All posts by sarahwnyc

About sarahwnyc

Sarah Wefald is a senior product manager, focusing on end-to-end B2B SaaS solutions for state & local government, finance, and education industries. She is also the founder and principal of Mother Blackbird, a digital solutions agency. Sarah has led a number of sessions on topics like WordPress development, as well as product and project management. Additionally, Sarah volunteers for Orange County WordPress, sharing knowledge, guidance and opportunities to those exploring careers in tech. Sarah attended Mount Holyoke College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

Session Spotlight: Marketing Automation Using WordPress with Robert Donnell

Sessions, Speakers,

Meet Robert Donnell in the Trabuco Trail room at 2:50 PM on Sunday, June 6 for his talk Marketing Automation Using WordPress.

In this talk, Robert will show you:

  • Develop marketing automation solutions
  • A review of leading marketing automation solutions that integrate with WordPress
  • What is marketing automation
  • Why marketing automation is important
  • What is possible with MA
  • Setup – working with clients
  • Sample installations – a peek behind the curtain

Session Spotlight: Automated Testing with Tabby Chapman

Sessions, Speakers,

Join Tabby Chapman in the Trabuco Trail room at 11:40 AM on Sunday, June 7 to discuss automated testing.

This is a session designed to help the intermediate developers switch from live-testing their code to implementing automated testing. The topic will cover a general overview of testing the WordPress way and include instructions on how to get started with testing in Windows and PC.

Session Spotlight: Adding a Design Process with Greg Douglas

Sessions, Speakers,

Meet Greg Douglas in the Salt Creek Trail room at 11:40 AM on Sunday, June 6 to discuss the importance of having a design process in your workflow.

If you are thinking about being a freelance consultant or already working as a consultant designing websites using WordPress, now is the time to specialize. The jig is up… the bubble has popped. We have exceeded full market saturation for consultants building websites with WP for small businesses. If you don’t plan to specialize and you are not a natural developer, you are going to have a hard time. For this reason, Greg believes it is important for people identifying themselves more as a designer to specialize in our field as a designer. With examples, this talk represents my take on the why and the how of specializing as a designer, designing for WP websites/applications in today’s business landscape.

Session Spotlight: Themes – Starter vs. Framework vs. Parent with Ryan Kanner

Sessions, Speakers,

Join us at 10:50 AM in the Salt Creek Trail room for Ryan Kanner’s talk about the difference between starter themes, theme frameworks, and parent themes.

Creating a custom WordPress theme from scratch is time consuming, but why start with a blank canvas every time? In this talk, Ryan will go through the differences between starter themes, frameworks, and parent themes; and which one is right for your needs.

Session Spotlight: An Introduction to Front-End Tools with Jacob Arriola

Sessions, Speakers, , ,

Join Jacob Arriola in the Trabuco Trail room at 10 AM on Sunday, June 6 for his introduction to front-end tools presentation.

This is an introductory presentation that will showcase tools that may help a Front End Developer or Designer streamline her development process and collaborate better within a team environment. Topics will include Gulp.js, Bower and Bourbon. This talk assumes the user is familiar with HTML, Sass, isn’t afraid of the command line and has a general understanding of the WordPress theme hierarchy.

Session Spotlight: Immaculate Consternation with Alex Vasquez

Sessions, Speakers, , , ,

Join Alex Vasquez in the Trabuco Trail room at 4:30 PM on Saturday, June 6 to discuss the immaculate consternation.

While everyone is talking about raising our rates; negotiating bigger gigs and releasing amazing products and “owning” their lives something gets overlooked: our personal well-being, physically and emotionally. Alex will speak on something that is overlooked; namely, how we deal with stress, feelings of inadequacy and more. Alex burned out last year and would say he’s still recovering a bit from it; it’s not easy doing the freelance thing, but he’s happy to do it and would like to talk about how one gets into the valley of doubt and depression to come out on the other side wiser, happier a better business person/freelancer overall.