And why you should go to a WordCamp
Last weekend was an incredible experience at WordCamp NYC 2015. As always, I could hardly decide which talks to attend because there were so many good ones. Here are the highlights of what I did see:
Speakers
Scott Taylor, one of the core WordPress developers, got me excited about the upcoming release of WordPress 4.4. One of the most exciting things, in my opinion, will be the option to select different image sizes to show on different screen sizes by default, thus reducing the load time on mobile devices. Excellent addition! There is also a new option coming out to make embedding content from other sites easier to share. Find his slides here for more details on the soon to be released update: http://www.slideshare.net/ScottTaylor1/
Sara Cannon gave an excellent design talk with some great resources for inspiration. She talked about visitng logodesignlove.com to find inspriation as well as this pinterest board. She also recommended lovelyui.com/ for UI elements Find her slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/saracannon
Anthony D Paul gave me some great ideas on tools to use on remote collaboration including using Google Slides – an option I had never even heard of! He also likes to use Skitch for creating screenshots and annotating them. He also recommends reading A Year Without Pants and HelpScout. Find his slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/anthonydpaul
Jordan Quintal really opened my mind up about web accessibility and how it can open the world for people. He showed an incredible video of a young man editing videos with buttons on his head rest of his wheelchair. It can also really help your SEO since “Google is blind and deaf.” So, make sure to add captioning to your videos and alt tags to your images. You can see his talk here.
Me – Of course, I hope you’ll check out my talk as well. It’s here.
Other things I discovered:
Even outside the presentations, WordCamp is a great resource. For freelancers or others who spend most of their time working from home, finding new tools and learning best practices can be hard since you have to do it on your own. WordCamp allows you to meet with other people like yourself and find out what they’re using.
https://letsencrypt.org/about/ For free SSL certificates.
https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/ could be a good alternative to WP Bakery Visual Composer. Can’t wait to check it out! Zone Manager could be another option.
And if you’re afraid to go because you won’t know anyone:
- I’ve never met a more warm and welcoming community than WordPress. Just go up to anyone and say hi and they will be glad to talk to you. There are lots of people who attend from around the country who don’t know very many people either and it could be a great way to make a connection.
- Find the speakers and talk to them in more detail about their presentations. They love to share their knowledge.
- Join a WordPress Meetup beforehand and start building your WordPress Posse to go to WordCamps with. Again, this is an incredible community.
Find the next WordCamp near you here: central.wordcamp.org
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