Ben has been building with WordPress for just over two years and in that time has merged his passion for education with a love of technology. In 2012 he co-founded of FlowPress, a WordPress focused development agency as well as WPUniversity.com, a site dedicated to enhancing WordPress learning and providing hints and tips for WordPress users. His current project is a WordPress plugin for the Sidekick platform that provides real-time, guided help and learning from right inside the WordPress dashboard.

Presentation: So You Want To Teach WordPress?

How and what to teach when training a non-technical person or beginner in WordPress.

Non-technical WordPress beginners aren’t like you and me. They didn’t look at the WordPress the first time and say “Wow COOL!” they said probably said something like “I don’t understand this” or “I’m not good at computers”.

During the presentation we’re going to talk about helping people get past that fear, how to engage in a meaningful and memorable way and how to prepare for class.

What attracted you to WordPress in the first place?

The possibility to create awesome, scalable websites that could be handed off to the client for easy management.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

I’m looking forward to interacting with the community face to face and not screen to screen. Hearing the latest news on how everyone’s projects are coming along and what the newest members of our community have to say about their experience with WordPress thus far.

Why did you decide to speak?

I’d like to see more people involved in WordPress education and more people receiving quality on-boarding to the WordPress community.

What is your favourite plugin or theme, and why?

My favourite plugin (other than my own Sidekick) is BackupBuddy by iThemes. It’s the simplest most cost effective way to schedule, take, manage and restore backups. It’s also awesome for migrating sites from staging to production.