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10up Heads to WordCamp US 2023, With Several Speaking Slots

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Next week, I – and ten other 10uppers, including President & Founder Jake Goldman and CEO John Eckman – are traveling to National Harbor, Maryland (just outside of Washington DC) for WordCamp US. The largest WordPress conference in the United States, this annual event takes place August 24 – 26 and expects nearly 2,000 attendees.

On Thursday night, the evening before the WordCamp begins, Jake will be joining a panel to discuss how governments and civic tech can modernize with WordPress during the inaugural “Run with VIP: WordPress for Government Summit”. The event is independent of the WordCamp, free to attend, and includes time for networking — you can still register here.

I’m looking forward to several presentations from my 10up colleagues during the three-day event:

  • Dmitry Mayorov, Lead Front-End Engineer, is presenting “From Comfort Zone to Cutting Edge: Embracing Lean Principles in Front-End Projects” — where he will introduce ideas to help developers stay on the cutting edge of the CSS by shifting their mindset.
  • Jeff Paul, Director of Open Source Initiatives, will be giving a lightning presentation on “Using a GitHub Action to Ensure Your Plugins Are GPL Compatible”.
  • Peter Wilson, Lead Web Engineer from our Open Source Practice, is speaking on a holistic approach to WordPress security in his talk, “The Enterprise Approach to WordPress Security”.

Some other attending 10uppers will include SVP of Engineering Taylor Lovett (a local!), VP of New Client Strategy Brad Miller, Director of Client Growth Strategy Steve Meyers, and VP of Platforms & Systems (and ElasticPress product lead) Vasken Hauri.

We can’t wait to see you there!

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Join me at WordCamp Europe June 2 through June 4, 2022. I’ll be in Porto, Portugal alongside twenty other 10uppers as we come together for the first WordCamp EU in 3 years. During the event, find us at the Google Booth–and be sure to ask about our work on SiteKit and the WordPress Performance Lab.

Helen Hou-Sandí

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On Thursday, June 3 at 3:30pm EDT, I’ll be presenting “Editorial Experience: An Important Part of the Full Stack” at Click/Deploy, an event presented by Jamstack Toronto. If you’re intrigued by talk about Jamstack versus WordPress, this is for you. Then, on June 8 at 3:15 EDT I’m joining GitHub’s Global Maintainer Summit to present “You Can’t Have a Solution Without a Problem”. I’ll be talking about why I like to ask, “What’s the problem being solved for here?” and how that type of thought process can lead to better solutions. Both events are virtual and free to attend.

Helen Hou-Sandí Presents at the GitHub Virtual Meetup for Open Source Fridays

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Working with WordPress GitHub Meetup

On Friday, April 2 at 10AM PDT/1PM EDT I’ll be joining Brian Douglas on GitHub’s Twitch stream for a GitHub Virtual Meetup Open Source Friday. Open Source Friday is a place for maintainers to share demos, stories, and inspiration with other GitHub users.

We’ll talk about using GitHub Actions to solve common problems in the WordPress development ecosystem, such as with 10up’s WordPress Plugin Deploy Action, and how the WordPress project itself uses GitHub Actions.

This Meetup event is free and will also be available afterward on the GitHub YouTube channel.

Deep Dive: Gutenberg’s Create-block Scaffolding

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Fabian Kaegy on Gutenberg Times Live Live

Yesterday, I was a guest on Gutenberg Times Live, discussing the inner workings of the Create Block scaffolding tool and the creation of new templates. The “WordPress/create-block” tool is a Command Line Application that facilitates the building and registering of new block plugins to help developers extend the capabilities of the WordPress block editor.

The discussion revolved around my pull request, Create block: Add support for external templates hosted on npm. I demonstrated how this proposed solution makes it easier to create new block templates.

You can watch the video on the Gutenberg Times YouTube Channel.

Congratulations Tim Wright!

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I was excited (but not surprised) to see Tim Wright featured this week as Smashing Magazine’s “Person of the Week.” In his role as Director of Front End Engineering, we’ve had first-hand experience with his commitment to knowledge sharing and mentoring, especially with respect to web accessibility.

Congrats Tim, and well deserved!

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In response to COVID-19, many people are working from home for the first time. Recently, I shared insights from my experience working at home and leading a remote agency with one of our clients, T-Mobile. My tips are featured alongside some other perspectives in their story, Pants or No Pants? That Is the Question! For the record, I am team “yes, pants.”

10up Is WordCamp US Bound

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WordCamp US

Each year, we participate in dozens of industry events around the world. One highlight is WordCamp US, the largest official WordPress conference in the United States. This year, we’re heading to St. Louis, Missouri for three days.

Speaking

We’re proud to have two speakers leading off this year’s event. In the presentation Open Source, Open Process, Open Web, Helen Hou-Sandi, Director of Open Source Initiatives, will examine the histories of open source and the open web, and discuss how they apply to WordPress.

Jeffrey Paul, Open Source Practice Manager, will answer the question, “I’m not a developer, how can I contribute to WordPress?” in the presentation Contributing to Core, No Coding Necessary.

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