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Double Days of Discourse in Dallas

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I’m proud to be joining my fellow 10uppers for not one, but two WordPress-focused conferences in Dallas, Texas this weekend!

Scott Kingsley Clark, Lead Developer of the Pods Framework for WordPress, will kick things off with several talks on Friday at PodsCamp, which focuses on the flexibility and varying use cases for the Pods plugin.

If Scott doesn’t collapse from exhaustion after giving four talks, he’ll join Corey Ellis, Jon Bellah, and myself at WordCamp Dallas the next day. Come say hello between sessions, or join us at one of our talks listed below!

Between the four of us, there’s content for WordPress developers of all skill levels: Corey will dig into WordPress themes for those just getting started. I’ll cover the benefits and trade-offs of several WordPress career tracks, while Jon will bring your development skills to the next level for high-performance sites. Want to know how to quickly extend WordPress to manage almost any type of content? Any of Scott’s talks at PodsCamp will fit the bill!

PodsCamp Dallas — October 3, 2014

Scott Kingsley Clark will be presenting four (yes, four!) talks on the popular Pods plugin:

WordCamp Dallas — October 4, 2014

10up goes to WordCamp Europe

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This weekend marks the second annual WordCamp Europe, being held in Sofia, Bulgaria. I am very excited to be presenting on enhancing WordPress development by getting curious about core; inspired by the 10up experience of building with WordPress and building WordPress itself. I’m also excited to meet a large group of end users, developers, and contributors who many of us based in the United States have few opportunities to see in person, and look forward to collaborating with them at Monday’s Contributor Day.

10up takes Salt Lake City

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WordCamp_SLC_2014_logoThis Saturday, September 13th, I’ll be presenting at WordCamp Salt Lake City on the topic of JavaScript and jQuery best practices in WordPress. In light of the upcoming integration of the WP JSON API into WordPress Core, my presentation will focus on building high-quality, performant front-end code that can be safely distributed in the WordPress.org repo.

As WordPress grows beyond a publishing platform to become a powerful and highly extensible CMS with its own JSON API, the need to write clean, readable, and efficient JavaScript is becoming increasingly critical. My talk will cover some common pitfalls that can occur in JavaScript engineering, including overuse of DOM elements, improper variable scoping, and lack of closures within script files. In particular, I’ll explore current best practices in PHP WordPress engineering, with an eye towards applying those same lessons and standards to JavaScript.

Heckling me from the crowd will be various members of an entire 10up pod, visiting Salt Lake City as part of their annual pod retreat. 10uppers in attendance include Kailey Lampert, Rachel Backer, Cameron Benedict, Faison Zutavern, Erin Crutcher, Darin Kotter, John Bloch, Cole Geissenger, and Grant Landram.

If you’re a WordPress engineer looking to find out about the latest and greatest that the upcoming JSON API has to offer, as well as how you can create plugins that use the API effectively while still playing nicely with other plugins, this talk is for you.

 

NERD Summit? Count me in

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New England Regional DevelopersThis weekend I’ll be headed out to Amherst Massachusetts for the New England Regional Developers Summit (see what they did there?).

While most of the WordPress community is familiar with the concept of a WordCamp, it’s great to see more conferences which are multi-platform or platform agnostic, bringing together designers, developers, and users of Drupal and WordPress into the same conversation.

I’ll be giving a talk on Saturday on “The Word and The Drop: How Drupal and WordPress Handle Structured Content.” It’s way too much to really cover in 45 minutes, but I think it helps developers in both communities to see how the “other” platform handles content types and fields.

Wearing Two Hats at WordCamp LA

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WCLAXWordCamp Los Angeles keeps getting better. This year, by adding another full day of talks for designers, small business owners, and beginners, the organizers have improved upon an already stellar and full weekend of sessions and activities.

I have the honor of speaking not once, but twice. Friday morning, in the business track, I’ll wear my former small business owner hat, joining Wes Chyrchel for a short Q&A session covering what web shops need to know when scoping a project. After lunch, I switch to my Creative Director hat where, in the design track, I’ll present Uncommon Design for a Common Web.

I’m looking forward to connecting with WordCamp friends, and meeting up in-person with fellow 10upper, Senior Engineer Mary Cadwell.

WordCamp Boston Turns 5, 10up Helps Celebrate

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wcboston

This weekend, Boston will hold its fifth WordCamp, and 10up will be there to help celebrate the #BestWordCampEver.

Jake and I will be part of a panel on “What Boston Gave WordPress, and What WordPress Gave Boston,” which will include the story of the first WordCamp Boston, which we helped plan back in late 2009 / early 2010. In many ways that first WordCamp Boston set in motion a series of events that would result in his founding of 10up and my joining as CEO. It’s really exciting to see the impact the camp (and the meetup) have had on the WordPress community in Boston and across New England.

Taylor Lovett, our Director of Web Engineering, will also be giving a talk about the JSON REST API targeted for WordPress core in 4.1.

Finally, we’ll be joined at the 10up sponsor table and throughout the weekend by 10uppers Dave Ross, Sara Tirrell, and Helen Hou-Sandí. Stop by and say hello!

10up at WordCamp NYC

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WordCamp NYC 2014 is this weekend and we’re excited to take part as speakers, attendees, and sponsor. WordCamp NYC is always a great time, and this one is no different, with four full tracks across two days at the Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge.

On Saturday, Adam Silverstein will be presenting Put a little Backbone in your WordPress! and our President, Jake Goldman, will share Best Practices for Plugin Development. Then on Sunday, catch Drew Jaynes’s insight into the core docs initiative and the major part he played as the docs committer for WordPress. Director of Platform Experience Helen Hou-Sandí and CEO John Eckman will be presenting simultaneously with a deep dive into WP_Query and ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’: Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Responsive Web Design, respectively. Doug Stewart and Amy Hendrix will also be in attendance, and you’ll also find many of us at Friday’s Contributor Day at NYU.

We’re also Park Avenue sponsors under the PushUp Notifications brand, so stop by the 10up/PushUp sponsor table and say hello. We’ll be happy to chat with you, especially about push notifications and 10up, and get you signed up for PushUp with the help of our team for just 99 cents.

10up in the Brew City at WordCamp Milwaukee

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WordCampMKE-2014-banner

This weekend, 10up will be making its midwestern presence known in Brew City.  Seven 10uppers will be taking part in the event, many taking on multiple roles to make this an amazing WordCamp.  Learn more about WordCamp Milwaukee on the official website.

The organizing committee features two 10uppers: lead organizer Dustin Filippini, and Kara Buffardi, who is organizing the Charity Hackathon which will build a web site for a Milwaukee area non-profit dedicated to helping young women and girls in the city.

10uppers will also be speaking throughout the day. In a can’t miss talk, Rachel Baker will be presenting on the new WordPress JSON REST API, which she took a major role in developing.  VP of Strategic Engineering Vasken Hauri will be presenting “jQuery: The good, the bad, and the anonymous.”  Faison Zutavern, Web Engineer, addresses Ethics in Web Development with his talk on Sunday, and Alison Barrett rounds out the schedule, discussing cooperation between developers and designers in “So I Married a Developer.”  Jess Jurick, our VP of Consulting Services, will also be in attendance.  Check out the full schedule.

We’re also sponsoring the camp under our PushUp Notifications product brand; so if you’ll be at WordCamp Milwaukee, stop by the 10up/PushUp sponsor table, talk with one of the many 10uppers, and sign up for PushUp with the help of our team for just 99 cents.

Telling my story at WordCamp Romania

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WordCamp Romania

Universitatea De Vest Din Timisoara

Attending Speaking

I love working in a global community! WordPress touches every corner of the globe and attracts both writers and developers from just about every country on the planet. Many of them are so enthusiastic they hold annual WordCamps to celebrate the application that ties us together. This weekend, I get to visit one such WordCamp.

WordCamp RomaniaOn Saturday and Sunday, I’ll (Eric Mann) be visiting the far reaches of Europe at WordCamp Romania – my first international WordCamp experience! It’s going to be a trip to remember.

WordCamp Romania is themed around telling stories, so I’ll be telling a bit of my own history with WordPress as well as encouraging new developers to become even more involved in the platform.

Sunday is a “leisure day” when I hope to touch base with some other WordPress aficionados to sit down and work on core code (the WordPress 4.0 beta is coming near, we need all hands on deck!).

Above all, though, I’m excited to connect even more with the global WordPress community. WordPress is global, and 10up has a growing global presence. I’m just honored to be a part of both!

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I’m excited to be the lead-off speaker at the 3rd annual WP Summit today. This one-day online conference brings together some of the most talented presenters covering various aspects of WordPress.  My talk will focus on the nuts and bolts of putting together a WordPress theme.  If you have ever wanted to start building your own themes then this talk will get you started.