Meet our Speakers

Email marketing is constantly evolving alongside consumer behavior and shopping trends. As consumer spending slows and competition from ecommerce brands increases, relying on the wrong or outdated tactics can cost you sales and tank your deliverability. Don’t let this happen to you.

“Do or do not, there is no try.” In this session, Ecommerce Expert and 19-year email geek Greg Zakowicz will explore the three dos and don’ts of successful modern-day marketers and will discuss:

- Email automation dos that will have your customers begging to take their money

- One traditional “best practice” that is now an “email don’t” — are you guilty?

- Essential email template changes to counter consumer spending changes

- Shortcuts that will lead your emails directly to the spam folder and worse

Industry melting down? Global recession? AI apocalypse? The truth is, calamities can be a great time to start a creative project — even a profitable business. And no, AI can't replace you when you avoid making certain mistakes. Let's talk about the current business ~climate~, how to create products people will actually want to use and buy, and how you can offer customers what they really want: humanity, trust, and support.

Over 14 million small businesses in the U.S. alone have fewer than ten employees. With over two decades of experience running a small development agency, Justin brings hard-earned insights, stories and practical tips to help every small business owner ditch the downsides of running an intentionally small business and enjoy the fruits of their tiny teams.

Whether you're a company of one trying to scale (but just a little), or you're feeling the stress of project management, payroll and compliance (oh my!) for your globally distributed dozen-person team - you won't want to miss this.

This project was about moving 11 high-traffic websites from an old CMS called Arbotron to WordPress on the WPVIP platform. These websites belong to a global media and publishing group, reaching over 245 million unique visitors and 500 million page views each month—so this was a big, high-impact project that needed careful planning and execution.

Our main goal was to build a modern and scalable platform using WordPress. We used WordPress Multisite to centrally manage all the websites, while still keeping each site’s unique look and feel. We migrated over 50,000 posts and their media files using custom WP-CLI scripts, making sure everything transferred correctly and worked smoothly in WordPress.

To simplify content creation and publishing, we built a custom plugin that allowed the team to manage all content from one central site. This made the editorial process faster and more efficient. For design, we created site-specific themes and shared Gutenberg blocks across all sites to keep things consistent and flexible.

We focused heavily on performance. We used advanced caching methods, WordPress VIP’s CDN, and Fastly’s reverse proxy to make the sites load quickly. For ads, we developed a plugin to manage ad codes easily and improve ad revenue.

The entire project was completed in just 12 weeks with zero downtime. We also improved and rebuilt key features from the old system so we could move away from outdated tools. In the end, we delivered a fast, reliable, and future-ready platform that’s built to grow with their global audience.

What's great for learning and personal development; helps make useful contacts in the industry; a helpful creative outlet; and a source of fun and joy and excitement? That's right: video games!

Oh, wait. No. I mean: side projects!

But I'm going to use (and really stretch as far as it will let me!) the metaphor of side quests in video games to explain how side projects can benefit your career. I'll give you cheat codes for getting the best out of your little creative works. And I'll try to inspire you with stories and ideas to get you started.

Perhaps I can convince you to Press Start on something new and exciting?

Is anybody truly good at context switching? Our business culture values multitasking, but our brains just aren’t built for it! Nonetheless, whether you are a manager or individual contributor, to move up in our careers we inevitably have to juggle more and more tasks of increasingly different types.

Agency life requires more context switching than other environments, and we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of these challenges. In this talk I will share practical strategies that I and my colleagues find useful for keeping track of it all: how to jump between projects and land on your feet, and how to get back into the groove faster after switching between different types of work. Teaser: the answer isn’t to try to do everything all at once!

What if Gutenberg wasn’t just for editing WordPress content but also for building full-featured web applications?

In this session, Muhammad Muhsin shares how he used the standalone Gutenberg Framework to build CareerVision.io — a modern, customizable résumé builder designed for anyone who wants control over how they present their professional story.

You’ll learn:

• How to run Gutenberg independently of WordPress

• How to use OpenAI APIs to import and parse Résumé PDFs and LinkedIn profiles

• Lessons from building a visual, block-based editing experience for non-technical users

• Why Gutenberg is more than a CMS tool — and how it can power entire product experiences

Whether you’re building tools for content creators, job seekers, educators, or your own SaaS, this session will expand your view of what’s possible with Gutenberg.

What would you do if your biggest client suddenly fired you—or your most reliable referral source dried up overnight? For many freelancers, the answer is panic, followed by a desperate scramble through old contacts or gig platforms. In this honest and tactical session, Zach shares a better way: how to build a self-sustaining, repeatable system for attracting high-value clients—one that can support a $200K/year business.

Drawing on 15 years of freelancing experience and his work with hundreds of freelancers in the Freelancing community, Zach explains how to take control of client acquisition and stop relying on luck, referrals, or platforms like Upwork. He also explores the mindset shift from being a commoditized developer to positioning yourself as a valuable business partner—an essential change in a world increasingly shaped by AI.

In this session, you’ll learn:

Why the old client-finding methods keep freelancers stuck in survival mode

How to build a predictable, scalable client generation engine

What makes the $200K/year mark a powerful benchmark for independence

How to escape the feast-or-famine cycle for good

The key differences between a commodity developer and a value-driven consultant

Why business thinking is now a non-negotiable skill for developers

Getting started with accessibility can feel overwhelming—especially when you're faced with the full scope of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). But you don't have to be an expert or meet every criterion to make meaningful improvements today.

In this practical and encouraging session, Amber Hinds of Equalize Digital demystifies accessibility by showing where problems typically arise—in design systems, third-party code, and even how clients enter content. You'll learn how to test your site using automated tools and keyboard navigation, identify critical issues, and prioritize fixes that deliver the biggest impact.

Whether you’re new to accessibility or looking to take your practices further, this talk will give you an actionable roadmap to start reducing risk and making your websites more usable for everyone.

WordPress Full Site Editing makes website design simpler and more consistent, just like having a complete toolkit where all your design pieces work together perfectly. With FSE, you can set up your site's colors, fonts, and spacing just once in the global styles panel, and they automatically apply everywhere - no more fixing mismatched designs across different pages!

In this session, we'll cover how to set up your global styles to create a cohesive design foundation based on your brand, and we’ll learn how to use that system to save time and maintain consistency while building in modern WordPress. You'll leave with practical knowledge of how to transform WordPress into a powerful design toolkit that grows with your needs.

Hate writing your own copy, and hate it even more when that copy gets ignored? Time to make like your withholding mother and weaponize your feelings! In this interactive copy talk, you’ll learn when and why to inject Frustration, Skepticism, Hope, and four other emotions into your copy for higher conversion and more durable customer relationships.

All About You: Unleashing the Power of Personal Branding

Whether you're freelancing, starting a new company, or working for others, developing your personal brand is important not only to your personal success, but to the success of the places you work and volunteer.

It's 2024, and you work in tech - so, of course, your information is on the web. You probably have at least one social media account. And you're on a business About Us page. And maybe you also have a blog. Or volunteer somewhere (or multiple places).

So you have a brand out there already. But what does it look like? Is it well-organized? Does it lead to the places you want it to? Does it represent you well? Or is it a chaotic mess of whatever pops into your head at any given moment?

There's a strategy to building a brand that helps you get ahead - and in turn helps any organization you're attached to, whether that's your own or not.

This talk will outline how to put together a strategy to help you move ahead with building a brand that will lead to higher success.

Sometimes you go all in and do your best work, and work is energizing. Other times, you procrastinate like nobody's business, and work seems to drain the life out of you. And there are also times you're doing something you're good at but struggle to care at all. Why? What's the difference? Motivation. Not forced motivation and external pressure, but your unique internal Motivations that drive your thoughts, decisions, and actions — and how you feel about your work.

Every person is wired differently and how you're wired determines the types of tasks and activities that energize and drain you. Knowing how your Motivations stack up helps you put them to work for you — to make your work more interesting, and enjoyable and set you up to shine bright.

But it's not all about you, especially when you're running a company, freelancing, or part of a team — and you deal with clients and customers. Once you understand how you're motivated, you can shift the focus to not just how others are motivated, but how you interact with others who are motivated by different things. And, when you can do that, your marketing is more effective, you close sales faster, and you build stronger, more resilient relationships among your team and with your clients.

In just 25 minutes, you'll discover:

- Why your Motivations are your competitive advantage.

- How to identify the work that naturally energizes and drains you.

- How to use motivational insights to make your work more fulfilling.

- How motivation impacts team dynamics and client relationships.

- Simple tweaks to help you close deals faster (and at higher rates).

By popular demand, join us for this live replay of Amy's session!

Industry melting down? Global recession? AI apocalypse? The truth is, calamities can be a great time to start a creative project — even a profitable business. And no, AI can't replace you when you avoid making certain mistakes. Let's talk about the current business ~climate~, how to create products people will actually want to use and buy, and how you can offer customers what they really want: humanity, trust, and support.

It's impossible to thrill customers AND have a team full of Customer Support agents who enjoy working, don't leave for better work, and avoid burnout. Right?

Customer support has a well-earned reputation for chewing up and spitting out support agents. You have to deal with customer vitriol, and the only reason you even take a job in support is to get your foot in the door to be able to move to a better department.

Or at least, that's what you've heard.

Folks who attend this talk will hear the simple (but not necessarily easy) system I've put in place on 3 brands (so far) that has resulted in nearly eliminating churn from those teams.

Technical support is just about the only differentiator left for your product, service or e-commerce shop to stand out. It deserves a sustainable system.