If you’ve been contemplating making the jump from your 9 to 5 job to full time freelancer or business owner but worried about how you’ll make ends meet, then this talk is for you.

In this short session we’ll discuss strategies to help you prepare financially for leaving the comfort of a secure paycheck to budgeting for your very own business and walk you through a budgeting exercise that will leave you with a plan for financial stability in the freelance world.

Financially preparing for full time freelancing by Jessica Spangler

About the speaker:

Jessica is an Omaha based IT consultant. Having graduated with a Spanish degree it was only natural she’d end up working with businesses to plan their IT budget.

At Five Nines, Jessica works with small and medium sized businesses to create their IT plan and budgets. Using a proven methodology to strategize and prioritize IT spend in alignment with her clients business goals, she not only finds the most cost efficient way to invest in technology but also helps her clients track, document and organize their annual technology initiatives.

Outside of work you’ll find Jessica disconnecting from tech by hitting up trails and attending yoga classes at her favorite studio.

We go meeting to meeting, let our inboxes fill-up, and impulsively check Slack for the next emergency. What would work be like if we were able to choose what to work on instead of reaction dictating our work? In this breakout, learn tips to leave Slack channels, ignore email, and thin your information intake. Do it enough and you might just find yourself asking: what should I do now?

Working Without Urgency by Jack Sellwood  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

I’m a technologist, designer, and streamliner. I founded WEDGE, a minimalist agency, and find joy in tidying up technology. I try to live a life that focuses on people, experiences, and mystery. Dinners with friends, long walks through Omaha, and yoga help me find purpose. Streamlining my life helps me stay focused on those priorities. A minimal wardrobe, few possessions, and unstructured time help me feel grounded. Today, I work at Flywheel as Product Manager for Local, The #1 local WordPress development tool. Having built over 30 WordPress sites, I’m passionate about making team collaboration and developer tooling a more delightful experience.

Color touches literally every pixel of digital products. That’s why it is so important to get color right in a design system.

In this talk, John Henry Müller (former Design Director at Hudl) divulges mistakes made and practical lessons learned about color while creating Uniform, Hudl’s design system.

What you’ll learn:
• Tips and tricks creating a durable color scheme
• Common pitfalls when defining a color palette
• Understand color contrast for accessibility

From Color Palette to Color System by John Henry Müller  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Recently, John Henry worked as a Design Director at Hudl, a sports technology software used by teams around the world (including Premier League, NBA, NHL, NFL, NCAA, and 98% of high school football teams). At Hudl, he focused on visual design spanning both product and brand design, with a team of over 30 designers. John Henry led the visual direction of Uniform, Hudl’s design system. (uniform.hudl.com)

Before Hudl, John Henry was the design cofounder of a startup called Pack. Before that, he founded a design/dev consultancy called What Cheer, with clients including Squidoo, Hayneedle, Union Pacific Railroad, US Department of Energy and Saddle Creek Records. John Henry lives in Benson, Omaha, Nebraska with his wife, two daughters, dog, and two cats. He sits on the board of Maha—a conference and music festival. He was gluten-free before (and after) it was cool.

Glen will explain what web accessibility (WCAG 2.1) is and why it is so important we understand it and be compliant. People with disabilities ranging from blindness, deafness, dyslexia and others may navigate and consume content in different ways with assistive technology.  Web accessibility is not just for developers, it is just as important for marketers to make it part of their digital marketing to ensure that opportunities for success aren’t missed.  When 1 in 5 people have short or long term disability, creating accessible websites can increase your conversions by 20% by being accessible.

Accessibility — What It Is & Why It’s So Important by Glen Ingram  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Glen Ingram is the founder of WebSearchPros. I have 12 years of experience in online marketing.  I worked for a large Yellow Page company for 10 years and launched Web Search Pros 7 years ago.

We have built over a thousand of websites and ranked hundreds of sites for thousands of phrases to page 1 of Google.  We specialize in building websites that meet W.C.A.G 2.1 AA standards.  This means sites that work for those with disabilities and help protect businesses from lawsuits and increase their reach. I am a member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals.

Manually copying or moving a WordPress site seems so easy, but it has some pitfalls. Abby’s presentation and discussion will include the high-level concepts of why we need staging/testing sites, how to complete a migration, helpful (and unhelpful) plugins, various gotchas, and a short discussion of managed hosting services that include staging/migration features. All types of WP enthusiasts (developer, designer, webmaster, biz owner, etc) are welcome, and hopefully there’s a little something here for all levels of expertise from the beginners who don’t even have a WordPress site yet to the experts who have done many migrations already.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Web developer, educator, mother, baker, bowler… WordPress saves this busy lady a lot of time and tedium as a front-end developer! Abby loves math, too, and as a former high school math teacher in Omaha, loves to create web resources for teachers to better engage students with the content.

WP Staging and Migration by Abby Langner