Articles FROM

Track 2

  • Keeping Humans in the Loop: Tactful AI in a Collaborative Community

    Jonathan Desrosiers Avatar
    Jonathan Desrosiers

    Open Source projects aren’t just about code. They’re about the people driving them behind the scenes. As AI tools become smarter and more capable, we face new challenges.

    How do we integrate these tools tactfully without losing what makes WordPress special? How do we utilize AI without eliminating low-friction paths for new contributors? How do we remain deliberate as we’re able to solve problems and implement faster?

    In this talk, we’ll explore the thoughtful, sometimes uncomfortable ways AI is reshaping how we collaborate, make decisions, and maintain trust in an Open Source project like WordPress. Let’s talk not just about what we can automate with AI, but what we should.

  • Beyond Microblogging: WordPress Leads the Way in Long-form Text on the Social Web

    Troy Chaplin Avatar
    Troy Chaplin

    Real-time sharing of short text messages and links — so-called “microblogging” — is the heart of social networks from LinkedIn to Twitter. But articles and blog posts, with finer details, deeper thought and more analysis, are a crucial part of what the Web is for. In this talk, Evan will go over the role of long-form text on the social web, and how publishers and readers are working together to make a smooth, integrated reading experience happen across sites.

  • WordPress and the open social web

    Dave Winer Avatar
    Dave Winer

    People talk about the “open social web” but there isn’t a whole lot of web to what they’re doing. WordPress has deep power and is very widely deployed, and of course is a central part of the open web. I felt it just needed a writer-friendly user interface. And that’s what I set out to do with WordLand. I’ll talk about how we got here, and what’s next, and the greater role WordPress can play in the evolving social web.

  • Search Marketing for WordPress in the Age of AI

    Alex Melen Avatar
    Alex Melen

    AI is revolutionizing the way search engines rank content and how advertisers optimize campaigns. For WordPress users, understanding these AI-driven changes is essential to staying competitive in both SEO and PPC.

    Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or agency professional, this session will provide actionable insights to help you maximize your search visibility and ad performance in an AI-driven world.

  • Software Supply Chain Security & Risk Management: Why the Future will be Federated

    Brent Toderash Avatar
    Brent Toderash

    This talk will cover a brief history of package management in WordPress, why centralized distribution was necessary, and why it’s time to decentralize now to address risk management for the supply chain needed for enterprise WordPress to continue growing. I’ll consider some security risks inherent in a federated repository model and some of the available mitigation strategies.

    Lastly, I’ll provide an overview from inside of the approach being taken by AspirePress and FAIR to provide the community with decentralized, secure, and robust package management for WordPress, including some specific advantages for the enterprise, for the ecosystem, and for end users.

  • WordPress as an Enterprise CMS: A 16-year Evolution at Carleton

    Troy Chaplin Avatar
    Troy Chaplin

    Over the past 15 years, Carleton University has undergone a remarkable digital transformation through WordPress. What began as a small project to replace 36 sites in a legacy CMS quickly grew—by the end of that first year, we were managing over 120 live sites. We had no idea at the time that this would become some of the most challenging, creative, and rewarding work we’d do at the university.

    Today, Carleton’s custom-built, enterprise-level WordPress platform powers more than 700 sites. Built on a robust Multisite foundation and enhanced with Gutenberg, a custom React component library, and Timber with Twig templating, our platform continues to evolve to meet institutional needs while embracing modern WordPress capabilities. This session will share key milestones, lessons learned, and the strategy behind scaling and sustaining a high-performance WordPress ecosystem in a large university setting.