Schedule

Below you’ll find a tentative schedule for WordCamp Portland. Exact times are subject to change (other than our starting/ending time each day).

Saturday September 17th

08:00 Doors open
08:45 Welcome/Introduction
09:00 Featured Speaker: Scott Berkun
09:45 Discuss and create Unconference schedule
10:15 Unconference sessions
11:15 Unconference sessions:
– main room: You have *no* idea what your users want (a/b testing)
– B201: Business aspects of plugin development
– B202: Second year slump, what to do when it’s no longer shiny
– B204: Get a new WP installation up and running ( as fast and future-ready as possible)
12:00 Lunch (onsite, included w/ ticket price)
13:15 Featured Speakers: Andrew Nacin / Hanni Ross
14:15 Unconference sessions
– main room: Intro to Child Theming
– B201: Music blogs
– B202: SEO
– B204: setting up various WP development environments
15:00 Break/snack
15:30 Unconference sessions
– main room: the personal blog in 2011: beyond cat photos
– B201: small business blogging “what do I say” and more
– B202: plugin development Q&A and best practices
– B204:
16:30 Unconference sessions
– main room: WordPress as CMS
– B201: blogging for photographers
– B202: WordPress multi-site
– B204:
17:15 Wrap up

Some sort of not-after party is in the works for Saturday evening… stay tuned.

Sunday September 18th

13:30 Doors open
14:00 Featured Speaker: Jane Wells – What’s Coming in WordPress 3.3 along with Town Hall Q&A
15:00 Unconference sessions:
– main room: WordPress Developer meet & greet / discussion / networking
– B201: Making themes and plugins talk to one another
– B202: Discussion: Blogging/content productivity: how do you write? workflow? tools? Discussion of EditFlow
– B204:
16:00 Unconference sessions
– main room: Social Media & WordPress / Web Actions – connecting WP with other apps
– B201: Practical Design: workflow centric design, function over form
– B202: Post Formats: using your blog to write about anything
– B204: Why WordPress has it alright
17:00 Unconference sessions
– main room: Custom Post Types – development, discussion, Q&A
– B201: Practical publishing: how WP is used by newspapers
– B202: Adding video/audio/animation to your blog
– B204: Training clients & end users to manage their WP site (discussion)
17:45 Wrap up

Some of the unconference topics that have been suggested here include:

• MultiSite and BuddyPress.
• Keeping WordPress secure.
• What it takes to be a great WordPress developer, designer, content writer, marketer, SEO, advocate and evangelist.
• What is a good formula for a successful WordPress project and where do we start?
• A case study on using WordPress as the base platform for a custom CMS.
• An in-depth look at how test-driven development works in php.
• How to write and execute tests preferably without the aide of an IDE.
• Building interaction between plugins and themes.
• Escaping and Localizing strings with WordPress.
• Best tips on site security and backup.
• What plugins others cannot live without
• Scaling wordpress
• Theme development
• SEO
• How to provide wordpress services
• How create an integrated marketing campaign that uses WP as the CMS with automatic flows out of WP with any plug-ins / 3rd party apps that then help reactivate and reengage.
• Reverse Publishing from WordPress to print.
• SSL and WordPress
• WordPress as your social media hub: integration with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.
• Guidelines for project pricing
• Scalability, optimization and performance
• Custom Post Types
• Child Theming best practices
• Different development environments/setup, using git (and github) with WordPress, svn, staging etc
• How to become a good website developer using WordPress themes
• Quick intro to CSS for bloggers (and/or HTML, PHP)
• Site visual appeal (advice from artists/designers on how to make a site easy on the eyes)
• Keeping a WordPress site accessible to people with various handicaps
• Making money from a blog or website (advertising, affiliates)
• Business or tax advice for bloggers or self-employed developers (liability protection, etc.)
• Site migration from other platforms to WordPress.org
• Site security best practices
• How do you recover a WordPress site that was hacked. Case studies?

Still don’t see anything you want to hear about? Suggest a topic or propose a session!