WordPress as an API: The Power of Semantic Data

As we move toward the “Semantic Web” or “Web 3.0″, the power of well defined, accessible information is getting greater and greater by the day.

In this talk, we’ll look at the way that data and the web are changing, and the possibilities that are created by allowing your data and your design to exist independently.

Sam Hotchkiss is the creator and lead developer of BruteProtect, a WordPress security plugin which was acquired by Automattic in August 2014. Prior to developing BruteProtect, Sam ran a successful WordPress development agency, Hotchkiss Consulting Group. Sam’s background is in PHP development, and he has been developing sites with WordPress since 2005.

Sam travels with his wife, Becky (and, quite often, their dogs, Barkley, Izzy, and Stanley) to WordCamps around the world. He presents on topics ranging from security to building web apps to building and managing large blog networks.

We have a new speaker to announce filling in on the dev track for a speaker who had to drop out for a family emergency. We’d like to thank Sam Hotchkiss for pinch-hitting at the 11th hour when we needed him! He’ll be taking the morning slot to talk about using WordPress as an API. Sam is the creator and lead developer for BruteProtect, a WordPress security plugin recently acquired by Automattic.

Chris Reynolds, who was previously going to be speaking in that morning slot, will present instead in the afternoon. Thanks Sam and Chris for being accommodating, and check out the speaker announcement for more about Sam and his topic!

Many of you may be familiar with Uber but some of you may have never heard of it. Uber’s use of technology and phone apps make it incredibly easy to get a request a ride and pay without hassle. For our WordCamp, Uber has offered new users a free ride with the use of promo code “WORDCAMPSLC” up to $20.

Many of you have RSVP’d to the WordCamp afterparty without knowing much of the details. Well, here they are:

MOJO Marketplace is sponsoring the afterparty and it will be held at The Green Pig. This is a sports bar/pub located one block west of The City County Building. They will be checking your WordCamp badges at the door so they know you are with WordCamp (be sure to keep your badge). After this your appetizers and drinks will be covered. The building has a great rooftop patio for you to enjoy and mingle with other attendees. The afterparty will start around 6pm. There will still be volunteers around if anyone has any concerns.

There is a map on the location page.

Step Into Creative Flow with your Blog through your Brain

Do you ever get writer’s block? Do you stare at a blank screen and don’t know what to write?

In this class, we’ll talk about the brain – how it works, and how you can use your brain to step into writer’s flow at anytime. You’ll discover instant ways to tap into your own writing genius by training your brain for creativity. No more waiting for the lightning to strike before you write.

Holly Stokes, The Brain Trainer loves helping clients clear the mental blocks that get in the way of health, happiness, and success. She has been in business 8 years and is a Certified Master Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner, a Certified Hypnotherapist, and a Certified NLP Life and Health Coach.

She is the author of two books and multiple CDs designed to train the brain for weight loss, life happiness, and business achievement.

The 7 Essential WordPress Plugins

There are literally thousands of themes and plugins available to help you customize your WordPress website to do almost anything you need it to do. However, navigating this sea of plugins can often be a daunting task. During this session, we’ll go over the best practices for finding the right plugin for your needs, and talk about the 7 WordPress plugins I believe are essential to every WordPress-powered site.

Brent Jacobsen is a founding partner at FDEV, a web consulting agency. He’s a multi-axis strategic thinker and has been consulting businesses in various industries since 2004. Brent wrote his first lines of code at age 5 and has been a WordPress user and advocate since 2005. Brent also recently founded WPUtah, which offers WordPress training workshops for businesses, marketers, non-profits and entrepreneurs.

Automating Your Repetitive WordPress Development Tasks

For many of us, the development process can be a very time consuming. A world where we are constantly nit picking our code in order to create a customized and unique experience. However, this can cause our developers to perform several tasks over and over again without extensive testing. If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over again? Let’s do ourselves a favor and build it right the first time. In this talk, I will be covering many techniques on how to reuse code with automation techniques, new languages, and tools such as Grunt that allow us to perform many many of our common development tasks when building WordPress themes and plugins. In the end, this produces products that are more secure and quicker to build.

David Parsons , a recent Computer Science graduate over at The University of Central Florida, has been working with WordPress for over six years now and is currently working at BrandCo as a WordPress Developer. His passion for the web originally started by making a simple website with WordPress back in high school. Over the years he has been branched out his skill set with responsive design, web apps, SEO, theme development, plugin development and SASS enhanced stylesheets. Recently David has been spending a lot of his spare time speaking at local events such as the local Orlando WordPress Meetup Group, BarCamp Orlando, BarCamp Tampa and more recently WordCamp Miami.

Jetpack All the Things

You’ve probably seen this plugin in your WordPress installations. Learn how to get the most out of it for your projects. We’ll cover the basics for users and share resources for developers.

Geek, Mom, Warrior Princess, and Happiness Engineer at Automattic. Big fan of standards and of keeping things simple.

You can also find her
Twitter: @supernovia
Blog: legendofvelda.com

Lingotek offers a full feature Translation Management System with machine, community, and professional translations. They are excited to becoming involved in the WordPress community with their soon-to-be-released WordPress integration plugin and by participating in our local event.

A few other notable features are

• Customizable workflows and choice of machine, community, and professional translation
• Translation memories (TM) that can be used across the enterprise
• Connectors from a variety of sources
• Ability to import over 30+ file types (e.g., Office, Adobe, OpenOffice docs)
• Integration directly into source control (e.g., git)

Sounds pretty cool to me. Make sure when you are at the event you say hello and welcome Lingotek to the WordPress community.

Start Your Membership Site on the Right Foot

The idea of having a membership site is exciting at the least. Who wouldn’t be excited? The idea of having a community you’re passionate about or creating a steady stream of income, to name a couple good reasons. You may have even seen wonderful existing membership sites and have thought, “Hey, I could do something like this, but for
[niche].” That is great and all, but how are you going to make it happen? You need a plan. You need to know what tools are at your disposal. You need to start on the right foot.

Curtis is a software tester by day at Bluehost and a freelance web designer by night, father of 4+ (one on the way) and has been a WordPress nut since 2007. He loves helping small businesses and loves creating things (current side project is building a 3 tiered bunk bed for the kiddos).

You can also find him
Twitter: @curtjen
Blog: curtjen.com