Gearing up for WordCamp Brighton

There’s less than two weeks to go until the next WordCamp hits UK soil and talk in the tsoHost head office has turned to the line-up.

WordCamp Brighton will take place at the Clarendon Centre in Brighton from 16 to 18 August. There are more than 26 speakers to hear from in a range of lecture-style presentations as well as ‘lightening talks’ and panel sessions.

Members of the WordPress community have already been tweeting about how they will be flying in from abroad for the event, but a handful of tickets are still available.

Feeling a little spoilt for choice when it comes to the sessions? We’ve selected a few highlights to help with the headache of whittling down the must-see list.

Dear Imposter Syndrome

When: Saturday 15:30, track two

In our recent blog The one thing all WordPress pros should have on their to-do list, we wrote about how wellbeing and mental health was becoming an increasingly prominent topic at WordCamp events around the world and within the WordPress community as a whole.

This talk by Dan Maby continues to bring these subjects to the fore by focussing on imposter syndrome – the psychological phenomenon that causes people to doubt themselves despite their competencies.

In this session, Dan, who is the director of WordPress agency Blue 77, will discuss his own experience of imposter syndrome and the actions he took to overcome the challenges it presented to him in both his professional and private life.

Growth hacking lessons from busking in the street

When: Friday 14:15, track two

This session comes from Vito Peleg who, at one point after his arrival in the UK, had barely enough money in his pocket to afford a bus ticket never mind a week’s rent.

Then he found busking and by applying business maximisation theories to the practice of playing for the public, he increased his daily take home from £40 a day to £368.

How does this apply to WordPress pros?

Today, Vito is the founder of the popular WP Feedback plug-in. In this talk, he’ll reveal the business optimisation tips and tricks that he used during his busking days and still harnesses today.

The future of our local WordPress communities – how industry pressures will change the way we work

When: Saturday 11:00, track two

Arguably one of the most topical talks on the schedule at WordCamp Brighton, this session looks at everything from major players leaving the industry to interest in WordPress from tech giants like Google.

It will raise questions such as how will recent changes affect freelance developers, what opportunities are available to the local community now the tech giants are interested in WordPress, and how will contemporary political and environmental issues change our digital communities?

The topics raised in this talk will no doubt be carried into the Afterparty, which will take place on the Saturday night.

Getting the best from code review

When: Friday 12:00, track one

There’s a long list of reasons why you’d want to listen to Sarah Pantry talk. She came from a self-taught background, has worked at agencies developing sites for FTSE 250 clients, and today she’s a developer for the WordPress.com VIP team at Automattic.

In this talk, Sarah will go through the ins and outs of code reviews – looking at best practice and revealing the ways it goes wrong, which can lead to everything from demoralisation to burn out.

If you can’t catch this talk, you might be able to pick her brains in the bar afterwards as she is a self-proclaimed fan of both beer and homebrewing.

SVG super safe, totally secure?

When: Friday 12:00, track one

Presented by Tom J Nowell, developer and community moderator at WP Stack Exchange, this talk questions whether scalable vector graphics are as safe as they are made out to be.

Tom will run through examples of when there have been safety loopholes associated with SVGs, regale a few horror stories, and then offer advice on making them cast-iron secure.

Creating a WordCamp

When: Friday 15:30, track one

In the tosHost blog mentioned above, we talked about how being an active part of the WordPress community can help a WordPress pro’s wellbeing.

To get a further insight into what it’s like to be at the heart of the community, you should attend this panel session, in which three former lead organisers from WordCamps talk about their experiences, what it meant to them to be onvolved, and what they learned along the way.

Need WordPress hosting?

tsoHost has tailored a range of hosting packages specifically to ensure WordPress websites work at their prime.

There’s a hat trick of packages to choose from. Each one comes with perks, like free domain names and daily site backups included in the price.