WordPress 4.0 preview with Helen Hou-Sandi

The next version of WordPress, version 4.0, is due for release in the next few weeks. At our next meetup, Helen Hou-Sandi, core-committer and release lead for this version, will preview 4.0, and discuss what it’s like to lead a software release that will power 20% of the internet.

As release lead, Helen is responsible for determining all important parameters for a release, like schedule, deadlines, which feature plugins are merged, and more generally, scope and goals.

OPENING PRESENTATION: PressForward

Aram Zucker-Scharff will be walking through PressForward, a Sloan Foundation-funded open-source WordPress plugin designed to help WP users aggregate content across the internet. The plugin collects and archives content from across the web, allowing users to subscribe to RSS feeds, view lists of articles, read them in full, and then discuss and nominate items as a group.

GET ONE-ON-ONE ASSISTANCE AT OUR HELP DESK:

The experts from Tadpole.cc (http://tadpole.cc/) will be available throughout the evening to help you with your WordPress issues and answer your questions.

"WPNYC GIVES BACK" RAFFLE:

We will raffle off $1 for each user that RSVP's. This money will be split between:

• One WPNYC member.

• A WordPress developer that has donated a free theme or plugin to the community (chosen by the member winner)

Check out our past winners > (http://wpnyc.org/gives-back/)

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Helen Hou-Sandi is the Director of Platform Experience at 10up, where she is sponsored to work on WordPress full-time. She is a core committer and the release lead for WordPress 4.0. Helen proudly lives in Jersey City, is a Virginian at heart, and a New Yorker by blood.

Aram Zucker-Scharff is a freelance web developer, journalist, and new media consultant. He also works as lead developer for PressForward, the content strategist for CFO Magazine, and CTO of OnAir Networks, a WordPress-focused knowledge management startup. In 2007 he needed a website to run election coverage on. Aram chose WordPress and hacked up an image map of election precincts that could be updated with live results using WP. He's been developing for WordPress ever since, but has happily never used an HTML tag again.