I get on stage to teach senior practitioners what the WordPress, edu-tech, and public-web stack actually does once you’ve shipped on it for two decades.
Speaking context: Building websites since 1996, WordPress since 2007, training delivery since 2004. MA candidate in Learning & Technology, Royal Roads University. Past clients include Corel, Yorkville University, the Government of Canada at CS-03 delivery, Postmedia, and Sherwin-Williams® brands. Booking paid keynotes, workshops, panels, and firesides.
This page is for people booking a speaker: WordCamp organisers, corporate L&D leads, association programme committees, and edu-tech or gov-tech event runners. The discovery call is twenty minutes and free. If you already know what you need, skip ahead and email directly.
Who this is for
- Fit:WordCamps, WordPress flagship events, and adjacent CMS and devops conferences that want a senior practitioner on stage rather than another vendor pitch.
- Fit:Corporate L&D and internal events at media, education, and public-sector organisations: a keynote on a quarterly all-hands, a half-day workshop for the digital team, a lunch-and-learn for the marketing org.
- Fit:Associations and professional bodies in publishing, higher ed, instructional design, accessibility, and government digital. Annual conferences, regional chapters, and member webinars.
- Not a fit:Pay-to-pitch slots dressed up as keynotes, or events whose business model is selling the speaker list to the audience. I’ll invest in a strong room — travel, prep, supporting materials — but speaker fees and ticket sales stay separate.
What you can book
- Keynote · 30 to 60 minutes. Single-track or main-stage talk on one of the topics below, calibrated to your audience. Custom slide deck, original examples, no recycled “as seen at” decks.
- Workshop · half-day or full-day. Hands-on session for 12 to 40 practitioners. Pre-event survey, custom exercises against your stack, post-event reference materials the team keeps using. Best for L&D, internal upskilling, and pre-conference workshop tracks.
- Panel · 45 to 90 minutes. Substantive participation, not filler. I read the other panellists’ published work in advance, prepare specific questions, and disagree on stage when the disagreement is honest.
- Fireside or armchair · 45 to 60 minutes. One interviewer, prepared arc, audience Q&A in the back third. Good fit for association events and corporate town halls that want depth over slideware.
Talks I’m currently delivering
Five talks in active rotation. Each one is ready to deliver the week a programme committee picks it up. If your room needs a variation on the core argument — say, the public-sector talk reframed for a provincial audience rather than federal — I’ll rebuild the case studies to fit.
When the CMS stops fighting the newsroom
Senior audience · Keynote, 45–60 minutes.
You’re past a thousand posts on WordPress. Drafts take eight seconds to save. Three SEO plugins fight over the schema. A freelancer files a piece and your section editor spends twenty minutes turning it into something the front-end can render. The CMS isn’t the problem. The workflow grew faster than the governance, and the platform is carrying weight nobody asked it to carry.
This talk is about the work I’ve done with publishers in the Postmedia network and a handful of member associations: editorial roles that match how the desk actually moves copy, schema decisions with a single owner, performance work that survives a theme update, and a content model that lets writers write without learning blocks. Two real properties on stage — one daily news, one membership association — with the calls I’d make differently the second time around.
Attendees will leave able to:
- Diagnose whether their editorial slowness is a CMS problem, a workflow problem, or a governance problem — and which one to fix first.
- Design a WordPress role-and-capability map that matches how their desk actually moves a story from filing to publication.
- Name the schema decisions that need a single owner before any new SEO plugin gets installed.
Accessible and secure WordPress for government work
Senior audience · Workshop, half-day.
Public-sector WordPress has a tell. You can see it in the procurement language — WCAG 2.2 AA, AODA for Ontario, Section 508 if the contract reaches into US federal, and a security posture that’s either thought-through or copied from a hardening guide nobody’s touched in five years. The gap between those two postures shows up about eighteen months in, when somebody from the auditor’s office asks a question nobody planned to answer.
I delivered at CS-03 for the Government of Canada and I’ve been building accessible WordPress for public-sector buyers since well before WCAG 2.2 was the line. This is the workshop I’d run for a delivery team in their first week. Reading accessibility as design constraint, not as a checklist. A security baseline that survives the staff turnover public-sector projects always have. Documentation a successor team can verify against, not just trust. Half the room time is hands-on with real procurement language and real audit findings.
Attendees will leave able to:
- Read a WCAG 2.2 AA requirement in an RFP and translate it into specific design and theme-build decisions before any code is written.
- Set a WordPress security baseline that passes a public-sector audit without depending on a single staff member’s memory.
- Document an accessible-build handover that a successor team can verify against, not just trust.
LMS and SCORM in the real world
Mixed audience · Keynote, 45 minutes.
I’ve watched the same LMS conversation play out at a university online-learning team and at a paint distributor network. Somebody decided the organisation needed an LMS. Somebody else decided WordPress should host it. A third person — usually the one in the room — is now sitting with LearnDash™ bolted onto the marketing site, or a Moodle® instance the IT team won’t let them touch, and a SCORM package that breaks in three places once it leaves the authoring tool.
I run learning systems for a Sherwin-Williams operating company. I’ve been building them on WordPress and adjacent platforms since the late-2000s online-learning wave. This talk is the LMS conversation nobody writes a vendor white-paper about: when LearnDash on the marketing site is the right call, when it’s the wrong one, where SCORM earns its complexity, and where xAPI gives you signal you can use. Two live deployments on stage, plus one I’d build differently today and the calls that separated them.
Attendees will leave able to:
- Decide between LearnDash, Moodle, and a standalone LMS for a specific learning programme without depending on a vendor demo.
- Identify the three places a SCORM package will most likely break in production, and design around them before authoring begins.
- Map the integration cost of running learning beside marketing on the same WordPress install before signing a plugin licence.
Designing learning adults actually finish
Practitioner audience · Workshop, full-day.
Adult-learning completion rates are mostly bad, and the reflex is to blame the learners — busy, distracted, not motivated. Twenty-two years of delivering training to working adults has taught me the design usually got something wrong about what the learner walked in with, what they could afford to spend on the programme, and what completion would actually do for them after.
This is a working day on course architecture for adult learners. We’ll write learning outcomes that survive the move from a planning document into an actual assessment. We’ll design module structures that respect a learner who has a job and a family and forty minutes on a Tuesday night. We’ll look at assessment design that gives you useful signal, not the kind of completion data that doesn’t tell you anything. Case material from my MA research at Royal Roads, from training I run for distributor networks and university faculties, and from courses that didn’t work the first time around. Bring a programme you’re designing or rescuing — we’ll work on it.
Attendees will leave able to:
- Write learning outcomes that drive a downstream assessment instead of decorating a course outline.
- Design a module structure that respects the time and attention budget of a working adult learner.
- Choose between formative and summative assessment for a specific outcome, and defend the choice to a stakeholder who wants a quiz at the end.
AI in serious WordPress workflows
Senior audience · Keynote, 45 minutes.
Last quarter, sixty percent of the work in my practice went somewhere other than me. A router decides task by task whether a piece of work goes to a small Ollama model on my home machine, to a frontier model I’m paying for by the call, to a focused Claude subagent, or stays with me. The work gets done. The cost gets logged. The client report shows the routing trail.
The AI conversation aimed at WordPress practitioners has been mostly creator-economy noise — blog posts in thirty seconds, image floods by Friday. The conversation that matters to people running serious WordPress is quieter. Which parts of the workflow can be safely routed to a cheaper model. What rescue rate tells you the routing got it wrong. Where a human practitioner’s judgement is still the only thing in the room that holds. I’ll show what gets routed where, what a quarter of real work costs per task, and one place where I put AI into the workflow and pulled it back out.
Attendees will leave able to:
- Map their own WordPress workflow against four AI execution paths and name which tasks belong on which path.
- Set a rescue-rate threshold that tells them when a routing decision needs to change.
- Identify the one part of their current practice where AI is most likely to cost more than it saves, and design around it.
Past talks
On-site links go to the event page with the abstract, slides, and recording where the venue published one. The WordPress.tv speaker page carries the older recordings; the events archive on this site carries the rest. Want a private reel for a programme committee? Ask on the discovery call.
Investment
Fees as listed. Custom curriculum, multi-session engagements, and complex AV setups are scoped separately on the discovery call. Travel and accommodation at cost outside a 100km radius of Fort Erie.
- Corporate, association, and L&D bookings: keynotes typically $12,500 CAD; half-day workshops typically $15,000 CAD; full-day workshops typically $24,000 CAD; fireside or executive briefing typically $9,000 CAD.
- Government and higher-ed in-house (sole-source thresholds in mind): keynotes and invited lectures typically $7,500 CAD; half-day workshops typically $10,500 CAD; full-day workshops typically $17,500 CAD.
- Industry conferences (WPCampus, agency-owner events, CMS / devops conferences): keynotes typically $5,000 CAD; half-day workshops typically $7,500 CAD; full-day workshops typically $12,000 CAD.
- Virtual or remote delivery: 70% of the in-person figure for the same audience class. Same prep, same custom deck, no travel.
- WordCamps and community events: This is where I give back. WordCamps are where I learned, where I met the people who taught me how to build, and where I keep learning two decades in. Community talks are unpaid by design. If you’re organising a WordCamp, a local meetup, a community-college class on WordPress, or a not-for-profit programme that needs the talk, ask. I take two or three a year, and I’ll work to fit the room.
Prep complexity is what moves a number within a tier. A full-day workshop built against your specific stack costs more than one I can calibrate from existing material; a keynote that needs a complete rebuild for a new audience costs more than a talk I’ve delivered twice before in a similar room.
If a tier fits, the discovery call is twenty minutes. No deck, no commitment — just a clear read on whether the format and audience are right.
Long-haul flights (more than four hours) need business class for daytime-of-talk arrivals so the keynote isn’t delivered jet-lagged. Bookings hold on a 50% deposit; balance due on delivery.
What’s included
- A prep call before the event. Thirty minutes with the organiser to confirm audience, calibrate examples, and lock the abstract. A deck for government accessibility leads reads differently than a deck for newsroom CMS engineers; the prep call is what makes that possible.
- A custom slide deck. Built for your event, not adapted from someone else’s. Slides are mine to keep but the deck is yours to share with attendees afterwards.
- Original examples and code. Real client work, anonymised where required, with the receipts. No stock-photo case studies.
- Recording and clip rights. You get full recording rights for your archive and member channels. I keep the right to use short clips on my own channels and in future talks. We agree the boundaries in writing before the event.
- Post-event materials. A reference page on This Is My URL with the slides, references, and any code samples, linked from your event page so attendees have somewhere to send their colleagues.
Pre-event preparation included
Every speaking engagement includes a pre-event preparation and audience-fit conversation ahead of the talk — roughly $500 of scoping work, included in the engagement fee rather than billed separately.
- An audience and context review. Who’s in the room, what they care about, what frame the conversation should land in, what they’ll walk out talking about.
- A talk-shaping conversation. Topic alignment, framing, the specific angles to emphasise for this audience, the questions they’re most likely to ask.
- A run-through of organiser-side requirements — format, length, AV setup, accessibility provisions, recording permissions.
- A written talk outline shared with the organiser ahead of the event so there are no surprises on the day.
If the pre-event work surfaces something larger than a single talk — a workshop, a multi-session engagement, or a curriculum development project — the scope can be adjusted with the prep hours crediting forward.
Materials and follow-up included
The talk is the centrepiece, but the surface around it is built so the audience can keep working with the material after the room empties.
- Talk recording shared with the organiser within seven days, with recording rights and use documented up front.
- Slides and supporting materials delivered as files the organiser can share with the audience.
- Audience handouts where the talk format calls for them — written reference, code snippets, checklists.
- A post-event Q&A surface. Audience questions that went unanswered in the room can come to me by email within 30 days; I’ll answer in writing and the answers can be shared back with the audience.
Engagements are delivered in person or online. In-person within driving distance of the Niagara region carries no additional travel cost; further afield, travel is included in the engagement fee within North America, and quoted separately for international engagements.
Booking, cancellation, and deposit policy
Speaker bio — ready to paste
Three lengths, ready to drop into a programme. Use the one that fits the slot.
Fifty words
Christopher Ross builds publishing-scale WordPress for media, education, and government, and teaches the people who run it. On the web since 1996, in WordPress since 2007, delivering training since 2004. WordPress.org plugin author, WordCamp speaker at 18+ events, and a regular conference speaker across Canada and the United States.
One hundred words
Christopher Ross builds publishing-scale WordPress for newsrooms, universities, and federal departments, and teaches the people who run it. On the web since 1996, in WordPress since 2007, and delivering training to working adults since 2004. Past clients and employers include Corel, Yorkville University, the Government of Canada at the CS-03 level, the Postmedia newspaper network, and Sherwin-Williams® industrial brands. WordPress.org plugin author, WordCamp speaker at 18+ events, and WordCamp Niagara organiser. MA candidate in Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University, currently completing the degree. Regular conference speaker at WordPress and education events across Canada and the United States.
Two hundred and fifty words
Christopher Ross builds publishing-scale WordPress for media, education, and government, and teaches the people who run it. On the web since 1996, in WordPress since 2007, and delivering training to working adults since 2004. The combination is the work — senior technical delivery on one side, and the discipline of teaching adults how to use what gets delivered on the other.
He’s moved between in-house and consulting roles at organisations that took their web work seriously: Director of Corporate Technology at Yorkville (2008-2009), CS-03 delivery for the Government of Canada, properties inside the Postmedia national newspaper network, and product work at Corel. He’s currently lead instructor and curriculum architect at the M.L. Campbell Training Center — the international training facility for Sherwin-Williams® industrial wood division — where he developed AI-productivity training for the sales and distribution force and serves as the colour theory authority for colour matchers across North America. WordPress.org plugin author and an MA candidate in Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University, currently completing the degree. He lives and works in Fort Erie, Ontario, on the Niagara side of the river.
On stage, Christopher works to say the things senior practitioners say to each other behind closed doors — the trade-offs nobody writes a vendor white-paper about, the parts of the job that get harder the longer you do them well, and the calls that are still hard fifteen years in. WordCamp speaker at 18+ events and WordCamp Niagara organiser.
Trust cues
- Building websites since 1996. WordPress since 2007. Training delivery since 2004.
- MA candidate in Learning & Technology, Royal Roads University (in progress). Active WordPress.org contributor profile.
- Past employers and clients include Corel, Yorkville (Director of Corporate Technology, 2008-2009), Government of Canada at the CS-03 level, Postmedia network properties, and Sherwin-Williams brand sites.
- Reachable referees on request: prior conference organisers, corporate L&D leads, and university programme staff.
If your team needs more than a keynote, the team training engagement is where the workshop becomes a program.