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: Customer Care with Levan Apriashvili

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Join Levan Apriashvili in the Salt Creek Trail on Saturday, June 6 at 2:50 PM to discuss what superior customer care is and what it can do for your business.

Ours is an age where power has shifted from corporations and companies to the common user. With the rise of the Internet and social media, consumers have a voice that echoes over marketing. Poor customer care comes with an incredibly high cost: 89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service. A customer is 4 times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service related vs. price or product related.

Focus on customer care has an incredibly high value: 81% of companies who deliver superior customer care outperform the competition in market share; 60% of customers will pay more for better customer care and customer retention is 5x more profitable. In this talk, Levan will guide us through the process of recruiting, training and motivating a high-performance customer care team, as well as demonstrate the value in investing in centralized in house systems, automation and tools that help your customer care team deliver an outstanding quality of service to positively impact your bottom line.

Session Spotlight: Contributor Corner with John Hawkins, Aaron Hockley, and Mike Hansen

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Join John Hawkins, Aaron Hockley, and Mike Hansen in the Crystal Cove Trail workshop room at 2 PM on Saturday, June 6 to discuss how you can contribute to the WordPress community no matter your skill level or interests.

Learn how to help improve WordPress, any which way you can at the Contributors Workshop. You will get an introduction to the various ways you can join the WordPress project and assist people on the forums, improve documentation, triage bugs, and add new features to core. Whatever your skill level, you can help!

Session Spotlight: Finding your ideal WordPress job with Suzette Franck

Sessions, Speakers

Join Suzette Franck in the Trabuco Trail track at 2 PM on Saturday June 6 for her presentation “Which WordPress Job is Right for You?”

You love WordPress, and if you are not already making a nice living with it, why not? The WordPress economy is expanding and more people are becoming involved in all aspects around WordPress, whether it be freelancing and entrepreneurship, blogging and content creation, search engine optimization, social media and marketing, developing plugins and themes, designing sites, User Interface, Maintenance, User Experience, Executives, Project Managers, Teachers, Presenters, and on… all working with WordPress in some capacity. This light-hearted session will break down several different types of popular positions and some of the requirements to do that job, which traits work best with which titles, and how you can begin to find your dream WordPress job.

Session Spotlight: Let’s Debug for Real with Joe Chellman

Sessions, Speakers,

Join Joe Chellman in the Trabuco Trail track at 11:30 on Saturday, June 6 for his presentation Let’s Debug For Real.

If you’ve written a line of code in any language, you’ve gotten into a state where you don’t necessarily know what the heck is going on. Sure, you can try adding “echo”, “print_r”, “var_dumps” and the like all over the place, but it’s messy, and there is a better way. A little bit of set-up can help you debug your code like a champ. If you’ve never seen a real debugger before, or if you’ve just dabbled with one, this talk could change your life substantially for the better.

 

Session Spotlight: Giving back to WordPress with Chris Ford

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Join Chris Ford in the Salt Creek Trail track at 11:30 AM Saturday, June 6 to discuss how to give back to WordPress without being a core contributor.

There are four ways to give back to the WordPress community that don’t involve writing code. Learn how writing, speaking and teaching can not only help you share your knowledge and grow the community, they can also help you gain a better understanding of your beliefs and values.

Session Spotlight: Designing for Seniors with Cemal Tashan

Sessions, Speakers,

Join Cemal Tashan in the Salt Creek Trail track at 2 PM on Saturday, June 6 to learn about designing websites with senior citizens in mind.

An American turns 50 every 7 seconds. The senior age group is now, for the first time, the largest in terms of size and percent of the population in the U.S. Those aged 50 and older represent 45% of the U.S. population. One-third of the internet users in the U.S., are adults aged 50+ representing the Web’s largest constituency.

WordPress sites must be designed with this in mind. You will learn how to meet seniors’ needs from one of their own.