Michal has been around the web for over a decade but has only recently decided to pursue his quest for Internet domination full-time. Having tried his hand at Office automation, Motion Graphics and 3D, he finally realized that the web is where he wants to be. Last year, he gave his first talk at WPMTL and got hooked. This year, he brought the power of Masonry to WordCamp Ottawa. When not writing code or integrating designs, Michal likes to take care of his spouse, his three cats and read comic books.
Follow @isotrope on Twitter.
Michal will be giving a talk in french titled “Comment présenter du contenu sur mesure sans vous emmêler dans la boucle“.
What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?
The new admin UI. It’s much more modern and pleasant to look at, IMHO.
The fact that you can now let users paste from Word without worrying as much as in the past. If I stretch the definition of “past year”, I’d also like to mention the “post locking” and “video shortcode” that I seem to recall being introduced in 3.6.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?
Over the years, I’ve learned ridiculous amounts of stuff from colleagues, our WPMTL group and various online sources.
Giving a presentation is my own way of trying to give back a little to the community. It’s always a joy for me to find a way to share information in a fun, easy-to-understand, non-condescending manner. If I help a person or two understand the concept I’m trying to present, I’ll be going home a happy man.
What is your talk going to be about?
Show Them All of the Things! I’ll be explaining the process that happens between going from a page request to presenting the information to the visitor.
We’ll cover ‘post’ and ‘pages’ and how to present ‘anything else’ (AKA “Custom Post Types” and their accompanying additional meta information).
Whether you want to manage a catalogue of books, movies, portfolio projects or cats, you’ll learn that the basic concept is the same. To top it off, we’ll see how we can help Google understand “what” it is we’re showing it even better with microdata.
I’m going to try and deliver on my promise of NO CODE, JUST CONCEPTS.
What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
That you don’t need to understand code to understand the concepts behind the techniques to manage custom content.
I’d really like to try and give content editors the tools to communicate with their developers. Front-end design is definitely not the first and last aspect of putting together a website. I think it would be great if the planners had a better grasp of the structure that a project will require to better think about the content they’re preparing.
I’d also like to give beginner themers the a better grasp of custom content. If you know what a “book” is, you already know what it would need to become a “type of content” in WordPress. I’m here to try and give you the missing link between your brain and bringing your custom content into WordPress.
Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?
I love the Montreal WordPress community.Having been around these folks for a few years now, I have to say that it’s one of the greatest professional groups I’ve been involved in. We have great organizers, a huge variety of members, a wide range of fields of expertise and levels of knowledge.I’ve learned a lot from the group page and the monthly meetups.
Everyone in WPMTL brings their own brand of awesome sauce.
This community also inspired me to quit my office job and become a full-time web worker. I can never thank them enough for that. More specifically, C. Bavota (@bavotasan), Carl Alexander (@twigpress) and a slew of other local folks deserve praise. I also like spending some time on the Advanced WordPress Facebook Group.
What new feature would you like to see in the future?
A standardized way to manage creating meta boxes for postmeta. A standardized content “modules” editing experience like CEUX. The time of using plugins to get out of the single column content box is upon us!
