Chris Van Patten is the founder and creative director of Tomodomo, which helps magazines (and other content publishers) build powerful subscription websites that editors and readers love. He has spoken at WordPress events in Barcelona, Boston, Houston, Toronto, and many other cities around the world. Chris writes at tomodomo.co and chrisvanpatten.com, and tweets as @ChrisVanPatten.

What’s been your best experience with WordPress?

Getting to contribute to a platform with an important mission — making publishing accessible to millions around the world, while letting them own their data — has been exciting and meaningful.

Tell us a bit about your WordCamp Halifax talk.

I’ll be talking about Gutenberg, but not just what it is and how it works, but how we actually implemented it for a real website.

>What’s your favourite thing about WordCamps, or if your first one… what are you looking forward to?

I love getting to meet WordPress users around the world, and share some exciting ideas about what’s possible with WordPress. For WordCamp Halifax in particular, I’m looking forward to snagging a donair or three!

Let’s get philosophical… what are you most proud of?

Through my company, Tomodomo, I’m lucky enough to work with an amazing international team of some of the best designers, developers, and admin support around. I’m so proud of the folks we have on the team, and love that I’m able to support them and support their work on the WordPress platform.

Session Details

The WordPress community is abuzz about Gutenberg. But what does it take to use it on a production website? And what if that website is a leading lifestyle magazine with tens of thousands of subscribers and readers? In this talk, you’ll learn why and how we built one of the first major Gutenberg-powered websites. You’ll get to hear about the hiccups and bumps we hit along the way, the surprising pieces that worked better than expected, how the editorial team integrated it into their flow, and lessons for your own Gutenberg integration.