Tina Reis

Get to know Tina 🎙️

Can you start by painting a picture of what a typical day looks like for you? What fuels your passion for the work you do, and how does it tie into your involvement with WCEU?

Even though I am a freelancer, I have a pretty fixed routine: I get up early, (try to) work out in the gym on some days, otherwise head to the office after breakfast, and then I sit down with a cup of coffee to plan my day. It usually involves meetings with clients and a lot of effort to carve out focused time for dev work in between. When I work on a website, I try to do my work a little bit better each time – that is what motivates me. You won’t see me repeat the same thing over and over, I’ll much rather read up on new best practices and try them out in my next project. That is what keeps me passionate about my work, and it also ties in nicely with WCEU because it is about sharing best practices with each other and questioning how things are done.

What sparked your interest in becoming a speaker at WCEU? Was there a particular moment or experience that motivated you to share your insights with this community?

Being a speaker seemed like the next step for me, and I’ve gained some experiences with it, speaking on a podcast and at a large local meet-up in my hometown of Berlin. I’m nervous every time, but then when I am on stage, I love it. But I’ve never spoken at a big conference like WCEU. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ready, so I put off the application to the last minute, literally filling out the form in the last hours of the last day of the deadline. I never thought I’d get picked, but I did and here we are! I chose to speak about a topic that I see neglected in the WordPress community: How to preserve SEO rankings when you relaunch a site. As I am a SEO consultant myself, I see this happen all the time: the relaunch makes the site look and feel great, but rankings are suddenly gone. So my hope for this talk is to bridge the gap between SEO and developers.

For those awaiting your talk, could you give us a preview of what we can expect to learn from your talk? Any sneak peeks?

The purpose of my talk is to equip you with a step-by-step guide: There won’t be lengthy discussions on theory, but very practical tips on how to navigate a relaunch with SEO in mind. And yes, I’ll also share some examples of relaunches gone wrong.

Is it your first time at a WCEU or WordPress event? Any standout memories or lessons learned that you’d like to share?

Actually, this year’s WordCamp Vienna was my first WordPress conference. It was amazing. A standout memory was two talks about a similar topic, each taking one side of a very technical but somewhat controversial question, scheduled one after the other in the same conference room. I’m pretty sure that was a coincidence, but I definitely learned a lot and had some heated discussions with the audience. 

Looking beyond the scheduled sessions, what do you hope attendees will take away from their overall experience at WCEU? How can they leverage the event to enhance their professional development or personal growth? 

I definitely want to have lots of conversations with attendees outside of talks. If you see me and want to chat, do just come up to me and say hello! In my career, building connections with people in similar fields has always helped me the most, whether it be for finding new projects, having a sounding board, or just to see friendly and familiar faces at events. I can encourage anyone to not only see this as an event for attending and learning from talks, but also to connect.