordPress consultant and WordPress tutor, speaker, mentor and an active member of the WordPress community here in Australia, and online.
Cath is also a coach at WP Elevation, where she trains and mentors website designers and web development professionals in business.
Cath founded her first business, Phase Creative, back in 2013, and launched Live By 5 with the aim of bringing quality sites to the freelance, consultant and soloist market.
Presenting: Beyond the theme: Affirming the role of the designer in the WordPress ecosystem
With a market spanning DIY to Enterprise, WordPress has cemented itself as the tool of choice for nearly 30% of the world’s internet creators.
We celebrate the robust content engine and the thousands of themes available, but with so much ‘done for us’, where does the role of designer fit within the WordPress environment, and how can we continue to use design to influence and shape the experience of WordPress for businesses, developers, DIY’ers and their respective audiences.
Ricky Blacker
Ricky is a self taught web professional who found and fell in love with WordPress, and the community behind it while looking for a CMS platform to build websites for clients.
He originally built his own web design business after being made redundant from a factory job in 2013, but now works for WP Engine as a Pre Sales Engineer, providing a Digital Experience Platform for WordPress.
He is a Co-Organizer for the Sunshine Coast & Brisbane WordPress Meetup Groups, as well as the Brisbane Web Design Meetup group, and was one of the amazing team who put together the Sunshine Coast WordCamp in 2016 and WordCamp Brisbane in 2017.
Presenting: Using Page Builders For Fun And Profit
Page Builders can sometimes get a bad rap, from being bloated and slowing sites down, to breaking sites and causing problems, or just not cool enough for real coders to use.
In this presentation I will show you how Page Builders are becoming more accepted, from novices to seasoned professionals, and use cases that demonstrate ways page builders can speed up development and make you more efficient.
Travis Balinas
I’m a Senior Product Marketing Manager at BigCommerce, leading the Commerce-as-a-Service initiative for our platform, focused on delivering headless commerce to WordPress.
Content and commerce are inextricably linked and I believe that the future of both will blend the best of open source + SaaS. I have nearly a decade of experience working at SaaS startups, serving small business, mid-market, and enterprise audiences across a multitude of industries.
Presenting: 5 Ecommerce Trends to Implement Now
Ecommerce is evolving and brands can do a lot to move the needle for their businesses if they know the right strategies to use.
Learn about the most relevant trends in ecommerce right now and how you can put them into practice immediately.
Evan Mullins
Evan Mullins uses WordPress daily at the office as well as for his own projects. He is currently Senior Front End Engineer at 10up.
He blogs at circlecube.com and has even been known to dream in WordPress.
With a background in digital media art, he now embraces the dark side and has found a strong creative outlet programming websites. Evan loves the problem solving aspect of web development and shines at harnessing WordPress as a true CMS & making interactive designs – interactive.
He strives to make the web a prettier, more pleasant and all-around better place for you & your grandma. Outside of work, Evan is a dedicated husband, father of four and soccer coach who loves rock music, audiobooks, chocolate and good pizza. He’s also a digital nomad family on a world tour!
Presenting: Adding a Child Theme to your WordPress Family
Learn how to modify WordPress themes the right way and even how to get a head start on your theme building.
We’ll go over the why and how concerning child themes and explore some topics on creating and working with child themes: inheritance and posterity, rebellious phases and discipline, style and security, responsibility and neglect, individuality and respect.
Wean yourself from bad practices and learn to child theme and try not to roll your eyes at the endless child theme puns and metaphors.
Phil Hall
I’m a school teacher who took to blogging because my wife kept insisting that I write a book about my experiences in motorcycling. I started riding a bike in 1974 and, over the years, have had many experiences related to riding and the people I have met while riding.
Right now I am celebrating 10 years of running my blog. The story of how my blog started is interesting in itself, however, what is more fascinating is what unfolded after the day I was helicoptered out of Macquarie Pass to St George Hospital. A head on collision with a semi trailer while riding my motorcycle turned my world upside down.
Presenting: Can writing a blog change your life?
How my blog became an important part of my recovery from a life-changing event.
In this talk you’ll hear how my blog became an important part of my recovery, rehabilitation and return to life on two wheels and how it has widened my community of friends globally.
You’ll also hear about the critical importance of original content, of how a variety of articles can keep your blog fresh and interesting, the importance of my blog now that I have retired and why my blog is so important to me.
Robey Lawrence
I worked in IT for 5 years, straight of High School. Then decided to pivot to web design when I discovered WordPress in 2013. I moved to the Gold Coast in 2014 where I started attending WP Meetups. That’s where my networking and learning exploded and I’ve been hooked (no pun intended) ever since.
The community around the WordPress platform has been such an encouragement for me over the last few years, I have grown and learnt so much from the generosity and time of others.
It is because of this that I am passionate about giving back, through organising the WordPress Port Macquarie Meetup and also co-creating and hosting the WP Bosses video hangout / podcast, where we interview Aussie WordPress Designers, Developers, Builders, Users, Hackers, Preachers etc.
Presenting: Working by yourself…together.
Working for yourself is great and all, but sometimes it can get lonely.
I figured this out pretty quickly when I began working for (by) myself. I’d love to share some tips and ideas I’ve picked up over the last few years regarding your working environment, finding others to work together with (on your own stuff), co-working spaces etc.
These are all things that can benefit your productivity, your professional growth, and even your mental health.
Simon Foxe
Simon Foxe has worked in both infrastructure and development sides of the tech industry since the early 90’s.
He is the director of Codeflow, a WordPress specialised development business servicing clients in Australia, United States and Switzerland.
He has been running Codeflow from the road for the last 4 years, and recently completed the Remote Year program, living and working in a different country each month with 65 other digital nomads.
Presenting: Digital Nomad Development
An exploration of ideas, lessons, hacks and opportunities to make you a more productive WP developer… and take your business on the road.
Topic points:
- Lessons learned whilst traveling the world as a remote WP developer.
- Hard realities of what it’s like to be a digital nomad, and what you need to do to make it profitable
- Australian specific tax implications and opportunites
- Acknowledge maintenance is required, and turn it into a product you sell to your clients (eg: ManageWP, InfiniteWP)
- Develop using ‘reusable function’ methodologies in your business (eg: starter themes, child themes, frameworks). Look at baking your own framework, but always use others.
- Look for opportunities to streamline your development (eg: CSS compilers, FTP sync, placing WP in a subdirectory).
- Become a hosting reseller to increase your passive income and be a one point call for your clients. This will save you time dealing with site builds.
- Identify opportunities to buy developer licenses and sell access to these as part of your maintenance.
- The benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone, and learning from other developers – especially non WP focused ones.
Matt Knighton
Matt is an avid developer and business analyst with his own agency, http://www.mrkwebsites.com and a site he sells WordPress plugins on https://www.DiviFramework.com
Matt is a WordPress advocate and user.
In his spare time he .. whats spare time. Make the most of every moment folks, you can’t get it back.
Presenting: Here come the machines
Machine Learning and AI is ready to take over the world.
Are you ready for Machine Learning to take over your WordPress website?
In this talk I cover what Machine Learning can do, where it can go and some practical examples of how to use the world of Artificial Intelligence to improve your WordPress website.
Will it replace your job? Maybe, but we also cover how you can face these challenges and ensure your highly employable into the future.