Presented by Pamela Coyle in Track 1 – Beginner.

WordPress 101: Welcome to the World of WordPress
In the Universe of the Internet, WordPress occupies and important and growing space. This session will cover what WP is and is not, the differences between wordpress.org and wordpress.com, and how frameworks/themes plus widgets and plugins fit into the picture. We’ll talk a bit about the WordPress ecosystem, from its core and the company that runs it to third-party services and the world of support available. This opening session will be in plain language, by a WP user who is not a developer.

#wcn14world

Presented by Ross Jones in Track 1 – Beginner.

Now that you’ve got WP101 under your belt, we’ll help you take the next step in learning WordPress.

Part of the beauty of WordPress is that you don’t need to be a programmer to have a great website. Just like WP101, this session is presented by a WP user who is not a developer so don’t worry if you’re not highly technical.

We’ll explore some of the common settings and uses of WordPress. Learn the right way to create content and organize it. With a little planning, you can make sure it’s easy for both your visitors and search engines to find your content.

You’ll walk away from WP102 with the confidence that you can use WordPress to create and share your fantastic content with the entire Internet.

Presented by Sue Anne Reed in Track 1 – Beginner.

Can Your Nonprofit Use WordPress as Your CMS? Yes You Can!

WordPress is a world-class CMS, but can your nonprofit use it and still be able to process donations, sign up people for your email list, promote advocacy and other nonprofit-specific tasks? Yes You Can! We will walk through several examples of nonprofits that are using nonprofit as their primary CMS and either using WordPress plugins – like Wufoo – to process donations or tying into the APIs of nonprofit CRMs (Convio Luminate, Salsa, etc.).

#wcn14nonprofit

Presented by Joel Norris in Track 3 – Developer.

WordPress has become so much more than what it began as.
Once upon a time a simple blogging platform arose to become a powerful foundation for whatever you could possibly want to ever do on the internet ( but were always afraid to ask ).
We’ll define what a web application is, and what that really means.
We’ll solve the age old riddle of the framework vs. the library. ( Maybe.)
We’ll take a look at some web apps built on WordPress. ( prepare for shock & awe )
Finally, We’ll take a look @ a simple example.
Everyone gets a free WordPress Web App for attending.

#wp_apps

Presented by John Housholder in Track 2 – Intermediate.

Have you ever built a house? Imagine buying a lot, hiring a contractor, and then he shows up with a crane, bulldozer, and some ‘crete and says “I’m ready.” We often do the same thing when we build websites. We know we want a website, but don’t do the necessary planning to turn our ideas into reality. In wireframes for WordPress, I will discuss what wireframes are, my process for creating them, and how they fit into WordPress.

Put on your hardhats and get ready to stop dreaming and start building!

#wcnwireframes

Presented by Marcus Crutcher in Track 1 – Beginner.

Our focus will be beginning CSS. We’ll use Firefox Fire Bug to show non developers how to do simple things like changing styles, colors, and things like heading tags and different classes. I’ll show people how to target classes & ids, as well as how to make the changes in real time so they can see what it would like if the changes were enacted. I’ll also show how to access the Stylesheet so you can just copy & paste the CSS from Firebug into your Stylesheet or the JetPack Custom CSS.

#wcn14CSS

Presented by James Laws in Track 3 – Developer.

The WordPress ecosystem is maturing every day as new businesses and products enter the market. There are many models that a business can adopt in this diverse market but there are also many challenges that need to be addressed if one wants to not only survive, but thrive.

This talk takes a “been there, tried that” look at the various business models that have been used when selling WordPress products, challenges that need to be considered, and some tried and tested solutions that have worked extremely well for us.

#wcn14product

Presented by Help Desk Staff in Track 0 – Helpdesk.

Scheduled 1-on-1’s
Scheduling for the afternoon 1-on-1’s will take place at the beginning of lunch on a first-come, first-serve basis. You will sign up for a 30-minute slot where you will get direct one-on-one help from an individual on the Help Desk team.

General Q&A
During the General Q&A sessions in the morning and afternoon, WordPress gurus will be in the Help Desk room answering questions in a group-style setting. Come at any time, even in the middle of a session, and stay for as little or as long as you want.

Presented by Help Desk Staff in Track 0 – Helpdesk.

Scheduled 1-on-1’s
Scheduling for the afternoon 1-on-1’s will take place at the beginning of lunch on a first-come, first-serve basis. You will sign up for a 30-minute slot where you will get direct one-on-one help from an individual on the Help Desk team.

General Q&A
During the General Q&A sessions in the morning and afternoon, WordPress gurus will be in the Help Desk room answering questions in a group-style setting. Come at any time, even in the middle of a session, and stay for as little or as long as you want.

Presented by Help Desk Staff in Track 0 – Helpdesk.

Scheduled 1-on-1’s
Scheduling for the afternoon 1-on-1’s will take place at the beginning of lunch on a first-come, first-serve basis. You will sign up for a 30-minute slot where you will get direct one-on-one help from an individual on the Help Desk team.

General Q&A
During the General Q&A sessions in the morning and afternoon, WordPress gurus will be in the Help Desk room answering questions in a group-style setting. Come at any time, even in the middle of a session, and stay for as little or as long as you want.

Presented by Liz Fulghum, Beth Downey, Anna Hamil, D’nelle Dowis, Michele Butcher in Track 2 – Intermediate.

For the past couple years, the topic of diversity in WordPress – specifically, women at WordCamps – has been a hot one. The WordPress Community Summit 2012 addressed the topic (in a discussion led by Cátia Kitahara that included Helen Hou-Sandi, Andrea Rennick, and Matt Mullenweg, among others). The subsequent months brought us lots of chatter about women’s involvement in business and tech, both inside and outside of the WordPress world: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, Sarah Gooding’s WP Tavern Blog from January of this year, Julie Ann Horvath’s experience leaving GitHub.

This session will explore the need to discuss gender diversity in the WordPress community, here in Nashville and beyond, by featuring women who are involved in WordPress in a variety of ways. We’ll talk about their personal experiences, ways to promote gender diversity in our community, how to avoid “pink washing” while encouraging more women to participate in community events, and ways to get involved if you’re not already.

#wcn14whywomen

Presented by Kate O’Neill in Track 0 – Helpdesk, Track 2 – Intermediate, Track 3 – Developer.

Presented by Samuel Wood (otto) in Track 3 – Developer.

In this talk, we’ll break down what JSON means, the various meanings of the letters “JSON API”, and help provide clarity on the overall ideas of JSON, APIs, XML, RPC, RSS, and other acronyms of various flavors.

And just for fun, we’ll also cover how to DIY some JSON using PHP and the AJAX handler. Whew!

#wcn14otto

Presented by Jon Henshaw in Track 1 – Beginner.

Sure, WordPress is SEO-friendly out of the box, but it’s not SEO-awesome. Jon will share proven strategies and techniques on how you can SEO the crap out of WordPress. He’ll also be covering Google Authorship and the importance of Schema.org structured data for your site.

#wcn14seo

Presented by Mitch Canter in Track 2 – Intermediate.

Let’s face it: content is king. But even the king doesn’t prance around haphazardly. He has a plan, and his day is scheduled out to the minute. He has policies, procedures, and ways to maximize how he gets things done. Shouldn’t your content have that kind of structure? We’ll discuss the idea of schema, or structured data – first as an overview, then as a practicum. We’ll talk about why structuring your data is not just good practice, but is even rewarded. We’ll discuss some of the popular types of structured data. Finally, we’ll talk about quick ways you can implement schema into your site.

#wcn14schema

Presented by Robin Cornett in Track 3 – Developer.

Organize your sites with Custom Post Types to handle specialty content (think staff, real estate listings, or design portfolio for starters). We will go over how to write a simple plugin to handle the Custom Post Type creation and make sure that your work carries through from one theme change to the next.

#wcn14cpt

Presented by Help Desk Staff in Track 0 – Helpdesk.

During the General Q&A sessions in the morning and afternoon, WordPress gurus will be in the Help Desk room answering questions in a group-style setting. Come at any time, even in the middle of a session, and stay for as little or as long as you want.

Presented by Help Desk Staff in Track 0 – Helpdesk.

During the General Q&A sessions in the morning and afternoon, WordPress gurus will be in the Help Desk room answering questions in a group-style setting. Come at any time, even in the middle of a session, and stay for as little or as long as you want.

Presented by Michele Butcher in Track 1 – Beginner.

Who loves Jetpack? We love Jetpack! We will roll up our sleeves and dig into everything Jetpack has to offer. From pictures to stats, we will cover it all. This will be a users in depth look into one of the most widely used plugins on WordPress.org.

#wcnjetpack

Presented by Cindy Cullen in Track 2 – Intermediate.

How Gravity Forms can make your life easier, your website development quicker, and your WordPress website more profitable. All the wonderfully magic things you can do with Gravity Forms and Gravity forms add-ons. From ecommerce to quizzes and surveys to newsletters, Gravity Forms can help you do it all, in much less time.

#wcn14gravityforms

Presented by Steve Wilkison in Track 2 – Intermediate.

If you want to work with WordPress one of the very first things you need to understand is the concept of the “the loop.” When information needs to be displayed on a page the loop makes a “query” to the database, basically asking for said information. If you wish to customize any aspect of a theme or site you will want to learn how to customize the loop and the query to do exactly you want. There are three different ways you can customize the loop functionality: 1. query_posts(); 2. WP_Query(); and 3. get_posts(). In this presentation we will look at each of these three techniques. We will discuss what they have in common, what they do differently and when, where and why you would want to use each one. Concrete examples will be used to take all the mystery out of making custom queries via the WordPress loop.

#wcn14customqueries

Presented by Michael Toppa in Track 3 – Developer.

Web accessibility (A11Y) is about making the web usable for people with disabilities, and it also benefits others with changing abilities, such as older people. Internationalization (I18N) and localization (L10N) are about translating web sites into other languages. UTF8 is a Unicode character set, which is now the dominant one used on the web, and it’s designed to include characters from just about every written language. Each of these topics are typically discussed in isolation from each other, but in this talk – after a gentle introduction to each of them – we’ll explore their interconnections. We’ll also take a look at what WordPress provides for supporting them in your work creating sites, themes, or plugins.

#wcn14wtf