Another WordCamp Buffalo conference has come and gone. Congratulations to Ron Brennan, Dominic Licata, Andy Staple, Ben Dunkle, and Michelle Ames for organizing a great event.
This year was special for me for two reasons; First, I spoke at this year’s event, so I had a completely different (and amazing) experience than year’s past. Second, the event was at UB’s Center For the Arts (CFA) where I spent mosts of my time in undergrad as a Media Study major.
I’m going to try and hang onto the inspiration and enthusiasm I felt at this WordCamp in the design/dev track since I’m gradually becoming disconnected from production the more I get into speaking/writing about and handling our own small business and pricing tasks.
I’m fortunate to still be in the trenches working in code occasionally so that offered me an opportunity to put together a talk on building and implementing WordPress customizer settings into custom themes. This was my last hurrah as I see day-to-day development in my rear view mirror fading into the sunset. I was floored by the number of people that crammed into our little design/dev track room to see my “Customize All The Things!” presentation. We had to bring in stacks of extra chairs to get everyone in. It felt like we were setting up a photo for one of those library shots of kids gathered around an author sitting on the floor. It was awesome.
The other speakers in the design/dev track were great too. Jen’s talk on client education and support was on point. Empathy has been a big topic lately as we become more and more advanced and forget that clients don’t live in our world 24/7 and need help understanding what is being created for them. Jeseph Meyers & our own John Connelly both spoke about Advanced Custom Fields, but in such a great progression and an intro & advanced use case that someone who’s never used the plugin may have just have the most eye opening 2 hours of their life at the end of the day.
The great thing about being a speaker is there’s an unwritten rule that attendees will have to come talk to you at some point. I love this part. I met so many great local and regional peers. We talked some about my presentation, but I noticed most conversations went towards project management & pricing the majority of the time. My favorite was with fellow speaker Brad Williams from WebDev Studios. I continually realize the need for these conversations to happen more frequently as our younger workforce battles team management & the potential scenario of working for themselves.
For anyone that missed out on the event or was unable to hit my presentation during the day because they attended another talk, you can grab my slides using the button below.
Download Customize All The Things! Presentation
For anyone that got wrapped up into a business and pricing conversation with me looking for that eBook I just released, you can grab that from here:
Read “Golden Mean Pricing” eBook
Hope to see everyone out at more of these events. Please hit me up on Twitter @timbouchard if you and I haven’t connected yet. I love chatting with all of you! See you around!