10 Mistakes beginners make when setting up their websites

Michael Viller

Michael, who until a few years ago was a decade-long Joomla user, is joining us to talk about the 10 things beginners forget when setting up their WordPress website. He’ll be covering common questions such as How do I speed up my website?, My images are slowing down my website, how do i fix that?, How do I SEO?, How do I get google to visit my website? and many many more.
But are these really questions that should be asked afterwards? Not having these things done at the time of creating your website can make it harder and more costly to do later on.
This talk will lightly cover the above topics, and focus on the questions that can be asked ahead of time to reduce the pain later on, such as how to choose quality hosting, themes and page builders, WordPress settings and image compression plugins, and implementing SEO the right way from the start.

Michael has been the “Mick” of many things over the past 36 years of his life however one thing that he’s always been passionate about is building websites, He started teaching himself to build websites back in ’99 with HTML, then moved to mambo, then was an avid Joomla user for over 10 years and a very anti-WordPress person up till a few years ago, but hasn’t touched Joomla since.

The Future of the Web

Brendan Woods & Luke Carbis

Brendan & Luke are joining us to remind us that we’re living at a time in history when technology is changing at a profound rate, creating deep challenges for companies all over the world. Those with the foresight to adapt will be greatly rewarded, while those who ignore changing technologies will fall behind (aka Blockbuster). Join them and learn about the 4 major areas of change that will fundamentally disrupt the future of the web.

Luke Carbis is a trained teacher who decided to trade moody teenagers for programming. Today, he works to foster diversity, community, and possibility at XWP.

Brendan Woods works as a Team Lead with XWP, managing large scale WordPress solutions. Currently completing a Masters of Data Analytics, Brendan has a deep interest in how technology continues to shape our lives.

How to make the most of your WordCamp experience

Sally Eberhardt

Sally, a published author from the Sunshine Coast is joining us to talk about how WordCamps are a great opportunity to learn, network, and strengthen the WordPress Community. While WordCamps can be a little daunting for first timers (and introverts!) she’ll touch on the power of networking, how networking is about giving, how supportive the WordPress community is, and some self-care tips for introverts to help them maximise their experience at WordCamp without getting social burnout.

Sally Eberhardt a proud and happy introvert (although you’re forgiven for not realising this upon meeting her), has recently published her first book entitled Pain-Free Networking for Introverts.
Her first networking experiences were nerve-racking to say the least, fearing about whether anyone would talk to her, whether she’d fit in, and general lack of confidence. Turning all that around she now shares her journey with others to remove pain and maximise the rewards of networking.
She’s a lover of wild places, animals, photography, family, street-art, traveling, dining out, reading, writing, and of course, the Communities she’s Networked with on her journey here.

My Experience Building and Operating an online community and social media platform on WordPress for the disability sector

Dale Reardon & Charlie

Dale, a qualified lawyer (but he asked us not to hold that against him) is joining us from Tasmania to share with us how he’s created an online social community for the disability sector – My Disability Matters, using many of the familiar tools such as BuddyPress, Peepso, WooCommerce, and many others. He’ll cover many of the learnings based around the scaling and performance ability of different plugins and hosting. Discussion of our experience and tips for others building their community on WordPress.

Dale Reardon is from Tasmania, Australia and along with his wife, Jo, have founded My Disability Matters, a Worldwide online community for the disability sector. Dale is qualified as a lawyer but he asks that we not hold that against him. He loves everything to do with France. Wine, food, and champagne. Dale is legally blind and uses a guide dog, Charlie.
Dale advocates for accessible web-design and has a particular hatred for graphical captchas that frustrate him and so many others, he’s also a passionate advocate for equality, anti-discrimination and disability rights and equality.

WordPress as API Middleware: We’ve been doing things wrong. Lets fix it!

Rheinard Korf

Rheinard is joining us to talk API & WordPress. Having integrated several API integrations for large clients patterns have emerge. Yet each time an API project comes up he finds us reinvent the wheel – Why? Mostly because of changing team composition, but more prominently… as a WordPress community we have been doing it wrong. What if there was a better way? What if we could standardise our approach for how we integrate with third-party APIs? What if WordPress became API Middleware?

In this talk Rheinard will explore this idea. He’ll use a real case study of where they’ve started to implement this. Ultimately he’s seeking feedback from the developer community with the intent to push WordPress forward in an exciting and unknown direction.

At the age of twelve Rheinard discovered a love for programming languages and writing software for friends and family. Whilst studying Information Technology he also discovered a love for teaching programming and has done so for over a decade before turning to programming as a career.
Rheinard has a passion for frameworks, programming languages and APIs. His most ambitious project he has worked on recently is Tide – a WordPress code quality and review ecosystem written primarily in the Go programming language. Now he is at it again, dreaming big and exploring the future of WordPress in an API dominated world.

Going Against The Grain: Insourcing In ICT

Maddison Selleck

Maddison, the Chief Business Development Officer at VentraIP Australia is joining us to talk about their story of rapid growth and difficult decisions that came with that. Like many companies in the ICT industry, VentraIP Australia went through a period of rapid growth and was met with the difficult decision of whether to invest in their local staff or build a team of outsourced technicians to meet the increased demand.

Hear what Chief Business Development Officer Maddison Selleck and the Leadership Team at VentraIP Australia has learnt since making this pivotal decision and discover the many hidden benefits of going against the grain by insourcing in ICT.