Speaking at WordCamp San Francisco

WordCamp San Francisco has announced their final round of speakers, and that includes me. I’m giving an advanced development talk on Saturday called Current User Can Watch This Talk. Props to fellow lead developer Mark Jaquith (who is also speaking) for coming up with that clever talk title. Here’s the description:

At first glance, the WordPress roles and capabilities system is simple. Users have roles, roles have capabilities, and plugins can make simple changes to them. Done, right? Not quite: You’ve been doing it the hard way. A deeper look inside the API reveals a surprising amount of flexibility, including the single most powerful (and dangerous) filter in WordPress. In this talk, you’ll learn how capabilities are “mapped” to other capabilities, and what the difference between primitive and meta capabilities means for your plugins and custom post types. We’ll explore the true hidden powers of the API, like using capability mapping to selectively grant and revoke privileges on the fly, making complex user management more maintainable.

The single most powerful and dangerous filter in WordPress? That sounds both ominous and awesome if you ask me.

If you’re interested in presentations aimed at advanced developers at WordCamp San Francisco this year, make sure to also catch the illustrious Mike Adams and Andy Skelton. Mike is talking about security in “Three Security Issues You Thought You’d Fixed.” Andy will be presenting a new approach to performance in “How pcntl_fork() Can Save Us.” I’m really looking forward to what they have to say and you should do.

I’m also looking forward to talks by Will Norris, Nikolay Bachiyski, and Helen Hou-Sandi. Together, those are six names who have greatly influenced not just WordPress development, but my own work and the contributions of many others. Check out the full line-up here and here. A few tickets are still available for the July 26–27 conference.

I also hope to see a lot of people at the Contribute Day on Sunday. I’m helping organize that, and WordPress 3.7 will be underway by then — more to come on both soon.