Author Archives: Kathy Drewien

About Kathy Drewien

speaker | trainer | cheeseslave| patient non-geeky teacher | WordPress fanatic | sweet tea lover | believes success is teamwork | loves to laugh | enjoys eating

Getting to Know Patrick Rauland

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Patrick spends most of his work day planning new projects improve WooCommerce. Before that he was on the WooCommerce dev team and released several extensions. He just moved to Denver and loves being outside, running, and practicing yoga. He finally finished the WooCommerce Cookbook a book he’s been working on for a year.

WCATL 2015 Session – Plugin Development
Panel Presentation with Russell Fair, Mike Schinkel, Naomi Bush

Getting to Know Jill Anderson

jill-anderson

Jill Anderson of Jill Lynn Design is that rare breed of designer and developer who partners with talented designers, copywriters, and agencies on their websites, and their client’s sites. Jill is passionate about crafting beautiful and innovative websites focused on clear positioning and positive user experiences. As a freelancer for over 13 years, she loves typography, code, and WordPress. She lives in the Atlanta suburbs and enjoys hanging out with her husband and 5-year-old son. And cat, Peanut, the chief paperweight. She tweets @JillLynnDesign.

WCATL 2015 Session – Applying the 7 Principles of Design to WordPress

Contrast, emphasis, balance, unity, pattern, movement, rhythm—what do these mean and how can we use them to design better WordPress websites? In this talk, I’ll break down each design principle and show practical examples to use on your next website design. Perfect for those who didn’t go to design school or just need a refresher/primer.

Getting to Know Tom McFarlin

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Tom McFarlin is a self-employed developer who works at Pressware where he works with his team to build software and provide services for others.

He’s worked with companies such as Envato serving as editor of Tuts+ Code, WordPress.com where he sales WordPress Themes such as Mayer, and worked as the technical editor on Smashing WordPress, Fourth Edition.

He also maintains a number of free plugins and tools including the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate, and he blogs daily.

When he’s not at his computer, you can usually find him playing music, hanging out with his wife, his two daughters, and his two dogs, running, reading, or catching up on movies or episodes of some of his favorite TV shows.

WCATL 2015 Session – TL;DR: We’re going to be talking about the reason for and the significance of coding standards.

Sounds boring, right? Maybe.

But how many times have you inherited code from someone else only to find yourself spending half the time on the project trying to figure out what was going on with the code.

This is a point of frustration that developers have all felt at some point or another especially when inheriting projects from another agency or another group of programmers.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! In fact, coding standards make it possible to actually minimize frustration both for us and our peers.

We’re going to talk about:

  • why coding standards are important
  • why you should be using them
  • the dangers of not using them
  • how they contribute to the maintainability of your code over time

Additionally, we’ll take a look at some of the WordPress Coding Standards, important pages for reference, and talk about why these should be a standard part of any WordPress development project.

Getting to Know Stefanie Newell

stefanie-newell
Stefanie Newell began freelance writing in 2005 and became a published author in 2008. Her exposure to branding, marketing and publicity fueled her desire to help other writers to gain exposure and attention for their books. As a book coach, Newell has successfully assisted writers since 2008 with writing their first book, book marketing, publicity and the like. Newell has spoken at numerous book and film festivals including the National Black Book Festival, Bronzeville Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Black Book Expo. Stefanie’s website is Write One Publications. Her blog is TheWriteOneBlog.com and you can follow her on TwitterGoogle+YouTube, and Facebook.

WCATL 2015 Session – Using Your Platform To Write Your First Book

Like most writers, you may find yourself stuck before you even begin setting pen to paper, simply because you don’t have any idea the steps to write a book.

This session will help you to bring your book idea to fruition. If you aren’t sure what to give thought to first, the Writing Your First Book session will take away the guesswork and provide all the essential steps to write a book. From the writing process to choosing a publishing route, your writing and publishing related questions will be answered.

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, this session is designed to help you begin your manuscript and complete it! It will walk writers through the first year of writing including: the dreaded procrastination, never having time, fleshing out ideas, writing the first words, writers block, and more!

You will learn:

  • How to get started writing
  • How to outline your manuscript
  • How to make time for writing
  • How to cater to your target audience
  • Manuscript formatting
  • Choosing between self-publishing and traditional publishing
  • The basics of editing your first draft and more!