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WordCamp Portland 2012

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It’s WordCamp season for 10up! Well, actually, are always traveling to various WordCamps, but in the next few months we’ve got a few. Near to my heart is WordCamp Portland, rapidly approaching on August 18th. We have four 10uppers attending, two are featured speakers, and 10up is a top-tier, Bald Eagle sponsor.

The three 10up Portlanders: Zack, Taylor, and Jeremy will be there and, since it’s our hometown, we will be volunteering throughout the day. Among the 12 selected to be featured speakers are Zack and Taylor. Presenting development anti-patterns is Zack, with his session titled _doing_it_wrong: Improving Your Development Skills Through Examining Bad Practices. Taylor is presenting a talk about how we, as authors, designers, and developers, should focus our attention on the interaction between users and content. His talk, titled Why We Click Publish: Advocating for User-Centricity through Interaction Design, as well as Zack’s are scheduled simultaneously, first thing after the morning announcements.

Because 25% of 10up employees call Portland home, 10up is sponsoring WordCamp Portland as a top-tier, Bald Eagle sponsor and Jake is flying in to keep tabs on us. If you’re in town for WordCamp, we’d love to meet you: find us in our grey 10up shirts or better yet, attend one of our sessions.

Helen Hou-Sandí

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Before I move from Wichita back to the East Coast (my original home) in a couple of weeks, I’m going to meet the fine folks of the Kansas City WordPress MeetUp and reprise my WCNYC talk on “Making Custom Content Management Disappear into the WordPress Admin”, since I wasn’t able to speak at WordCamp Kansas City. We’ll be meeting at 1PM at OfficePort (details). If you’re in the area, please come join us!

Interview on CodePoet.com

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Rebecca Collins, an editor over at the recently refreshed CodePoet.com, has published an interview with me that explores 10up and our WordPress-focused web development business. Rebecca asked some great questions, and really challenged me to expand on topics I may have otherwise breezed over. In addition to articulating our focus on building really rich administrative experiences and supporting high scale sites, we really dived into what communication looks at a distributed company and how we respond to work opportunities that, on the surface, might initially seem like a poor fit. At 10up, we pride ourselves on transparency and sharing, and this very intimate look at our operational philosophies is no exception.

Working With Memcached in WordPress

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In the early 2000s, LiveJournal dominated the blogging world. While known as a pioneer in the world of online communities, many may not be aware that  its creators are also responsible for one of the most important caching technologies currently powering the web: memcached (pronounced “mem-cache-dee”). Memcached is the caching engine behind Facebook, Twitter, and, a favorite at 10up, WordPress.com. Even though memcached is a stable and mature caching system, it has subtle nuances that can make it difficult to tame. Given that our work at 10up frequently involves development within memcached environments, we have become quite familiar with the ins and outs of the tool. In this article, I share some of my insights, cautions and thoughts on developing in a memcached environment.

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Slides: Enterprise Class WordPress

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Updated 9/16/2012 with the latest version of the deck, presented at WordCamp Los Angeles.

Here are my slides from Enterprise Class WordPress – a talk I debuted at WordCamp Orange County last weekend. Like What Would Core Do?, the focus was on big ideas, not code. I found this difficult to formulate, largely because it involves a complex “problem” that’s more human than technical, and as such, requires a lot of generalizing. I do think that the underlying ideas are important to WordPress’s growth, and I’d like to see the conversation percolate. I plan to refine the talk and explore this with other communities and at other camps – starting with Boston. Please chime in with ideas!

See you at WordCamp Milwaukee!

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In an unexpected, but certainly delightful turn of events, I will be speaking at WordCamp Milwaukee next weekend! As some of you may or may not know, my family is from Milwaukee and I lived there for a few years, so I’m really excited to not only attend, but speak at the city’s inaugural WordCamp.

WordCamp Milwaukee will consist of three tracks: User, Developer, and Unconference. I’ll be speaking in the User track and delivering my “WordPress Can Do That” presentation. My talk will focus on showcasing some of the amazing sites running WordPress, profiling unique front-end user experiences and the custom backend publishing interfaces that make managing these sites a breeze.

If you’re in the area or plan on attending the event, feel free to ping me on Twitter (@jessjurick) if you’d like to meet up!

WordCamp Seattle 2012 Recap

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The WordCamp Seattle organizers had great foresight when they chose last weekend for their 2012 event at the Seattle Art Museum. Not only did everything turn out perfect, from the weather to the venue, but 10up’s entire Portland contingent was able to make the trip.

We had an excellent time mingling and meeting likeminded folks and were impressed with the quality of sessions offered in all three tracks. I think the only regret is we weren’t able to attend them all.

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Join us at WordCamp NYC 2012

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I am excited to announce that Jake, Helen, and I will be speaking at WordCamp NYC 2012 – which we’re also sponsoring – on June 9-10. This will be my first time to speak at a WordCamp. Jake and Helen are old pros.

In Jake’s presentation, he will be asking: “What would core do?”, and challenging you to keep asking yourself the same as you add your themes and plugins to WordPress. He will show you how to extend core “with class and consistency”.

Helen will be talking about: “Making Plugins and Themes Disappear into the WordPress Admin. One of the best things about WordPress is its beautiful admin UI.” Helen suggests, “We should take advantage of what is built-in and also strive to have our additions look as though they are native.”

I will be talking about: Actions and Filters in Core JavaScript. As JavaScript becomes an ever more important part of the WordPress admin, knowing how to use these JavaScript hooks will become as essential as knowing PHP hooks.

If you are in the New York area, come see us. We would look forward to meeting you (or seeing you again).

Sponsoring WordCamp Boston 2012

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WordCamp Boston has a very special place in my heart, as I helped organize the first camp back in 2010, and then made it the first event that 10up would sponsor back in 2011. We’re excited to be repeating our Silver Sponsorship in 2012. You can expect to see 3-4 members of team 10up at the event, and, hopefully, at least a few of us speaking. With a first class organizing team behind the event, one of the biggest meet ups in the country behind it, and a good old New England passion, you can expect this WordCamp to be every bit as amazing as the prior two!