These presentations are available for your use and reference. Please keep in mind that all materials are copyrighted (in as much as many contain my personal photos and more). Obviously, photos used from other sources are cited (and have their respective copyrights). Please contact me (see the contact form below) before using any of these materials for any purpose other than your personal education.
Keep in mind that these slides are for my use during my presentations (to help jog my “middle aged” memory). If you find them useful, wonderful (some presentations will contain a number of links; others will not). I realize not everything is accessible with these slides. I encourage you to participate in the meeting (where this material was presented). If you have questions, there is a feedback from below.
Central Illinois Insects Meeting (February 15, 2020)
Burmite Insects – this is an overview of some of the insect inclusions found in burmite (amber from Myanmar). I will discuss these slides in detail and show a number of specimens during the meeting. This is a massive PDF file (roughly 1.5 GB in size as it contains a number of higher resolution photos). Handout version (6 slides per page) for those who do not want to print full slides.
Peoria Academy of Science Banquet (April 21, 2023)
Insects through the Ages – I used these slides as the basis of my address to the group. Obviously, most of the slides are meant to foster further discussion. There are multiple slides per page (and this is still a large file to view/ download).
I plan to use this site to provide a copy of presentations I make beginning November, 2019. This is an experiment (as I also plan to use the new Slides plugin with WordPress to generate these presentations). Let’s see how this turns out. I give presentations on various topics. Those associated with various aspects of technology will be found in this “thread.” If you are looking for presentations on insects or fossils, there is a different thread.
Please keep in mind that these slides are for my use during my presentations (to help jog my “middle aged” memory). If you find them useful, wonderful (some presentations will contain a number of links; others will not). I realize not everything is accessible with these slides. I encourage you to participate in the meeting (where this material was presented). If you have questions, there is a feedback from below.
Central Illinois Web Professionals Meeting (November 12, 2019)
WordCamp US 2019 – this is an overview of some of the things I learned during my 3 days in St. Louis (Nov. 1 – 3, 2019).
Deque AxePro tool – these are supporting slides only (I plan to provide a live demonstration).
Adobe Fresco – recently released tool (I plan to provide a live demonstration of this tool as well).
Peoria WordPress MeetUp (November 18, 2019)
WordCamp US 2019 – this is an overview of some of the things I learned during my 3 days in St. Louis (Nov. 1 – 3, 2019).
Peoria WordPress MeetUp (December 16, 2019)
Functional Accessibility – I plan to review some of the basics of accessibility and discuss/ demo a newly minted tool as well (AxePro from Deque).
Central Illinois Web Professionals Meeting (January 14, 2020)
Micro.blog – This is a short overview of an alternative (IndieWeb) approach to placing your content on the WWW. If you don’t like the idea of using your data/ information as payment, consider this alternative approach. Hopefully this presentation will form the beginnings of a much longer discussion.
Central Illinois Web Professionals Meeting (February 11, 2020)
HeatMaps (and more) – This is an overview of the HotJar set of tools to help you better understand your site visitors (and how they are really using your site). We will discuss a number of features (including heat maps, visitor recordings, funnels, and more).
Peoria WordPress Meetup (March 20, 2023)
Machine Learning Overview – The area of machine learning/ artificial intelligence is huge (and growing rapidly). This is meant to stir a much longer discussion. BTW – these slides were made with the Presenter plugin. Note – if you use this plugin and your slideshow does not display (dreaded 404 error), flush your permalinks (Settings > Permalinks > Save Changes). For those who wish to take notes, here is a PDF version of the slides.
Central Illinois Web Professionals Meeting (March 30, 2023)
Think you know CSS? – The world of CSS continues to rapidly evolve. We will review several examples (along with annotated source code) to better understand what is happening. For example, the venerable sRGB color gamut is soon to evolve into at least 50% more colors (think high definition displays). We will cover this and much more. This will be a Zoom session. I also provide a copy of the content (for those who wish to take notes – it is a PDF). I recorded this and provide this link to the recording. I also include the recording below.
Washington WordPress Meetup (January 10, 2024)
WordPress fundamentals (and more). We plan to cover initial WordPress topics as well as more advanced WordPress topics during each meeting. For those who wish to take notes, here is a PDF version of the materials. We are also hoping for more discussions at each meeting. If you are interested in presenting or discussing a specific topic, please let us know. For those who are interested, here is a link to the audio of the meeting. It is rather entertaining to read the transcript. Just send me an email and I will provide the passcode (so you can listen). Something about the captioning with AI “just wasn’t quite right.” Ok, I will bring a microphone to the next meeting.
Washington WordPress Meetup (February 14, 2024)
WordPress Plugins. We will review why plugins exist in WordPress, which ones you may wish to consider, how to evaluate plugins and more. We will also develop two plugins (ok, I will provide the code and you can modify). One plugin will provide additional information for a single post; the other will provide additional information for a single page. These links both now contain working zip archives. We will be using the online versions of both VS Code and WordPress during this discussion. I provide this PDF version of the materials for those who wish a copy (along with code snippets). We used Zoom to capture the meeting. The Zoom AI was used to create a meeting summary (reasonable, if not complete). Lastly, for those who would like to listen to the recording, I provide this link. Contact me directly for the passcode to watch the recording.
Based on our March discussions, we agreed to create/ modify a checklist of actions one should take as one starts thinking about a new WordPress site. Mark will provide a beginning checklist (and will bring copies to the meeting). Obviously, this will remain a work in progress. A PDF version is available and has been updated after the meeting. We can discuss these changes at our May, 2024 meeting.
Washington WordPress Meetup (May 8, 2024)
For our May meeting, Tammy will discuss Elementor (paid theme environment) and Vikki will discuss Divi (another paid theme environment).
Washington WordPress Meetup (suspended for the summer)
We will not be meeting during the months of June, July, August, or September. The meeting room is being used by the library for their summer reading program. See you in October (October 9).