WordCamp MTL 2018 Roundup

The WHC team had a fantastic time attending and sponsoring WordCamp Montreal 2018, as we launched our Managed WordPress Hosting. Excellent presentations and many wonderful people made this year’s conference a spectacular success.

Want a taste of what went on? Here is a quick roundup of the event with some featured talk snapshots!

For a complete list of conference topics, check out the schedule.

Format

Talks were divided into 7 categories:

• General

  Covering a wide range of topics from WordPress’s hidden features to taking a Buddhist approach to WordPress.

• Development

  Development refers to the creation of a WordPress site starting from the initial planning, to managing plugins and what to know before deployment.

• Code

  The most technical category, coding sessions go deep into the underlying structure of WordPress, plugins and more.

• Content

  The content of your website is what makes it engaging. These talks go into planning, marketing and writing effectively.

• Business

  Top level talks on how to improve the reach of your site and concerns (such as privacy policies) that business owners should be aware of.

• Lightning talks

  Talks about any WordPress related subject, but make it quick. Each participant only has 15 minutes to present.

• WooCommerce

  As the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, talks focus on how to get the most out of the application.

Timetable

With 46 scheduled presentations, 3 simultaneous presentations were given during each time slot.

There were presentations in both French and English, with at least one French-language presentation per time slot.

Day One - Saturday August 11th

A continental breakfast fueled participants for a morning of information, starting with an orientation, in the Web Hosting Canada Theatre, led by the charming and hardworking organizers who made the event possible.

The first talks revolved around, surprise surprise, getting started with WordPress.

9:30 to 11:10

Presentations focused on how to begin using WordPress quickly, as well as deployment. Some interesting hidden features of the CMS were brought to light and a deeper understanding of WordCamp as a community put the event into perspective.

11:10 to Noon

Lighting talks covered a wide range of topics from bilingual social media best practices to providing admin access to clients. Alternatively, an attendee could go learn about how to plan for success, before beginning a WordPress project.

Lunch

Omnivores, vegetarians and vegans had a variety of salads, sandwiches and cheeses to choose from during the buffet style catering. Eco-friendly was the name of the game, with reusable plates and cutlery ensuring minimal waste!

1:00 to 2:40

Stomachs full, the afternoon topics included developing workflows, submitting plugins, and the importance of staging environments. The high point for WHC were the security talks, one given by our very own Emil Falcon!

3:00 to 4:50

Communication is needed at all levels of site creation. Seminars provided info on how to set up a bilingual site and increasing communication between designers and developers. Even visual communication was discussed at a talk devoted to web design trends.

7:00 to End of First Day

Organizers, presenters and attendees got together for beverages and lively chats at Cafe Osmo.

Day Two - Sunday August 12th

Day two had a great deal going on for marketers, content writers and coders.

9:30- Noon

Developers had a number technical talks about block development and using ReactJS, while content specialist got tips from industry leaders on formating, planning and blogging. Others were enlightened on how to work with zero waste and why a Buddhist mindset may be the best approach when developing in WordPress.

Lunch

You can’t go wrong with pizza, unless there isn’t enough. Got it covered!

1:00 to 2:40

These sessions were all business with presentations on WP-CLI, GDPR compliance, multilingual site building, the importance of rich snippets and more.

3:00 to 4:40

The last few talks brought in a wide range of technical expertise. SEO and WooCommerce had back to back sessions, with maximizing the pages of your blog and discussing how to make WordPress work best for agencies rounding out the topics.

Interested in Learning More?

With so much discussed there was something for everyone at this year’s WordCamp. Did any of the topics grab your interest? You can find a complete list of presentations and (most of) their slides here.

We’re already looking forward to WordCamp Montreal 2019! In the meanwhile, WordCamp Toronto 2018 has been announced and scheduled for December 1st, so we hope to see you there!

Hope to see you there next year!

Happy Hosting,