Steven Slack is a freelance developer at S2 Web. He collaborates with companies, agencies and individuals to build custom WordPress themes and plugins. In 2014 he helped with Asheville NC’s first ever WordCamp and is playing a part in the 2015 Asheville WordCamp as well.

As of October 2014 he has been working in the Craftpeak office in downtown Asheville, a space which has allowed for the collaboration with a solid group of designers and developers. He also does development work with Big Bridge, a design agency based in Asheville as well.

Steven is fluent in Portuguese as well as any front-end language, can be seen biking or running through Pisgah National Forest, and enjoys the lovely company of his wife.

WCATL 2015 Session – Key in on your Value

You know your value … can you communicate it?

We developers love what we do. Every single project results in an improvement in our skills and knowledge. We know our capabilities and have the ability to serve up some clean efficient code for our clients. But if you are a freelance developer like me you need to be able to articulate the value of your skills.

To you and I, coding standards and doing things properly in WordPress matter. How do you explain that value to a potential client and communicate to them how your services will benefit their business? Can you express your expertise without sounding like a space robot?

This presentation will share stories and talk about selling value as a developer.

Nancy takes photos, shoots film, designs stuff, and tries not to be too pretentious about it. Her very first client was a woman in her eighties running a spectacularly successful cancer non-profit program…who didn’t really use email, let alone anything else. Nancy trained her to set-up and maintain a WordPress site.

Throughout undergrad she gave regular talks to prospective students and parents on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of college. Now as both a web designer and filmmaker, she has realized that she’s teaching very similar lessons to many of her clients, especially those that haven’t worked much with visual design, on how to avoid the pitfalls of “en vogue” to create products that can withstand the test of rising and falling fashions in typography, photography, film, and design.

WCATL 2015 Session – Best Practices: Building Accessible Websites in WordPress

There are over 20 million blind adults in the United States, approximately 10% of whom use screen readers to access the internet. Likewise, roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness. Many government contracts are beginning to require websites to be accessible and many companies who are not legally required to build accessible websites are starting to do it regardless. What goes into making a website accessible? How can you determine whether or not your website is? This presentation will discuss both tools and techniques that can help you build accessible websites.

Cullie Burris is the Director of Internet Marketing at Southern Web, a web design & digital marketing firm in Atlanta, GA. Cullie is extremely passionate about all things web – most importantly, user experience & conversion rate optimization. He takes his campaigns very seriously but finds an immense amount of fun in finding unique solutions for his clients and setting them apart from their competition. Cullie began using WordPress in college and hasn’t looked back since.

Outside of working for Southern Web, Cullie enjoys coaching baseball, attending concerts and enjoying all the good eats in Atlanta.

You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook – or via the website.

WCATL 2015 Session – Get Yoast or You’re Toast

There are a lot of very valuable plugins in the repository, however there is one that is imperative to have: the Yoast SEO plugin.

I will do a walk through of the plugin to show best practices and explain how and why it is so imperative to have this plugin.

Melanie’s Adcock diverse background enables her to have a unique insight in the area of Web Design. Melanie received her degree in Art Education from Ball State University and was an Art Teacher for 17 years. During that time she became interested in graphic design and web design and became a district wide trainer for applications such as Photoshop, Painter, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Illustrator, and Flash.

In 2001 Melanie left teaching to pursue a full time career in Web Design and Technology. Her duties included not only web design, but network administration, network design and infrastructure, phone system management, help desk support, software training, and even some video editing.

In May of 2010 Melanie relocated to the Atlanta area and became a full time Web Designer / Developer. She has been using WordPress exclusively for nearly five years. Her current clients include several small businesses, continuing care retirement communities, churches and former employers. She also mentors and consults with other WordPress enthusiasts. In her free time she studies additional web related technologies. Her other hobbies including reading and working out.

WCATL 2015 Session – Rev Up Your Design Cycle

Rev up your design process by removing slow internet connections, the hassle of installing WordPress and plugins prior to beginning a project. Creating local development dev sites right on your desktop or laptop that work just like real world servers is now simple.
DesktopServer can import, export, clone, and deploy WordPress websites with a few clicks. It works seamlessly with BackupBuddy, ManageWP, and InfiniteWP.