Attending a WordCamp is often filled with decisions of which talks to attend. It is said by some that designers should attend a few developer talks, and vice-versa. It’s a great opportunity to expand your knowledge and further your abilities when building with WordPress. And it’s a good rule for bloggers and business owners to also expand their understanding of WordPress.
For the bloggers and business owners that don’t want to delve into the code involved with design or development, here are some suggestions for sessions to allow you to get the most from your WordCamp Belfast experience.
After opening-remarks you might want to switch rooms to Track ‘B’, where Tim O’Driscoll will be giving his talk on ‘social media tips and tricks for business’. This will be followed by Ahmed Khalifa’s presentation on how to find endless content ideas using Google and your keywords.
After the morning break, you really will be torn – you have the choice of presentations by Claire Savage in Track ‘A’, which focuses on the importance of quality content for your WordPress site. Meanwhile in Track ‘B’, we have Amit Wadhwa who will be talking about the limitations of WordPress. This would be a great talk to gain a better understanding of what you can or can’t expect to achieve with WordPress.
Immediately following this, will be another choice. You can see the excellent talk in Track ‘A’ by Barry Adams on SEO for WordPress. Or you can go to track ‘B’ and hear a very insightful talk on how WordPress changed the face of Croatian Politics by Emanuel Blagonic.
This brings us nicely to lunch, when you will have the opportunity to recharge your batteries, talk to as many people as you can and create plenty of new friendships and contacts. Don’t forget to visit the sponsor stands, where you can bag yourself some free swag and ask questions.
After lunch we have a brilliant talk by Rodolfo Melogli in track ‘A’ on turning your WordPress powered site into a traffic generation tool. This is followed by a talk on managing your online presence on Google Search. And what’s more, this talk is given someone who knows the subject better than anyone; Juan Felipe who is Manager of Webmaster Outreach within Google’s Search Quality team.
Another short break, and we are right back to it in track ‘B’ with Danny Dagan and Heather Burns who will both give talks on the new laws regarding data protection. While both Danny and Heather’s talks cover a similar topic, both will cover different sub-topics that we all need to be aware of.
After Heathers talk it will be a quick visit to track ‘A’ where we will have closing remarks. In closing remarks, we will be covering a brief report of the event so far, and what will be happening on day two.
Just because the Saturday is over, don’t be thinking that’s it for WordCamp Belfast!
On Day Two, we have lots more for you…
We have panel discussions and workshops for you in track ‘A’.
These will start with a panel discussion on Search Engine Optimisation with Ahmed, Barry and Juan.
Another panel discussion on security and speed will follow with Juan, Michael Martin (Deloitte Belfast) and Paul Goodchild, creator of the WordPress plugin ‘Shield WordPress Security’.
After lunch we have a couple of Workshops for you. Our first will be a Woocommerce workshop, which will be run by Luminus Olumide Alabi, who is Happiness Engineer at Automattic. Luminus works on support for Woocommerce full time, and he will give a run through on how to get started with Woocommerce, and how to convert your WordPress blog or site to an e-commerce platform.
Our last workshop will cover the Yoast SEO plugin; this will be run by Ahmed Khalifa.
As well as the panel discussions and workshops, we also have for you the WordCamp Happiness Bar – where you can bring your laptops and talk over any WordPress questions you might have with seasoned WordPress users and experts.
If you would like to get more involved with, or already contribute to WordPress. We will have an area set aside where you can do just that. Remember, you do not have to be a developer to contribute!
And there will be someone on hand who you can discuss where your talents would be best suited. Options include, but are not limited to: Accessibility, BuddyPress, Community, Core, Design, Documentation, Flow, Meta, Mobile, Polyglots, Support, Themes, Training, TV and also answering questions on the WordPress.org support forums.
We will also have a separate area set aside where you can help local charities get started with WordPress, in our Charity mini hack-a-thon. Details for the charity hack-a-thon are currently being finalised, but it you would like to know how you can help, let us know via our contact form on https://2016.belfast.wordcamp.org/contact/
