There’s no shortage of encouragement to be “solution oriented”. Much of our education is based around encouraging taking initiative and taking extra steps of initiative and creativity to solve a problem. The only problem is, in software and technology, assumptions and interpretations can greatly hamper finding the best solutions that no one may have thought of yet. Problem based thinking, and problem based selling provide a unique

This talk covers the experiences of starting and running a digital business based from Edmonton for over 15 years:

• discovering how much solution based thinking you do vs. problem based thinking,
• how solution based selling can be much more effective after a problem based approach is put into practice first,
• how cultivating a problem based thinking mindset leads to uncovering more long term customers,
• developing relationships with ideal customers so they have the best chance of lasting last many years,
• identifying your next steps to take.

Learn how to leverage the WordPress Shortcode API and give your clients the tools to implement dynamic and engaging content.

We will touch on the fundamentals of Shortcode, applying it to responsive layouts and great shortcode plugins that will make your lives easier.

The web changes at a vicious rate. If you’re like me, you can find that change overwhelming and even intimidating at times.

I’m Theron Smith, owner of Think Style Studio, I’ve alway been a big advocate of work smarter not harder. By breaking up a task into bite sized chunks it makes the unyielding seem approachable.

In this talk I’ll share some tips, tricks, and resources I use to keep on top of everything while still keeping my sanity.

That may seem a bit harsh but far too often we fail because we haven’t considered what the business behind the website/app/product/technology/idea should look like.

Whether your a one person startup, a growing business, or a struggling entrepreneur you will at some point need to think about how your customers, partners, resources, products, and so much more all fit together.

Utilizing concepts from Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup and Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Generation, Nick will teach you a few simple steps you can take to dramatically increase your chance of success.

Ski run rating: Green

What if there was a tool that could help you determine your most successful blog posts, discover problems on your site and find ways to improve your site’s design. Well there is, it’s called that Google Analytics (GA), that thing you installed a while back but never really look at. Glenn will introduce you to some easy to use features of GA and configurations that can find areas for improvement on your website.

Green Rating

Like or not, clients (or customers) are a necessary part of our working lives. It doesn’t matter how great a designer or coder you are, if you have trouble working with people, you’re not going to get far. Micah Slavens, owner of Lift Interactive, shares some of his hard earned lessons on how to win clients, communicate ideas and get things done. Whether you’re working on your first paid project or you’re a seasoned veteran, this session will provide insights into learning to get along better with your clients and that’s time well invested.

Ski run rating: Green circle

The ski run rating for this talk is: green.

To get the most from my presentation, people shouldn’t be easily offended by strong opinions or swearing. Also, they should be interested in words – specifically keywords. I will be telling the exciting tale of how I became the keyword person at Kick Point, as well as providing an informational how-to session on conducting basic keyword research and using the popular, wonderful and life-changing Yoast for WP plugin.

The best design is often invisible, and allows your users to fly through an interface without a UX beat down. Take a walk through our team’s iterative process to interface design that allows us to build products and experiences that people actually want to use.

Rating: Green Circle. Attendees should be familiar with using Microsoft Paint.

What can we learn from analyzing the different types of work we do and how we allocate our time? All work is not created equal and how you manage your work energy can greatly help (or limit) your progress. This talk is for anyone looking to get more creative – and productive – with their weekly workday.

Description: Understanding different caching tools and techniques available to WordPress developers such as the Transient and Object Caching APIs and how/why they can make or break your site.

Ski Run Rating: blue square

Requirements: In order to get the most from this talk, attendees should be familiar with PHP and basics of WordPress plugin development.

Summary: Getting a complex piece of code to work is hard enough. Making sure it’s secure and readable can be even harder. During this session, we’ll introduce a few simple plugin-based tools for automating the scanning of your code to insure that it meets WordPress standards for quality, security, and readability. After this session, you’ll have the basic toolset and knowledge you’ll need to scan your PHP and JavaScript code for security, identify the most common security and readability problems, and understand how to quickly and easily eliminate them.

Prerequisites: “attendees should be familiar with PHP and/or JavaScript in a WordPress context.”

Rating: A nice, wide black-diamond cruiser.

This session will discuss all sorts of “alternative” methods to the website design & development that don’t often get covered in traditional settings. This is primarily due to the negative connotation associated with them, but also simply because individuals do not want to give up their trade secrets. Outsourcing overseas, purchasing templates, using competition marketplaces and uncovering free resources are all viable tools to the web development process. We’ll attempt to remove the stigma around these and other resources, talk about when they are appropriate to use and how to go about getting the best results.

Ski run rating: Green Circle

The more session goers know about the traditional process they more they’ll get out of the talk, but even users who are newer will certainly be able to gain value from it. Especially if they are skilled in certain areas of website design and development but not others.

Otherwise exceptionally talented artists are being done a disservice because of their site design and image presentation, not to mention their content (or lack thereof). Kim is going to talk about what an artist really wants from their theme and why it’s important that their art is seen in its entirety. She’ll also go over the only 4 pages a visual art site really needs and what content absolutely has to be on them. Good art deserves to be seen – properly!

Audience: This talk is for designers, developers and WordPress users. Basically anyone that works with artists or is an artist.

Rating: Green Circle

Bio: Design is Kim Bruce’s background; art, her passion; digital technologies, her tool. Kim is a visual problem solver that designs WordPress websites and themes for fine art. At Artbiz.ca, she teaches artists to maintain their online presence using WordPress. When Kim isn’t at the computer you will find her in the studio creating art with her own unique visual voice.

Find her on Facebook and Twitter @ArtbizKimBruce

Synopsis: Bootstrap is a popular and powerful open-source front-end framework for faster and easier development of mobile-responsive websites and web applications. This session will cover the basics of applying and customizing Bootstrap’s pre-built snippets and CSS styles to the development of custom-built WordPress themes, and targeting smartphone, tablet and desktop users with responsive CSS rules unique to each browsing experience. The session will provide examples of integrating popular design elements like carousel sliders, multi-level navigation menus and widgets into your theme by combining the power of Bootstrap, WordPress core functionality and freely available plugins.

Audience In order to get the most from this talk, attendees should have an intermediate to advanced understanding of HTML/CSS and the WordPress Admin interface, and some experience with theme hacking and/or custom theming for WordPress, including The Loop, common core WordPress PHP functions used to build WordPress themes, and custom queries.
Rating: Black Diamond

Synopsis: WordPress was built in English with the computer programming language PHP. Using WordPress to power a web site requires either an “out of the box” approach, or Customization to better suit your needs. A knowledge of English and PHP makes this second approach not only possible, but desirable.

This talk guides your move from an “off the rack” approach to a custom tailored WordPress solution for your site. The second half of the presentation is a brief introduction to getting started with PHP, covering primary elements of the language and some common mistakes to avoid. Suggested tools and websites will also be covered.

Take a sneak peek at the slides now!

Audience: Anyone interested enough in WordPress and building web sites to attend WordCamp Edmonton 2013 will feel comfortable attending this talk.
Rating: Green Circle

Having moved to Edmonton just over a year ago, I continually hear from people how impressed they are by how quickly I’ve integrated myself into the tech/creative community. I want to share my story and provide insight to inspire more people to get involved—with whatever it is you are interested in. The community benefits, as does your business, personal life, and career; or all of the above.

Bio: Jody is a builder. He is currently spending his time building websites & other digital stuff as lead developer at Versett in Edmonton…but he is always looking to build more stuff.