A content marketer at heart, David understands that good content starts with knowing the audience. He blends what people say (customer conversations) with what customers do (website data) to help WordPress site owners build smart more attractive content.

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Presentation: Google Analytics and WordPress for Beginners

This session is a beginner’s guide to best practice set up of Google Analytics and navigating the user interface so you can look at your traffic more critically. We’ll also talk about how Google Analytics WordPress plugins simplify your set-up and analysis.

Elida is slightly obsessed with creating delightful user experiences and determining the best way to do just about anything. She has 15 years’ experience spanning commercial photography, digital media, design, fine arts and teaching. By day, Elida is a UX Designer at Sid Lee, an acclaimed creative agency based in Montreal. By night, she enjoys sampling fine liquids such as new world wines, craft beers and gourmet balsamics.

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Presentation: Wireframe Secrets Revealed

Wireframes. Such a mysterious and elusive term. You may have heard rumours that they exist deep in the depths of waste bins napkins to top secret security compounds. Legend states that wireframes transcend powerful benefits of website creation. But some say could be dangerous to use or almost extinct. Could this be all true?

If blueprints are to a building, what wireframes are to a website, you could be missing out on fundamental knowledge. Let us embark on a LoFi to HiFi journey, discovering wireframe types, tools and much more.

Nicole is a software developer at Alley Interactive, a leading WordPress.com VIP service partner. She develops WordPress sites for Alley Interactive’s high profile media clients, such as Fortune and The New York Post. She also contributes to WordPress as part of the Documentation Team, and has spoken at Detroit area meetups and WordCamps.

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Presentation: Core Functions You (Maybe) Don’t Know Exist

With thousands of functions in the WordPress codebase, it’s virtually impossible to remember all of them. We’ll cover some overlooked WordPress core functions that you may not know exist. We’ll walk through some practical examples for their use, and give you a variety of new gems you can use every day.

Alex Rascanu is a digital strategist and speaker. He creates and executes digital marketing initiatives that help brands win.

Alex is the Director of Marketing at Wealthsimple, a startup that makes smart, simple, low-fee investing accessible to everyone, regardless of net worth or financial knowledge.

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Presentation: Demystifying SEO

Discover what SEO best practices and resources can help you win in the long run, while complementing your current WordPress development processes. Learn how to incorporate our key take-aways to improve your organic search results and generate more customers for your brand.

“I tinker with code at Automattic on a team called “Tinker”. I like ice cream and other sugary things. I wrangle WordPress-related code at Automattic.

I like web stuff including working with open source software such as WordPress, API integration, and other cool things.”

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Presentation: The Database Schema

Learn how the database schema of WordPress is setup, including a walk-through of the tables and how WordPress stores the data and helps you interact with it via its APIs. We’ll also dive into the benefits and dangers of the schema and how to adapt it to go beyond just blog posts.

Brian Layman has been hacking WordPress for fun and profit since 2004. In 2007 he left his programmer analyst position in the corporate world to work full time io join b5media, a Toronto based blogging network. The entrepreneurs working at b5media proved that you could make a living through WordPress, blogging and OpenSource technologies. feeding his family off of the fruits of WordPress.

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Presentation: AJAX

There was a time when every action taken on a website involved staring at a white screen for 5 seconds as the entire page was reloaded. If, for your clients, that time was last week, you should attend this session.

We will learn the basics of using AJAX to improve the speed, performance and presentation of your website. This session will involve writing source code. A basic understanding of editing plugins, themes, hooks and filters will be helpful, but may not be required.

Hailing from the rolling cornfields of Iowa, Mendel loves the outdoors, hiking, gourmet coffee, programming, and prototyping new inventions. From scrappy beginnings as an entrepreneur and Web consultant for local businesses, he found his way to corporate America as a software developer, marketer, and inventor. In addition, Mendel can be found at local and national conferences speaking about small business and software development topics.

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Presentation: Pump up your search visibility with structured data

Google and other search engines use schema.org formatted structured data to power rich snippets in search results. These rich snippets make a search listing stand out, and therefore make it more likely someone might click on your listing. This talk focuses on the PODS framework and how it can be used to easily add schema.org structured data information to your WordPress content to improve the Google search listing for your content.

“I’m a web designer from Birmingham, AL with 15 years of agency experience building websites big and small for a wide variety of clients. I’m passionate about usability, obsessive about typography, and addicted to the mobile web. When I’m not designing, I also make music and grow a beard. I’m a freelance designer and also a contractor for Modern Tribe, which is a name that I’m sure is recognized in the WordPress community.

I’m a huge typography nerd and am passionate about creating great content presentation and reading experiences on the web.”

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Presentation: Designing for Content

“In this talk, I’ll go over the method I’ve created for designing websites from the content outward. I’ll cover aspects of designing in code, type choices, line height and typographic scale, creating a proper base style sheet for your child theme, usability best practices, semantic structure, and more. Since the web is fundamentally a text-based, utilitarian medium, making good type choices is arguably the most important aspect of web design. In this presentation, I’ll walk you through the things I’ve learned in my 15 years designing for the web.”

Luca Sartoni is a media professional with more than a decade of technical and marketing background. Thanks to his extensive experience in different business environments, from SMEs to large corporate projects, Luca helps companies scale up their business adopting data driven strategies. He does not believe in Santa Claus, magical spells and everything that is not backed up by facts. Luca is a Growth Engineer at Automattic.

In addition to his consulting background, Luca is a well renowned blogger and a speaker in the online communications industry.

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Presentation: Powering Business Sites with WordPress

“I’ll be addressing all the code poets, the WordPress consultants and business owners who powers their business sites with WordPress. I’ll be showing them how to define their business goals and structure a methodology based on WordPress to implement all the tools to meet those goals. I’ll be covering case scenarios: restaurants, gyms, local businesses, consultants, pro-bloggers, etc.”

Dawn Comber: “I am copywriter, providing web content and content strategy to small businesses, non-profits and individuals. I also teach monthly LearnWP WordPress workshops in Toronto with Ruth Maude (we’re doing a joint session).”

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Ruth Maude: “Hi I’m Ruth of Dandelion Web Design. I’ve been designing and developing web sites since the late 1990′s. I also co-teach LearnWP WordPress Workshops in Toronto with Dawn Comber.”

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Session: Website Assessment Clinic

Let two seasoned experts review your website and provide on-the-spot advice and insights into ways it can be improved!

This two hour session will give you feedback on your existing website with practical recommendations to improve it. Website assessments will include reviewing usability, messaging, SEO (search engine optimization) and design. We’ll address the principles of each as we review the websites of participants in the room.