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Sponsor Highlight – WordPress.Com
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Building Seamless Payments for Africa
Let’s start a conversation on challenges faced by African developers and clients. The main focus of this talk is on what payment processors can do to effectively offer payment solutions to the African Continent.
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Challenges in blogging both socially and politically
Having content that will continuously engage the audience is not easy, as the audience is easily bored with content that once captivated their minds. They easily move on, and this leaves bloggers in a tight spot of remaining relevant. It is even worse with political blogging, because news that could be trending today can easily become irrelevant the next day.
Increasing web traffic is a challenge if one has not subscribed to advertisement logs. At times, one can subscribe, then it still becomes a hindrance if the adverts turn into spam messages because they are too many.
This talk promises to show you how to know your audience very well. If content is not exactly tailored to their needs, it ends up becoming a waste of time.
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Understanding User Behavior, Bot Patterns, and Attack Signatures for Better Security
You can’t fix what you can’t see. Most WordPress site owners have no idea their site is under attack or what’s making it slow until it’s too late.
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The hidden performance killer in your WordPress Project: It’s not your code.
You’ve spent hours optimizing your WordPress site’s speed, perfecting its database queries, and ensuring your code is flawlessly clean. Yet, do your projects still feel like they’re lagging, perhaps due to frustrating client miscommunications, team friction during a major update, or an inability to clearly articulate complex ideas? What if the most significant “performance killer” in your WordPress projects isn’t a slow server or an unoptimized plugin, but something far more subtle: the overlooked realm of soft skills?
This talk is crafted for WordPress developers (from beginners to seasoned pros), theme and plugin creators, site owners, freelancers, and agency professionals, essentially, anyone who collaborates on WordPress projects, interacts with clients, or contributes to our vibrant global community. When you leave this session, you won’t just understand why soft skills are crucial; you’ll be equipped with actionable strategies to transform your interactions. We’ll delve into how crystal-clear communication, empathetic client management, and constructive feedback loops can drastically improve project efficiency, reduce stress, and foster more harmonious team environments.
Drawing from my extensive experience organizing major tech events like PyCon Uganda and WordCamp Jinja, and leading communities like GDG and Women Techmakers, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful these human connections are. We will cover practical techniques for building bridges, not walls, in your collaborations; mastering the art of feedback to propel growth; and cultivating truly inclusive communities where every WordPress enthusiast feels valued. This talk is about empowering you to leverage your soft skills as the ultimate WordPress upgrade, unlocking hidden efficiencies and propelling both your projects and your career to new heights.
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Beyond Posts – Extending WordPress Like a Pro
Most users on WordPress users are aware of Posts (and Pages) and tend to rely on plugins to add new posts and still end up lacking in presentation or functionality.
With CPTs and CCTS, it allows extending WordPress in more than posts and pages (products) to define your own post types and content types using the capabilities of WordPress to achieve things like CRMs, leads management, etc.
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When Your Code Becomes Your Boss and Why Developers Need a Collective Voice
This talk will be about how algorithms and AI are already changing the nature of coding work, and what gig workers’ struggles can teach us about life without a collective voice.
Frida will show the risks developers face from automation, precarity, and platform control, and explore how solidarity can give developers the power to shape a fairer and more sustainable digital future.
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Tech Women UP
Tech Women UP is a presentation dedicated to empowering women with tech skills, leading not just to survival but to a more fulfilling and independent life. Recognizing the common life stages women experience: childhood, adolescence, adulthood (including childbirth), and grandparenthood.
This presentation will demonstrate how equipping women with tech abilities provides them with freedom and fosters their progress. Attendees, whether women themselves or those with female relatives, will discover actionable ways to empower the women around them to attain this independence.
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Securing Transactions, PCI DSS Best Practices for WordPress eCommerce
Is your WordPress store a secure vault or an easy target?
With every transaction, you handle sensitive customer data. This talk cuts through the complexity of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and translates it into actionable steps for your WP eCommerce site.
Learn essential strategies to secure transactions, simplify compliance, and build unshakable customer trust.
Stop risking fines and reputation, Secure your revenue stream now.
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Why People Are Your Most Valuable Asset
This talk explores why people are at the core of every successful idea, project, or business. The speaker will share insights on how putting people first, whether clients, teams, or communities, leads to stronger strategies, more creative problem-solving, and lasting impact.
The session will focus on practical ways to build genuine connections, keep human needs at the center of decision-making, and create outcomes that go beyond numbers.
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WordPress as a Launchpad: How to Build a Digital Marketing Career from Scratch
- My step-by-step journey from launching a website to leading a digital marketing firm.
- Skills WordPress helped develop and design: SEO, content, analytics, and branding.
- How my online presence opened doors to partnerships and speaking engagements.
- Mistakes I made early on and how they shaped expertise.
- Actionable takeaways for beginners who want to use WordPress to start their own digital careers.
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WordPress Community: A Bridge to Opportunity
In this talk, I’ll share my journey from initially disliking WordPress to becoming a Lead Developer, trainer, community contributor, and WordPress advocate. I’ll show how engaging with the WordPress community can be a bridge to professional growth, leadership opportunities, and even global recognition.
Attendees will learn how contributing, whether through code, mentorship, or organizing events, can transform careers, build leadership skills, and create lasting impact. I’ll share practical lessons from my own experience, inspiring African developers and entrepreneurs to see the WordPress ecosystem not just as a platform, but as a gateway to opportunities, collaboration, and community-driven success.
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What’s Trending Isn’t Always What Matters: How AI fails Community Publishers
As AI becomes a bigger player in shaping what content gets created and prioritized, many community-focused publishers are finding themselves misrepresented, or completely left out.
This session explores how editorial teams can preserve their mission and audience connection in an ecosystem increasingly optimized for what’s trending, not what’s true. We’ll look at the tension between cultural nuance and algorithmic assumptions, and how publishers can push back on tools that weren’t built with them in mind.
Using our client iOne Digital (the largest Black owned and operated media company in the United States) as a case study, we’ll examine how one publisher collaborated with Getty to advocate for more representative stock photography, and what it takes to influence the platforms shaping our content ecosystems.
We’ll cover:
- Why AI often overlooks culturally relevant stories.
- Editorial strategies that prioritize mission over metrics.
- How to integrate AI tools without compromising identity.
- Ways publishers can advocate for better training data and platform changes.
This session is for editorial and content teams looking to navigate AI with intention, building tools for their audience instead of reshaping their voice to fit an algorithm.
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How to Accelerate Your Website Development With AI Assistance
AI as a Superpower: Position AI not as a replacement, but as the essential tool for overcoming common bottlenecks in WordPress development (content, code, design).
Focus: Practical, hands-on integration of current AI tools directly within the WordPress ecosystem.
Key Takeaways (What Attendees Will Learn)
- Instant Site Generation: How to use specialized AI builders (ZipWP, 10Web, SeedProd) to create fully-themed, pre-populated WordPress sites from a simple text prompt in minutes.
- Visual Design Acceleration: Leveraging AI features in page builders (Divi AI, Elementor AI) to generate wireframes, custom CSS snippets, and unique, high-quality images on demand.
- Content and SEO Automation: Using AI assistants (Jetpack AI, Rank Math Content AI) for instant content drafting, product descriptions, meta tag optimization, and hands-free alt-text creation.
- Developer Efficiency: Integrating coding AI (GitHub Copilot, Cursor AI) to generate WordPress-specific PHP functions, write complex queries, and receive real-time debugging assistance.
- Workflow Optimization: Strategies for using AI to automate post-launch tasks, including intelligent chatbots and advanced SEO and security checks.
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Localizing WordPress: Driving Inclusivity Through Polyglots and Accessible Design
This session will explore how contributing to the WordPress Polyglots team expands access by breaking down language barriers and creating opportunities for communities whose voices are often missing online. Attendees will learn how to get started with translations in GlotPress, practical steps for managing multilingual projects, and how localized interfaces drive adoption in underrepresented regions.
The talk will also highlight how inclusive design practices, such as writing accessible alt text, choosing culturally appropriate language, and building layouts that work across scripts and screen readers, strengthen localization efforts. The goal is not just to translate WordPress but to make it truly inclusive and accessible for diverse audiences.
Whether you are a developer, designer, or contributor, you will leave with practical knowledge on how to join the Polyglots movement and how to integrate inclusivity into design and content workflows, helping WordPress empower more people across the globe.
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Beyond WordPress Websites: Unchaining WordPress for Disruptive Green Innovations that Win Funding
I am excited about presenting this topic to WordPress attendees in Nairobi this year. I am a seasoned presenter and have done presentations at local WordCamps in Uganda, Global Sustainability events in Kenya, Egypt, the US, UAE, and, being a health sciences lecturer, making presentations is my everyday life. You will not be disappointed.
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Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for WordPress: Staying Visible in the Age of AI Search
Search is changing so fast. Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and AI-powered overviews are rewriting how users discover websites and how brands are found online. Traditional SEO tactics alone no longer guarantee visibility, especially as generative AI answers more queries directly in search results. In this session, we’ll explore a new frontier: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the art of optimizing your WordPress site for AI-driven search experiences. You’ll learn how Google’s AI reads, summarizes, and ranks your content, and how to structure your posts and pages so they are surfaced, quoted, and credited by AI systems.
We’ll dive into practical, WordPress-specific strategies that any marketer or site owner can apply immediately: How to format content for SGE and AI Overviews. The importance of schema markup, FAQs, and answer-ready snippets. Which WordPress plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, Schema Pro, and emerging AI SEO tools) support GEO best. How to craft high-quality summaries and metadata that train AI to recognize your authority. Ways to track performance in a world where traditional impressions and clicks are disappearing.
This is not theory it is a hands-on, forward-looking session built for content creators, marketers, and developers who want to keep their WordPress sites discoverable as search evolves. By the end, you’ll walk away with a 7-point GEO checklist you can apply to any site and a clear understanding of what the future of SEO looks like in the age of generative AI.