Zeek Interactive has been a successful agency since 1995. Steve will share his stories and tips for managing client expectations, strategies for proper communication and thoughts on how to motivate a team. This session applies to everyone from freelancers to agencies.

Far too often we build website from our own perspective. Putting yourself in your audiences’ shoes is much easier said than done. We’ll take a look at how visitors view your website and how to turn their frustrations into success.

Making changes on a live server is always risky. And when things go wrong it’s not easy to diagnose the problems. You can setup a staging server for changes, but you still have to deploy files, and that takes time. Spinning up a local environment is essential for WordPress development. And it’s also very easy to do, thanks to Local by Flywheel. I will show you how to quickly spin up a local site. We will cover SSL, debugging, database management, and other features to help you safely build better quality WordPress sites in less time.

In this talk, I discuss the roadmap of a typical WordPress site getting “hacked”. From start to finish, we look at how victims can be identified, how sites are breached, how persistent backdoors are established, and how the attackers will exploit the compromised site. I avoid getting too overtly technical in my descriptions, instead opting to focus on the mindset and overall process of the attack. This enables less-technical website owners to get a stronger conceptual grasp of what exactly goes on during a breach. It can be overwhelming for inexperienced webmasters to adequately defend against a threat they don’t understand. This talk defines these threats in a concrete way, which is much more compelling than the nebulous concept of “hackers” in general. Viewers leave the room empowered to take a proactive outlook on the security of their web presence.

After spending several years working in a large advertising agency I found the most useful tools for creative collaboration and building teams in an improv class. In this session I’ll share how to apply the basic rules of improv to build collaborative teams, who come up with more creative ideas and have more fun while doing it.

Now that WordPress has an amazing REST API, there is a lot of buzz around “headless” or “decoupled” sites. However, these are mostly covered with “how-to” and not “what this is” articles. My presentation aims to provide a higher level insight into what it means to be using WordPress, JavaScript and the REST API, all in tangent. It will go into the pros and cons of using limbless, headless and brainless WordPress. Learning Objectives: – Understand the differences between Limbless, Headless, and Brainless WordPress configurations – Structure their next non-traditional WordPress site with confidence using the proper solution for the task at hand – Begin using WordPress as a development platform for cutting-edge web solutions

This talk will provide an overview of the planning and execution of taking over an existing website. Sometimes we don’t get to start a project at the beginning. This talk will show users what to expect, and how to be prepared for it. Topics will include: Executing a safe handoff, initial housekeeping, planning for improvements, staging and deployment of changes, and ongoing maintenance.

WordPress has always been about websites, but it’s not just about websites. It’s about freedom and possibility. When we build websites for ourselves and others we are democratizing publishing for everyone regardless of language, ability, or economic wherewithal. At Automattic, we believe Inclusive Design is essential to this mission. We’re inspired by the work of Kat Holmes and her clear articulation of design as needing to be increasingly inclusive — especially in the technology world. Inclusive Design is for those who want to make great products for the greatest number of people. A philosophy of openness that matches the freedoms of WordPress, yet also offers a practical approach to growing your business. To reach more people, to find a larger addressable market by recognizing exclusion and learning from diversity. As Kat says, “Solve for one, extend to many.” In this talk I’ll share the most important principles of Inclusive Design illustrated with stories from product improvements in our work at Automattic for WordPress.com and Jetpack (https://design.blog/inclusive/).

If your fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of dying, the fear of asking for the sale cannot be far behind. Many business owners languish in low volume when, with a little bit of knowledge and practice, they can be kicking their sales into overdrive. We will cover classic sales techniques and update them for the digital age. We will also dig into the psychology that not only keeps some of us under-pricing but keeps us from closing the deal, at all. You don’t have to be cheesy, sleazy, or greasy to be a great salesperson. You will learn to sell with style and walk away with increased confidence to go out and make more money.

In a world deeply divided, how do we have hard conversations with nuance, curiosity, respect? Veteran reporter Eve Pearlman introduces "dialogue journalism": a project where journalists go to the heart of social and political divides to support discussions between people who disagree. See what happened when a group that would have never otherwise met -- 25 liberals from California and 25 conservatives from Alabama -- gathered to talk about contentious issues. "Real connection across difference: this is a salve that our democracy sorely needs," Pearlman says.