Speaker Spotlight: Al Davis

April 12, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: Al Davis

Al Davis has spent more than 15 years working with small business owners, helping get their businesses online. In his former life as a Hosting Product Manager, Al has seen the good, the bad, and the (very) ugly when it comes from taking a website idea to website reality. Currently, Al is a Program Manager for the world’s largest hosting wholesaler and is in charge of WordPress strategy and product direction for several of the world’s largest telcos and ISPs. Al also teaches Intro to WordPress at George Brown College in Toronto and expands to offering an Intermediate WP class in the summer, in addition to offering both classes online. He has formerly been an organizer of Toronto’s WordPress MeetUp groups as well as the two WordCamps that are hosted in Toronto. When not working with WordPress or writing for his site at WPTeach.com, Al can be found on his Harley or taking in a football game somewhere.

Al is presenting: After the Install

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? In all my years building websites and reviewing and implementing tools to help others, nothing has come close the the combination of simplicity and flexibility that WordPress offers.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? Rick has blackmail material on me…..seriously, I have had the chance to meet a few people in the Ottawa WordPress community through my involvement with both WordCamp Montreal and WordCamp Toronto and it was  a no brainer for me to sign up and present at the first ever WordCamp Ottawa. i’m looking forward to seeing old friends and making some new ones!
What is your talk going to be about? 10 things you should do after you install WordPress and before you start producing content. Very much a quick checklist of things you need to know and do.
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? Thats easy Backup Buddy…cause it’s saved my bacon more than once…
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Speaker Spotlight: Mo Jangda

April 12, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: Mo Jangda

Mo wrangles code and VIPs at WordPress.com. He enjoys ice cream and other sugary things.

 

Mo is presenting: How to think and work like a VIP Developer

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? It’s the easiest, most flexible and forgiving platform out there.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? It’s the first one! And I miss Beaver Tails 😉
What is your talk going to be about? How to be a great developer
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? The Developer plugin (no bias!). It helps you kickstart your development environment by setting up all the plugins and settings you need.
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Session Highlights – Code Creators Theming Morning

April 11, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Session Highlights – Code Creators Theming Morning

This is the first in a series of posts, tagged “Session Highlights” that will highlight many of the sessions that will be presented during WordCamp.

To a large degree our session schedule is dictated by our volunteer speakers and what they choose to contribute as session topics.  So when you luck out, and can put together a line-up like this one, well, you just have to shout about it!

For our first Session Highlights post, check out our Code Creators line up for Saturday morning:

  1. Start your morning by learning how to “Code a theme from scratch” with Scott Gallant
  2. Follow that up by learning how to internationalize it with Shannon Smith in “Building Multilingual WordPress Themes“
  3. Wrap up the morning by seeing what makes themes responsive in “Using Responsive WordPress Themes” with Clarissa Peterson.

If you ever wanted to learn how to create your own custom WordPress theme or  to customize a theme you have, then this is a must do morning!

If you are not quite ready for creating your own theme, then check out “WordPress Themes and Frameworks Explained” with Richard Martin in Content Creators and “Simple Theme Customization” with Jordan Quintal in Site Creators for more introductory level sessions.

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Speaker Spotlight: Clarissa Peterson

April 11, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: Clarissa Peterson

After spending more than a decade in Washington, D.C., managing websites for nonprofit organizations, Clarissa Peterson set off last fall on an international road trip that took her through nearly twenty states and provinces. While traveling, she works from the road as an independent UX designer, web developer, and consultant, and she frequently speaks on responsive design and mobile strategy. Clarissa is the author of Learning Responsive Web Design, to be published later this year by O’Reilly Media. You can find her on Twitter: @clarissa

Clarissa is presenting: Using Responsive WordPress Themes

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? For anyone who does client work, WordPress has a great deal of versatility, which means that you can use it for almost any type of website or project. Otherwise you’d have to learn multiple CMSs in order to be able to offer clients the same variety of functionality.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I have been to a few WordCamps in different cities, but this is my first time speaking at one. I’m excited to be able to give back to the community by sharing knowledge.
What is your talk going to be about? It will go beyond the basics of responsive design and help you understand the best ways to implement responsive design on your WordPress site, along with what else you need to do to make sure your site works well on all devices.
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Speaker Spotlight: Shannon Smith

April 11, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: Shannon Smith

Shannon Smith is the founder of Café Noir Design, a boutique Montreal web design company specializing in multilingual web development. She builds beautiful, functional websites that her clients can update themselves and that are easy for search engines to find. She support things like making the web accessible for everyone, using open source software, helping organizations find greener more sustainable ways to operate through online technology and helping non-profits with online community organizing. Also sewist and mother of four.  twitter | google+ | blog

Shannon is presenting: Building Multilingual WordPress Themes and is hosting our unconference session Where are the women?

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress?
WordPress is a great web design tool because it can be (almost) anything you want it to be: a blog, a brochure site, a photo portfolio, a business directory, a social network. I love that it is so flexible and easy to customize, but also that it is easy to use. I work with non-profits and they often have volunteers running their website, which often means high staff turnover. WordPress is great because for users, it doesn’t take a huge investment in time and training to get started.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa?
WordCamps are a lot of fun, and I love attending. But I think it’s important to contribute to the open source community and to WordPress specifically. WordPress is a great tool and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned. Speaking is one way I do that.
What is your talk going to be about?
The first talk I’ll be giving is on how to build multilingual WordPress themes. I’ll cover all the steps needed to get your brand new theme internationalized and localized. You’ll learn about gettext, Poedit, POT files glotpress, and more. This talk is for theme developers.
My second talk isn’t a talk at all. “Where are the Women?” is more of an audience participation activity which will look at the role of women in the WordPress community. This isn’t a traditional presentation but a group brainstorming session on increasing diversity. If you don’t like something, change it. Here’s your chance. Audience participation is expected and all are welcome (men too!).
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?
Though I haven’t used it much yet, I’m looking forward to playing around with underscores (http://underscores.me), a starter theme produced by Automattic. Billed as “ultraminimal”, it looks like a great place to start when designing custom themes.
I’m also a huge fan of Limit Login Attempts (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-login-attempts/). I design sites for non-profits and community activists, and a couple of the more controversial projects I’ve done attract a lot of hackers. Limit Login Attempts sends me a quick email letting me know whenever it stops a brute-force attack. Every time I get one of those emails, I do a little cheer.
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Speaker Spotlight: Scott Gallant

April 11, 2013 by Rick Radko • Comments Off on Speaker Spotlight: Scott Gallant

Scott is a front-end web developer and UI/UX expert based out of Prince Edward Island. He co-founded WP Status and runs a design firm that specializes in WordPress theme development.  Get in touch at scott@wpstatus.com or on twitter @scottgallant

Scott is presenting: Coding a theme from scratch

Why WordPress? Why do you like using WordPress? Somebody once told me “every one who attempts to build a custom CMS, ends up moving to WordPress for all subsequent projects”.  In my case, that’s true.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa? I have family in Ottawa and I love WordPress!
What is your talk going to be about? WordPress Theming from Scratch
What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why? WP Status, of course 😉
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Sessions, Tracks, and Schedule Explained

April 10, 2013 by Richard Martin • Comments Off on Sessions, Tracks, and Schedule Explained

There are three separate tracks (Content Creators, Site Creators and Code Creators) planned for the Ottawa WordCamp on April 27th and each track has seven sessions.

We have had several people ask us, online and at the Ottawa WordPress Meetup, to explain how the tracks and sessions are organized at the upcoming Ottawa WordCamp.

Since this is the first WordCamp to take place in Ottawa, we expect that many of the people attending this event will be new to WordCamps and need some tips on how it all works.

Here goes. If there are questions we have missed, please post a comment or post on our Facebook page.

Ottawa WordCamp has three tracks. Please describe them.

The three tracks are:

  • Content Creators. This track is targeted at people new to WordPress. You are probably interested in starting a WordPress site and want to find out more about how to get started on WordPress. Or you may already have a site and you want to get more out of your site. This track includes sessions on what to do after you install WordPress, how to select a theme, typography choices, social media marketing with WordPress, making a living with WordPress, getting WordPress to speak different languages, and how to create a blog post.
  • Site Creators. You are a more experienced WordPress user and want to look deeper into specific topics. Sessions presented in this track include getting good at WordPress support, installing multisite, and customizing a theme.
  • Code Creators. As the label implies, you are probably comfortable with writing code and want to explore the more technical elements of WordPress. If you attend the sessions in this track you will learn how to code a theme from scratch, how to create a multilingual theme, responsive design, custom post types, debugging WordPress, WordPress VIP development and how to contribute to WordPress.

Do I have to sign up for one track?

No. In fact, you do not have to sign up for any tracks at all. You are free to choose the track that suits you and you can move between tracks.

During the registration process we are asking you for your track preference. This is not to commit you to a particular track. We are collecting the information simply to estimate room size requirements for each track. Again, indicating which track you are interested at registration is not a commitment to attend that track.

Am I allowed to attend sessions in different tracks?

Yes. You should look for the topics that interest you the most and attend those sessions. That’s the beauty of a WordCamp.

At times, you might find the presentation contains material that is either too advanced or too basic. Chances are, though, that you will learn something new in each session.

I am really interested in a specific WordPress topic but it is not being covered at WordCamp Ottawa. What can I do?

WordPress is a big area and it is hard to cover everything in one WordCamp. A great resource for you will be WordPress TV where presentations from past WordCamps around the world are posted.

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