a WordCamp Ottawa 2013 talk re-delivered with the same abstract the speaker had used at WordCamp Detroit two years earlier — the same argument, brought to a new audience after another two years of consulting evidence behind it.

Where and when

Illustration supporting key points in How to Make a Living with WordPress
a quick visual summary to make the concept easier to understand at a glance.

The premise

From the published WordCamp Ottawa 2013 session listing — abstract identical to the one used at WordCamp Detroit 2011:

“a look at how to make a living working with a free product like WordPress. The presentation looks at how bloggers, designers and developers can build authority, revenue and opportunities by supporting open source development.”

Watch or read

This Ottawa 2013 session was not recorded. The closest available capture of this thesis is the WordCamp Detroit 2011 version — same abstract, recorded on WordPress.tv, slides on SpeakerDeck.

What changed between 2011 and 2013 (comparative analysis)

Reconstructed analysis. The same abstract was used at WordCamp Detroit 2011 and again at WordCamp Ottawa 2013. The author re-delivering the same abstract two years later usually means the underlying argument was sharper, the examples newer, or the audience different. Without a transcript, the section below grounds the 2011→2013 delta in documented platform, market, and client-behaviour shifts of those years.

Platform maturity

Between November 2011 and april 2013, WordPress moved from version 3.3 through 3.5 — including the 3.5 “Elvin” release that brought the new media uploader, the welcome screen, and significant admin UI improvements. By the time of the Ottawa talk, the platform was visibly more comfortable for non-developers than it had been at the Detroit delivery. That changed who the talk’s argument was aimed at.

Market expectations

In 2011, “WordPress for serious sites” was a position you had to defend in a pitch. By 2013, the share of high-traffic web properties on WordPress had grown enough that procurement teams encountered it regularly. The talk’s argument — that you can make a living working with a free product — landed on a different audience: less “convince me WordPress is real,” more “what does sustainable WordPress consulting actually look like.”

Client behaviour

By 2013, mobile-responsive design had moved from optional to expected. Hosting choices were maturing — managed WordPress hosts entered the market with serious offerings during this period. Clients were less anxious about hosting and more focused on what their site could do. The “make a living” argument, in 2013, had to address that shift: less about justifying the platform, more about positioning the consultant against an ecosystem of better-resourced competitors.

Industry trend signals

WordPress’s market share grew measurably during this two-year window. automattic was visibly raising capital. The plugin and theme ecosystems matured into recognizable career paths. None of these are personal claims — they are documented industry signals that frame why the same abstract carried different weight in Ottawa than it had in Detroit.

The Detroit recording (linked above) is the closest available capture of the speaker’s voice on this thesis. The Ottawa version was delivered to an audience whose default starting position was already two years more sympathetic to the argument.

Christopher Ross

Your presenter

Christopher Ross

I've been the person event organizers call when they want someone who's actually doing the work, not just speaking about it. Twenty-two years building, a few hundred talks across WordCamps, conferences, and client teams — the talks come from real delivery, not from last year's slide deck.

  • Nineteen years building with WordPress; twenty-two delivering the underlying web work.
  • Talks at WordCamps and conferences across the publishing, education, and public-sector arc.

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