About

Scott Croom has been working in the Web Design industry for 4 years. Both humble and humorous, he guides his design team to creating swift and clean designs for small to large businesses. Scott got his start in Wall St management but being a lover of technology, he later taught engineering and programming. It was while coaching a winning robotics teams that Scott really became truly aware of how critical having systems in place was the foundation of a project’s success. Scott currently manages a web development team that will frequently juggle dozens WordPress projects at a time as well as a member of the Project Managers Institute.

Topic: Pain Free(ish) Project Management

Failing to plan is planning to fail. Way too many otherwise talented WordPress businesses get bogged down in development hell. Pain Free(ish) Project Management is a product and method agnostic approach to setting goals, getting systems in place, and following through with consistent execution. The talk includes ideas and samples of flowcharts and systems that people can use on their own projects at no or low cost. This talk is not only for businesses but also great for anyone building a WordPress site or doing any type of project.

About

Claudia is a customer service addict. She’s worked for some of the largest companies in I.T. and throughout her career, Claudia has focused her work on proactively finding solutions for her customers. She believes that, by giving customers a channel to voice their feedback, businesses can improve their processes and features.

Topic: Digital Business: Making IT personal

During my presentation I plan to touch on examples of customers going from a churn risk to a promoter. My intention is to educate business owners and entrepreneurs that learning from their customers will open the door to revenue streams that no amount of advertising or marketing campaigns can bring in. You’re only a great company if your customers agree.
It’s no secret, businesses need customers to be successful– so why not give them a channel to be heard? The cost of acquiring a new customer outweighs the cost of keeping and maintaining a relationship with a long-time patron– and long-time patrons become Promoters. Continuously learning what your business and team can do to be better in your customers eyes SHOULD be your #1 priority.

About

Taylor Bare is CEO of TaylorMade Web Presence, a website and online presence development company. He has an extensive background in search engine optimization, WordPress site development and web tools training for entrepreneurs. He’s also helped companies reach the first page of Google and increase their online conversion rates through split testing. At TaylorMade Web Presence Taylor and his team provide authors, speakers and coaches with the tools and training they need to build their platform, get paid and make a difference. Because Taylor believes small business owners and entrepreneurs should be able to make website changes on their own timetable, he teaches them how to take control of their web presence through the power and simplicity of WordPress. With a certification in advanced search engine marketing techniques, Taylor knows how to bring targeted website visitors, and as a certified Guerrilla Marketing practitioner he knows what it takes to turn visitors into sales.

Topic: Setting up your WordPress website for success

A website is much more than an online business card. It is the central hub of your online presence and the face of your business to thousands of potential clients. To effectively reach your audience, you must have the proper elements in place, as well as the tools that will allow you to manage your WordPress website with the greatest of ease, functionality and power.

Join Taylor in this presentation to learn the elements that every WordPress website must have. You will learn how to:

• Ensure an SEO-friendly website
• Keep track of where your visitors are coming from
• Start building a marketable email list
• Use the tools that will save you time and headaches
• Make your website and blog posts more engaging

And much more!

About

Chris has worked for several start-ups in the Austin TX area for years, focusing mostly on eCommerce solutions in a technical support role. He moved on to becoming the director of support at WP Engine, and then a Happiness Engineer at Automattic. He is now the CEO of Pressable, a Managed WordPress Hosting Company.

Topic: Users need our help

The WordPress Community is one of the most supportive tech community in the world. We help each other through code issues, site problems, ideas for improving the design of the site, and so much more. New WordPress users often struggle to understand how to get help, and confront similar challenges when they start building their site and hosting it.

• Where should they host their site?
• What type of design should they use?
• How do they manage all of their plugins, and which plugins should they use?
• Then what happens when their site goes down?
• How do they ask for help?
• Who do they ask?

This talk covers these type of topics and covers the life cycle of different types of users. WordPress is one of the most flexible platforms in the world that provides a ton of options. For a new user, or a seasoned user, it can be hard to navigate the WordPress Community. Users Need Our Help.

About

Daniel has been a professional developer for 20 years and been running Grow Development for the past 8 years. He focuses on WooCommece development building commercial plugins and custom ecommerce sites. Daniel authored the “Getting Started with WooCommerce” video series for WP101 and produces growdev.tv – a free WooCommerce focused question and answer series. Daniel and his wife Amanda live in San Antonio with their three kids when not traveling the world as a family.

Topic: Using the WooCommece REST API

In this talk I’ll show how to integrate your WooCommerce store with other systems that power your business. Perhaps customer data needs to be available to a CRM system, or the order data needs to be updated by the warehouse’s inventory system. All of this functionality an more can be harnessed by using WooCommerce’s built in REST API!

About

Emily White is a web and graphic designer and has been designing WordPress websites for about eight years. She runs a full-service design and development studio, specializing in custom WordPress sites built on the Genesis them framework. She’s worked with hundreds of clients from all over the world, helping them to grow their businesses and personal brands. Her attention to detail, professionalism, and unique design style is what her clients say they love most about working with her. Emily lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and three daughters.

Topic: Clients from Heaven: How to attract the clients you want, exceed their expectations, and keep them (and their friends) coming back for more!

Since I began my WordPress design and development business eight years ago I have always had a waiting list of clients. At times I’ve had folks wait up to six months to work with me. Is it because I’m the best designer around? Nope. Is it because I’m an awesome developer with coding skills like a ninja. Hardly! There are any number of people that could deliver the same product as me. But I don’t think there’s as many that could deliver the same experience of working with me. I will teach you how to attract the clients that YOU want to work with.
We’ll go through the entire process from initial email inquiry to proposal, site design, development, launch, and beyond. Great client relationships don’t end when the site goes live. We’ll discuss strategies for developing amazing ongoing client relationships and why that is the key to long-term success. ‘Clients from Hell’ might make for funny stories, but it doesn’t have to be your story!

About

Stefanie works with Grok Interactive as their WordPress Director and Frontend Team Lead. She has been working in web development and design for me than 5 years and using WordPress as a primary tool for 3. Outside of the workplace you can find her running around town catching Pokemon and competing within the eSports scene. She loves caffeine, books and Game of Thrones, and while she won’t admit it, she loves a great pun!

Topic: Responsive Design

Stefanie will be going over the basics of design in WP theme building. How to help organize your classes, Twitter Bootstrap (if someone intends on using it) and overall design output through desktop and devices.

About

Isaac does development under his own company Echo Design Solutions. He has been doing development for over 15 years and enjoys new challenges and the fast paced exciting world that is development today. When he is not developing he is wrestling with his four kiddos and trying really hard not to be the 5th kiddo to his wife (Wife: “Which he fails at”). In his spare time he enjoys coffee, beer, fine cigars and working on house remods.

Topic: Steps to secure your WordPress Site

Security is a crucial element of any WordPress site and too often site owners don’t put it on their forefront of development till it’s too late. A few steps provided in the WordPress documentation along with some tested practices can help.

About

Alan Bush is a Community Manager at Rackspace by day, a husband, daddy and comedian by night. Alan likes beer, coffee, puns and the Kansas City Royals. He dislikes writing about himself in the third person.

Topic: Improv-ing your content

Can improv help you be a better content creator? Does Big Red go with Barbacoa? (The answer to both, is “yes.”) I’ll show you how I apply improv philosophies, such as “Yes, and,” giving gifts, and many more, in my roles as blogger, Community Manager and co-host of multiple podcasts. You’ll leave learning how you can use these same philosophies to create new and interesting content on your own or in collaboration with others.