Lessons Learned About Attending WordCamp Miami

by ThisChickCodes

WordCamp is a conference that I really look forward to every year. I have attended 2 WordCamps and I will be attending this year as well. Here are a few lessons that I have learned from attending WordCamp. These are lessons that I will be applying for my third attendance. 

Get there early

I made the mistake of showing up late last year. My first year I showed up early and I will be going by that rule from now on.

You will need to pick up your badge and get your t-shirt first, that line can start getting long around the time the event starts, so get there early so you aren’t waiting in line. You may also want coffee and something to nibble on before the talks start. 

Plan the tracks you want to attend

Decide which talks you will like to attend before hand. Sometimes it will be hard to make a decision because 2 talks that are very interesting may be going at the same time. Try to get to the rooms early because space can be limited depending on how many people go to that specific one. You don’t want to have to stand up for the whole talk. 

Networking

I am a true introvert, my first WordCamp, I will admit that I barely spoke a word to anyone. But I realized that everyone that’s at WordCamp share a common passion and you can easily spark up a conversation with someone. Ask them what track they are most interested in, find out their expertise with WordPress—just a few examples. 

Another thing, bring business cards! You are going to meet a lot of great people and this is your opportunity to network with them. I made this mistake not once but both times. Go meet the vendors, ask them about their products if you have never heard of them, as well as chat with vendor’s whose products you use and love. 

Make room for swag! 

One thing I love about conferences is the swag! I have become somewhat of a hoarder of swag but I love every little sticker, pin, t-shirt, notebook, pen, bag… and they have all of these things at WordCamp Miami! 

The conference will sometimes have bags to give you, I usually store the swag from vendors in it. However, last year they ran out and I ended up having to take some of it to my car because it didn’t all fit in my backpack with the rest of my stuff. Most vendors have t-shirts and those tend to get bulky when you have a lot of them so make sure you have room! 

Have fun!

Most importantly have fun! There will be so much for you to do and learn, and you should definitely make the most of your time there enjoying being in the company of fellow WordPress lovers. 

WordCamp Miami Changed My Life

by Camille Vogl | Instagram| Website

Before 2017, I had very minimal knowledge of WordPress or WordCamp Miami. That year, I was approaching my senior year at Florida Atlantic University and was starting to apply for marketing roles. I began to notice that almost every marketing role required WordPress knowledge. Needless to say, when I was given the assignment to create a marketing blog as part of my senior project, I took the opportunity to learn WordPress. I wanted to give myself an edge when applying for entry-level marketing jobs.

I had no clue what I had gotten myself into.

I spent two weeks learning everything I could, stumbling along the way. I even made the noob mistake of signing up for WordPress.com instead of WordPress.org.

Luckily, things became smoother and I started getting the hang of it. Shortly after, my internship manager told us he was bringing our team to WordCamp Miami. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was willing to dive in headfirst to the experience. And I’m glad I did.

Over the next three years, I would be involved in one of the most immersive and collaborative conferences I have attended. Every year, I’m able to take away a gold mine of information and constantly transform the way I help build online experiences. I have been able to use the skills and tactics I learn at WordPress to become a Unicorn marketer. Yes, I know it’s a large claim but truly, I do it all and I’m proud of it. I learned more than web design, I gained knowledge on SEO, creating content, personal branding, and much more.

My WordCamp experience especially helped me in finding and exceeding at Florida International University’s Master of Marketing program. I created a strong digital presence as a marketer and even assisted my Cohort with their WordPress sites. Now a recent graduate of the program, I teach personal branding via WordPress to the same program I was part of.

I also was able to take my first marketing role and complete a full re brand of the company using WordPress and the skills I learned from WordCamp Miami. This same experience and knowledge eventually helped land me my role as a Customer Experience Specialist for ADT mid-2019. In my role, I help to improve the experience of our online platforms.

I credit much of my success to WordCamp Miami. It has afforded me so many opportunities over the last three years. This is why I come back year-after-year. This community has embraced me, taught me, and inspired me to challenge myself and to create for good.

I encourage anyone attending their first or even their fifth WordCamp to just dive in. Don’t just show up, take notes and leave. Embrace the crazy Slack chats, visit the Happiness Bar, and interact with the vendor booths. Do all the things!

Most importantly, connect and collaborate. I have gained some amazing friends and colleagues from this conference. I guarantee you that you will too!

Choosing WordPress for Fundraising (From GiveWP a Sponsor of WordCamp Miami)

By: Taylor Waldon, Content Writer at GiveWP

With fundraising platforms of all shapes and sizes on the market, why choose WordPress for fundraising? GiveWP’s mission is to “Democratize Generosity.” Not all fundraising platforms are made equal. WordPress is the right choice for most fundraisers because it allows you to take control of your voice, your data, and your cause.

Democratizing Generosity

The WordPress slogan is “Democratizing Publishing” because it makes an open source content management system accessible to everyone. Long ago, creating your own website required custom coding, expensive software, or a platform controlled by a third-party. WordPress overcame those hurdles by providing an open source platform for everyone to publish with, both developers and end users. 

GiveWP follows this model with a free donation plugin for WordPress — making online giving as accessible to everyone as possible. That is what it means to “Democratize Generosity.” GiveWP tears down barriers of entry with a platform optimized for receiving donations, managing your donors, and reporting on your success all for free. No one should control your fundraising platform but you.

Owning Donor Data 

If you don’t own your donor data or share it with a third party, you might run into some problems. 

  • Third-party platforms might use your donor information for advertising, sending them additional emails, which dissuades them from donating or giving again in the future.
  • If your fundraiser is hosted on a website with others, some of your donors might get distracted and choose to give to another cause. 
  • If you don’t ever get access to your donors’ contact information, then you aren’t able to continue fostering the relationship with them. 
  • If the third-party system fails, you are completely beholden to them and their ability to get their servers up and running again.

Those are just some of the potential downfalls. Your donors and donation data is vital and important. Owning that data is the best way to prevent losing your donors, their donations, and their trust. 

Embracing Open Source

Open source software is great for anyone who wants to host their own fundraiser, especially nonprofits. Why? Because it’s free. Free to own and free to extend as you need.

Even open source platforms with paid products, like GiveWP, provide much more affordable solutions with the same level of functionality as more expensive ones.There’s no reason to pay thousands of dollars to create the same end result that you can get from spending hundreds. 

Plus, the WordPress community is a wonderful world of helpful and generous souls. Your fundraiser could benefit in multiple ways from the network you find when you enter the world of open source software. WordCamps are the perfect place to start if you want to dive into the WordPress community. 

Continuing to Code for Good

We’re here at WordCamp Miami again because we love the people who come here and celebrate all things WordPress together. We also want to show you some of the awesome features and updates we have in store for this calendar year. 

We just released a brand new reporting dashboard. It’s powered by the WP Rest API and React (much like Gutenberg is) and gives you an at-a-glance view of the performance and strength of all your fundraising efforts.

GiveWP 2.7.0 is already on the horizon and we’re planning on having even more exciting new features. Our founder is excited to release what we’re calling “Donation Form Themes”. This will allow you to create engaging, optimized, and beautiful donation forms that won’t conflict with your theme and look great out-of-the-box.

The donation forms feature is also paving the way for new ways to build your forms much more dynamically. We want to empower users to create different types of fundraising forms with one click — like crowdfunding, events, and even peer-to-peer. This is a larger endeavor but the work we’ve done with reports and form themes is pivotal in moving us in that direction. 

Democratize Generosity with Us

If you are attending WordCamp Miami, please come visit us at our table, introduce yourself and tell us all about how you serve nonprofit organizations. We can democratize generosity together. 

Update On 2020 Speaker Submissions

WordCamp Miami is so grateful to all the interested speakers who submitted talks to our 2020 event. To be clear at the present time NOT EVERYONE has been confirmed to be a speaker (or not a speaker) but we wanted to get some information out publicly for the sake of some transparency.  A link to this post will be sent to all those that applied to speak via our online form.

All-Time Record Of Submissions

We experienced close to 240 speaker submission this year, a new WordCamp Miami record. That is an honor to have that number of submission for a WordCamp – and we are happy to have that kind of variety of people and topics. As you can imagine, with only about 60-70 slots available that means still only 1/4 of the submissions can be accepted.

Emails, Emails, Emails

It’s our policy to send an email out to EVERY person who submitted via our official online form. The acceptance emails are pretty much the same (outside of some minor details related to the talk). The emails stating we couldn’t accept the speaker are also short and sweet. We try to mention any particular reason why the sessions submitted weren’t accepted if we can, but many times it just boils down to a few innocent reasons (see below). Sending out these emails takes a lot of time and energy.

Reasons Why Applications Weren’t Accepted

A few people ask, so we figure we would share common reasons why applications are not accepted (outside, again, of the sheer fact that we don’t have slots for everyone). The vast majority (>95%) of ones that get a confirmation that they have been selected this time around fall into one of these three categories:

– Simply too many talks submitted with the same subject. This is the most common reason, and you can’t blame this really on anyone. But sadly with an event like ours if you are looking for (let’s say as a random example) an SEO talk… and there are 40 SEO talks submitted by qualified speakers… you can only realistically pick one.

– Some submitted talks interested us greatly, but simply wasn’t relatable to attendees of a WordCamp event. Random example (this was NOT submitted): how to build a toaster (if there’s a toaster conference though, we know who to recommend).

– Room reservations at the venue have made us have to consider some format changes and other planning difficulties that removed spots in our schedule that would have otherwise gone to other speakers.

It’s the nature of the beast that with large conferences the odds aren’t in your favor, sometimes if you submit multiple talks. Highly suggested reading: Speakers And Organizers: Dealing With Conference Rejections. If you are among  those not sadly not accepted this round, there are some good pointers there.

Other Recommended Places To Submit

If you are looking to give talks to other WordCamps in sunny Florida and Georgia (general Southeast), we would recommend checking out these:

WordCamp Atlanta –https://2020.atlanta.wordcamp.org/call-for-speakers/ (speaker call submissions accepted until Feb 15)

WordCamp Orlando – https://2020.orlando.wordcamp.org/ (event in August, so watch for speaker calls on this).

Meetups

If you are local to the South Florida area, we highly encourage you to give those same submitted talks at your local WordPress meetups. Speaking at a local WordPress meetup is an excellent way to demonstrate that you are interested in supporting the local WordPress community, which is what WordCamps primarily focus on.

No matter where you are, find your local meetups and give your talks there. Some speakers come recommended to us just by the fact they gave a presentation at a local meetup that impressed enough people to made to our ears.

Speaker Announcements

Please help us spread the word about all the speaker announcements coming out. That not only shows support for the conference, but those speakers that got selected. There are going to be quite a number of speakers that are new to speaking at WordCamp Miami, or new to speaking at a WordCamp period.

More Information

We hope to share more information about our submissions – we will likely share some interesting stats Saturday, February 29th, during our opening remarks or during our closing remarks on Sunday, March 1st.

Thank You

We sincerely want to thank EVERYONE who submitted a talk. If you were not accepted this year PLEASE SUBMIT AGAIN NEXT YEAR. WordCamp Miami is dedicated to locating new speakers locally and from around the world. Feel free to get in touch with us after April if you want to pick our brains on future submitted talks.

2020 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Seven

 

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce our seventh round of speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2020.

YESENIA ROQUE

Yesenia first began her storytelling journey when she was a little girl, listening to her grandfather recount his time in Cuba. Since then, Yesi has been consuming literary works of fiction ranging from short stories to YA to even classic Archie comics. Yesi’s vast knowledge of literary styles and formatting makes her the ideal Creative Director and co-founder of Write & Day, where she oversees the storyboarding process for book projects, working with clients to cultivate their ideas into reality.

NEV HARRIS

I’m a speaker and educator, passionate about translating stupid financial speak* into plain English so Freelancers and Agency Owners can understand it.

“I call it “accountantese” – an overly complex language that is most often spoken by financial planners and accountants.

I could, literally, talk all day. So here is the short version of “The Life of Nev”.

MICHELLE FRECHETTE

Michelle completed her MBA in Marketing, E-Commerce and Information Systems from the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business. She has over twenty years of experience in higher education; ten years owning a web design and marketing company; and currently serves as the Head of Customer Success for Impress.org (developers of GiveWP.com and WPBusinessReviews.com).

Michelle is a veteran of public speaking. She’s been an instructor for a wide variety of topics including Using Quantitative Data Analysis Software, Meditative Drawing, Intro to WordPress, and Marketing for Massage Therapy. Michelle speaks at conferences all over North America. You can find many of them recorded on WordPress.tv including “Little Things That Make a Big Difference” and “Hidden Features of WordPress Revealed,” as well as panel discussions on ethics, marketing, page builders, and women in technology.

FERNANDO GOMEZ

Served in 2006-2011 as an active U.S. Army Interrogator where I got a deep understanding of human behavior, psychology and ticks. Transitioned from military into Product Marketer for a government enterpirse platform (apan.org) – Managed a agile development team on the communities feature while promoting campaigns both internal and external. Decided to go freelance after I helped a friend generate 20k on 1k ad spend. From there I took what I learned and started offering my services and went to build a team, won awards, and grew a bunch of companies (as their digital marketer) and have been doing that for the past 5 years as a full-time freelancer.

WENDY GUESS

Dr. Wendy Guess has studied and taught transformation and behavior change for over 20 years. She has expertise in the promotion, communication, and marketing of health, wellness, across a variety of platforms and settings. Currently, Dr. Guess is an award-winning faculty member of the Dept. of Marketing and Logistics at FIU.

RAHUL NAGARE

Rahul has been working in the web hosting industry since 2005 and started using WordPress in 2008. Since then he has helped scale web and cloud infrastructure for companies like General Mills, Saks, CSX, and PetSmart. Rahul is now the co-founder and CEO at ScaleDynamix, where he manages 15,000+ WordPress and WooCommerce sites.

DAN GUDEMA

Dan is a writer, speaker, online marketer and software developer who has over 20 years of online experience. He is the founder of SEO Turbo Booster, a WordPress based SEO visibility solution. Dan cofounded Pre-Dating Speed Dating, the largest dating event company in the US as well as StartupPOP, a Boca Raton based pitch event. Dan has written 5 books on Amazon about startups, online marketing and online dating. Dan lives in Boca Raton with his wife, 2 boys, 2 cats, 2 dogs, 20 finches, 100 guppies and 500 snails.

IVAN SUAREZ

Ivan Suarez has more than 22 years of hands-on experience in information systems, technologies, and operations. Suarez holds a Master’s degree in Information Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Information Security. He is a decorated US Army Veteran with extensive experience in information technology. His specialties include electronic warfare, exploitation, coding, networking, social engineering, cyber warfare, and signal exploitation.

He is passionate about providing or creating answers and helping others in the growing IT industry. Suarez also enjoys testing systems and looking for flaws or vulnerabilities. He loves to help end users by teaching and leveling the playing field for the safety of others and their children. Suarez has implemented and overseen several architectures, designs, and installed information systems for all types of operations and businesses.

He has created support systems that ensure that the organization maintains and hardens network infrastructures. In his spare time, Suarez volunteers at homeless shelters, teaches coding to children and warns others about the exposures and dangers pose by cyber criminals. He attends or hosts tactical events with others to teach and mentor how to respond to cyber attacks and rapid response measures and countermeasures.

2020 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Six

 

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce our sixth round of speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2020.

BRIAN MESSENLEHNER

Brian is a former software developer for the United States Marine Corps, the Co-founder of AppPresser.com, a WordPress based framework for building iOS and Android Apps, and the Co-founder of SchoolPresser.com, a company that specializes in building open source solutions for schools. Brian is also the Co-Author of “Building Web Apps with WordPress”, a book published by O’Reilly Media about WordPress as an Application Framework.

E. ANITA NEWMAN

E. Anita Newman, DTM is a speaker, certified trainer and MC known for her energetic and humorous speaking style. Anita discovered her passion for public speaking during her college years and later honed her speaking skills as a longstanding member with Toastmasters International, where she achieved the highest distinction of Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) and served as Division Director, overseeing 26 Toastmasters clubs with over 800 members.

Also a Certified Trainer with The John Maxwell Team, Anita helps organizations improve the communication skills of their employees.

Most weekends you will find her hosting the performances at a prominent 1,200 seat performing arts theater in South Florida, where she has been the MC for the past two years.

ANTHONY MIYAZAKI

I build brands, processes, and programs that deliver results. I’m a firm believer in people, truly constructive feedback, and the value of tangible results. If something’s efficient, effective, and sensible, I like it. In the few years that I’ve directed the revenue-focused marketing and analytics at FIU Business, we’ve grown annual revenues over $11,000,000 (yes, that’s per year) during a time when education revenues are shrinking. I lead two teams — a marketing/analytics team (5 people) and an academic/training team (40+ people) and we work together to build our individual and collective brands. Connect with me on LinkedIn; follow me on Twitter (@SensibleFolk); and catch my weekly #MarketingMinute videos on YouTube (and be sure to subscribe while you’re there).

DONATA KALNENAITE

Donata is the President of Termageddon and the engineer behind the policy questions and text. She is a licensed attorney and a certified information privacy professional. She often volunteers at the Illinois State Bar Association holding courses on the General Data Protection Regulation where she teaches other attorneys on the importance of privacy and what Privacy Policies should contain. Donata is the newsletter editor for the American Bar Association’s ePrivacy Committee and the Chair of the International Association of Privacy Professionals Chicago Chapter.

DAVID YARDE

David Yarde is an award winning designer and software engineer that is now focused on leveraging his 17+ years of lessons learned in design, software programming and building brand experiences to help individuals and teams build lovable products and cultures.

David helps brands fill the gaps within their creative and technology initiatives and is focused on building better communities by building better brands.

During Davids career he has helped to facilitate a variety of customer experience solutions involving developing creative teams, strategies, visual designs and software platforms for brands of all sizes from Avis, Merriam-Webster, and Walmart/Sam’s Club all the way to the startup owner with a passion to make the world better.

BIANCA WELDS

Bianca hails from Kingston, Jamaica where she works in corporate innovation. She has been a WordPress advocate since 2005 when she set up her first personal website, eventually moving into freelance WordPress consulting. She decided to get more involved in the global WordPress community, including speaking at WordCamps since 2016 and starting a local meetup in 2017. When she’s all recovered, you’ll also find her playing steel pan or salsa dancing.

TARA CLAEYS

Tara Claeys began her career in advertising and marketing in the early 1990’s. After her first child was born, she supplemented her full-time job as Mom with illustration and stationery design for clients around the world. Her extensive marketing background and understanding of business quickly became her focus. Founded in 2010, Tara’s agency, Design TLC, specializes in websites and digital marketing for small schools, enrichment programs, camps and education-focused nonprofits.

She’s given presentations on essential tools for productivity (her passion) as well as sharing examples of websites she has built with WordPress and panel discussions on freelance work. Tara as a WordPress DC organizer and enjoys traveling to WordCamp conferences. Along with Liam Dempsey, Tara uncovers the stories of people in the WordPress community in their podcast Hallway Chats.

When Tara isn’t redesigning websites, she can be found volunteering for a nonprofit, running, challenging you to get out of your comfort zone, or vacationing with her family.

KIM WHITE

Kim White has been a web developer for over twenty years building websites and web-based applications. She has been using WordPress since 2008 and is the Co-organizer of the Lehigh Valley Meetup and Lehigh Valley WordCamp. She has been part of the organizing team of WCUS for the last 3 years.

Recently, Kim joined the support team at Paid Memberships Pro.

2020 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Five

 

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce our fifth round of speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2020.

VIVIAN OLODUN

Flourish Media is a marketing collective that helps business owners speak clearly to their audiences on the platforms that mean the most to them. Flourish Media creates business development and training products, workshops and networking events to help businesses grow. Flourish Media is based in Miami, FL and supported by a small team of female entrepreneurs who bring decades of experience to growing, established & startup brands by aligning business owners with resources proven to boost exposure & revenue.

CARLOS VAZQUEZ

Carlos will setup and launch all the tech stuff you need to automatically attract more customers and convert them into cash. He’s been doing it since 2003 and has built campaigns for companies of different sizes to include Coca-Cola, Universal Studios, Disney, Carnival Cruise Lines and more.

MATT CROMWELL

Matt has served nonprofit organizations since early 2000’s as a web developer, educator, fundraising consultant, marketing consultant, board member and more. Currently, he is Partner and Head of Support and Outreach at Impress.org who’s mission is “”Code for Good””. Impress.org’s flagship product is the number one fundraising tool for WordPress websites: GiveWP.

Matt serves on the board of San Diego Refugee Tutoring, a volunteer driven organization dedicated to serving the rising refugee population of children in San Diego. He also serves on the board of Mid-City Church of the Nazarene who hosts bi-weekly food distributions, and houses dozens of other local NGOs in their facility in City Heights, San Diego.

Matt is a husband, father to four, and lover of all things musical and/or homebrewed. He also loves to talk about the most taboo of topics: Politics and Religion.

LUIS ATENCIO

Luis Atencio (@luijar) is a Principal Cloud Engineer for Citrix Systems in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. He has a B.S. and an M.S. in Computer Science and now works full-time developing and architecting cloud web applications using JavaScript and Java. Luis is also very involved in the community and has presented on several occasions at conferences and local meet-ups. When he is not coding, Luis writes a developer blog at http://luisatencio.net focused on software engineering as well as several magazine articles for PHPArch and DZone. Luis is also the author of Functional Programming in JavaScript (Manning 2016), co-author for RxJS in Action (Manning 2017), and currently working on his third book The Joy Of JavaScript (Manning 2019).

ADAM SOUCIE

Adam Soucie is a front-end focused WordPress developer based in Kissimmee, FL. He is a member of the WordPress Orlando & WordCamp Orlando organizing teams and has a passion for building websites that are accessible to all users.

MELANIE ADCOCK

Melanie G Adcock is an Agency Owner who brings her artistic skill and web development background together to help Small Businesses and Nonprofits. She began her digital consulting career in 2010 and is now co-owner of Adcock Creative. She is especially known for creating beautiful church websites, providing excellent support to her clients , and being a creative problem solver.

Melanie G Adcock regularly speaks on various web design business topics at local WordPress Meetups and WordCamps . Besides speaking on business processes, software training, and design, Melanie volunteer at her church and runs the local WordPress Meetup Chapter.

When she is not creating stunning websites, she is reading, binging on BBC murder mysteries, cooking, or fishing.

CHARLES JOHNSTON

Charles is a self-proclaimed and well earned “digital ninja” on a mission to help entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations change their communities. After spending the last few decades in the corporate IT industry he started a web design and digital marketing agency called HeartWired Digital Solutions, where they focus on putting compassion back into technology. His passion is helping nonprofits and small business owners share their stories on the web.

SEBASTIAAN VAN DER LANS

Sebastiaan van der Lans is an open-source fanatic who loves to explain complex technology in plain English. In 2006, he founded the Amsterdam based agency ‘Van Ons’. In 2013, he started to experiment with WordPress and blockchain, resulting in start-up WordProof.io, bringing benefits of blockchain to the WordPress ecosystem. At WCEU 2019, Sebastiaan presented ‘From WordPress to Blockchain: The Future is 100% Open-Source’. His motto: “Celebrate progress, tomorrow is just a dream away” – W. Disney

Why WebOps (From Pantheon, A Sponsor of WordCamp Miami)

By: Steve Persch, Technical Product Marketing Manager

If you read much of the Pantheon blog, you almost certainly have noticed a word we are using a lot lately: “WebOps.” Pantheon co-founder and Head of Product Josh Koenig says, “Your Website is Your Results Engine. Keep it Tuned with WebOps.” Our CEO Zack Rosen says that WebOps is the key to getting unstuck. I even wrote about how you can avoid WebOoops with WebOps.

We think WebOps as a term helps tell the story of cross-functional web teams. For us, it passes the Goldilocks test. It is not too small, not too big. WebOps is just right. And it’s a concept we have built toward since our founding.

“Hosting” Is Too Small

Often when I travel to WordPress and Drupal events, the attendees ask me how Pantheon is different from other hosts. They want to comparison shop storage, memory limits, and price. That’s a really limited view of what teams do with Pantheon. Our CEO, Zack Rosen wrote back in 2013:

Pantheon is not hosting. In the same way your smartphone isn’t really a phone but an internet connected pocket computer with a phone calling app. Yes, Pantheon hosts Drupal sites, but it is architected completely differently and built to do much more. 

As a WebOps platform, Pantheon enables web teams to drive value with their websites. Sure, that includes having a place to host the live website. But it also means supplying a git-backed pipeline to move through Dev, Test, and Live environments. It means an easy way to spin up disposable new environments to do feature branch development. It means performance monitoring, HTTPS at the edge, and disaster recovery, all baked in. A team using Pantheon does not need to re-answer these questions with every project. We implement these features in a standardized way for every site using them. “Hosting” is just a fraction of the picture.

“DevOps” Is Too Big

The wide world of DevOps has answers for Internet of Things gadgets, iOS apps, machine learning, and much more. Of course, the management of websites can fit comfortably under the umbrella of DevOps. But teams focused entirely on delivering business value through the web, specifically, should have an ecosystem and a culture that acknowledges that constraint. For example, technologists practicing DevOps might expect to pick which Linux distro is best for a given use case. Practitioners of WebOps will build on a platform like Pantheon that abstracts that problem away.

When I was working as an agency developer for clients with a limited budget, I did not want to spend a single billable hour on Ubuntu vs CentOS, or NGINX config, or backup scripts. I liked the vision of “Website DevOps” that Josh Koenig sketched out in 2015. Now, we call that “WebOps.”

“DevOps” Doesn’t Encompass the Whole Web Team

Josh ended that 2015 blog post with a prediction:

I predict that the definition of “technical organization” will continue to expand, encompassing more and more departments, groups, and companies. Marketing is getting technical, as are marketing-oriented agencies. They all have a lot to gain from adopting a DevOps mindset.

I think that prediction holds up really well! The vision of WebOps we are building now includes marketers, site owners, designers and more. And we think we need a word other than DevOps to fit them in. In my observation, much of the DevOps community views roles beyond the  “Developer” and “System Operator” as outside of DevOps. Business stakeholders are important, but separate. Sometimes the word will even get expanded to include single extra roles like DevSecOps to include a “security” role.

At Pantheon, we think the set of roles in a WebOps culture is flexible, and that it includes business stakeholders. In my own recent WebOps blog post, I wrote:

WebOps brings together developers, designers, marketers, content editors and more. Everyone whose job it is to change the website in significant ways (the code, the visuals, the content, the measurements of success) needs to think of themselves on the same team and working towards the same goals.

Concretely, if your team does daily stand ups, then you should not often have to go outside that meeting to get a decision or know whether a proposed change is feasible. The people changing the website are represented in that group.

WebOps Wins

We want to focus the WebOps conversation on cross-functional teams because we have seen people get lost in the shuffle. “Hosting” can be a race to the bottom where price is paramount and value is lost. “DevOps,” at its best, is an empowering cultural movement that frees people to do great work. That can be hard to see if you are neck deep in a mess of config files and failing builds. With “WebOps,” we maximize our chances to make good on the offer in the very first blog post on pantheon.io, that we want to put the human at the top of the stack.

2020 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Four

 

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce our thirdround of speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2020.

JOCELYN MOZAK

Jocelyn has over a decade of experience building, running and wrangling a WordPress Website Design Agency all while having two boys at home.

While her education in engineering certainly refined her technical and analytical skills, it is her passion for what she does that makes her an outstanding WordPress web designer. She is an expert in thinking outside the box and filtering out the key points amidst all the noise.

In addition to running her Agency, Jocelyn is a mentor & business coach to other Creative Professionals helping them to build businesses that support the life they desire.

VICTOR RAMIREZ

Victor Ramirez began his foray into the interwebs building websites and email newsletters for various high school art projects. He is currently a lead software engineer at Dow Jones building WordPress projects for the Wall Street Journal. On the side, he runs An Abstract Agency – a WordPress-focused marketing agency. In his free time, he teaches high school students to code & coaches professionals in New York City.

KORENE STUART

After starting a career in programming, Korene Stuart felt there was more she could do to improve the lives of the community in which she lives. Learning the statistics for people of color in STEM fields was a wake-up call and she now serves as the director of MAScode( Minorities Advancing through STEM), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization she established that exposes both children and adults to the amazing careers of S.T.E.M.(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). She encourages experienced professionals in those fields to give back to communities in need. Her ability to effectively engage offers her the opportunities to serve in different leadership roles such as the Technical Lead for Black Girls Code Miami, serving on the Broward County Schools S.T.E.M Task Force and a facilitator for the Jamaican Diaspora Education Task Force.

NATHAN INGRAM

Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.

As the founder of >ADVANCE Coaching, Nathan works with WordPress solopreneurs and business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.

Nathan has been working with clients to build websites since 1995. He is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he has been an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham (WP Y’all) for several years.

NILE FLORES

Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at Blondish.net, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design. Nile also works as an Infection Cleanup Specialist at WP Fix It.

She also loves helping people and contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user. Lastly, here’s a fun fact: Nile has been blogging over 18 years!

SCOTT MANN

Scott is the Founder and Creative Director of Highforge, an Orlando-based service agency focused on helping medium and enterprise businesses lead and succeed online. He’s an Emmy- winning commercial writer that’s sold millions in projects and generated hundreds of millions in new revenues for clients since 2001. He’s been managing commercial WordPress projects since 2009. He loves to solve problems, make clients happy and help creatives achieve their destinies. He digs racquetball, travel backpacking, scuba, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, music festivals, fine tequila and a non-profit called Be the Match that helps save lives.

TARA KING

Tara King is a self-taught developer. She works at Pantheon, where she helps WordPress and Drupal developers build skills and optimize their WebOps processes. She has also worked as a Senior Developer at Universal Music Group, at small digital agencies, and freelanced for countless arts organizations. She loves using the command line and thinks you will, too.

She lives in Albuquerque, NM, where she plays boardgames, writes poems, and tends her garden.

WILLIAM JACKSON

William Jackson, M.Ed. graduate of South Carolina State University earning
a Bachelor’s in Education, furthering his education earning a Masters of Arts
in Teaching from Webster University with a focus on Educational Technology,
Social Media and STEM.

2020 WordCamp Miami Speakers: Round Three

 

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce our thirdround of speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2020.

DAVID WOLFPAW

David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing maintenance and support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox.

JIHANA BARRETT

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Jihana Barrett has pushed her career in intelligence and cybersecurity to the limits.

Beginning her career in the United States Air Force, Jihana was quickly promoted to Staff Sergeant. During this time, she pursued a career in tech. After obtaining her Associates degree, she later completed her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Cybersecurity and acquired both her Security+ and Certified Ethical Hacker certifications (CEH) at the University of Maryland University College.
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Following her separation from the military, Jihana received her Masters degree in Cyber and Information Security from Capitol Technology University.

Currently, Jihana is a Senior Threat Vulnerability analyst at one of the country’s largest tele-communications corporations. After many years of education and research, Jihana has developed a passion for excellence within her field—and encouraging up and coming women in tech to pursue their dreams in the industry through her organization, Tech Sorority.

KEANAN KOPPENHAVER

Keanan Koppenhaver is CTO at Alpha Particle, a digital consultancy that helps plan and execute digital projects, mostly using WordPress.

He enjoys helping clients build out their developer teams, modernize legacy tech stacks, and better position themselves as technology continues to move forward. He believes that more technology isn’t always the answer, but when it is, it’s important to get it right.

ANELLE VALDES

Anelle Valdes is a freelance editor and content creator, specializing in website audits, blog posts, articles, and resumes. As a professional with a master’s degree in marketing and undergraduate degrees in biology and psychology, Anelle breaks down marketing concepts and gives them a psych twist. Her desire is to help people feel more connected, productive and happy. She feels, fulfillment in what we do, while having meaningful relationships is key. Anelle has experience in the marketing, healthcare, and recruiting industries.

ANDREW NORCROSS

When i was 17, i threw a party at my parent’s house while they were out of town. it ~maybe~ got a little out of hand, given the numerous games of human cannonball through the screened in porch. I woke up the next morning to realize I had about 7 hours to learn how to re-screen all the panels we jumped through. i finished with 15 minutes to spare. i almost got away with it, until my father found all the bottle caps in the pool filter.

TRACY APPS

Behind the bowtie, Tracy Apps (@tapps) is a big-picture doer, a veteran UX designer, front-end developer, strategist, teacher, and artist, Tracy has amassed quite a wide range of experience since she started teaching herself code in the late 1990’s. Including teaching at several Universities, presenting at numerous WordCamps, and over 20 years of creating for either her own company, tracy apps design, her co-founded startup, inntro, or as a contractor for Fortune 500 & 1000 companies like Kohl’s, Johnson Controls, and GE Healthcare.

She also could probably deadlift you.

JEAN FELISME

I am a Builder on the Web! In my tool belt: PHP, WordPress, JavaScript, NodeJS, ReactJS | Co-founder of Rate My Barber

MARIA LOPEZ

Maria is a Learning and Development Specialist at White Shark Media. She is a marketing professional with a bachelor’s degree in Information and Document Management and Advertising and over 6 years experience in digital marketing.

During her free time, she enjoys baking and spending time with her family.