I’ve just returned from my second ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference (EECI), this time in New York City (the first being in Leiden two years ago). Fellow delegates are always surprised when they hear I’ve travelled from South Africa to attend. I spend more time in a passenger seat than I do actually at the conference (at 16hrs 05min, SA203 is one of the longest flights in the world!), put up with long embassy lines to get a visa, and leave business for a week knowing that work is piling up on my desk for when I return.
But once again, it was worth it. I’m returning home with loads of new ideas to extend our ExpressionEngine offering at Flow, and I got to meet and brainstorm with some top-notch developers.
Here are the top 10 things I learned at the conference:
1. We can change the world. Ellislab CEO Leslie Camacho alluded to the fact that Ellislab is there to make people’s lives better. Mitchell Kimbrough of Solspace urged us to consider our responsibilities while wielding the power of the internet (aka the ‘Spiderman speech’). Realising the extraordinary effect that web development is having on the world politically and culturally was an edifying experience.
2. Knowing the templating parse order is key. Lodewijk Schutte’s Parse Order Pro talk was a masterclass in the template parsing order. It’s always a source of frustration for myself and fellow colleagues when the template output fails for some reason. Many of the common errors we find while developing in ExpressionEngine templating have got to do with parse order.
3. Finding the bug. On a similar tack, Rob Sanchez showed how to troubleshoot PHP errors that crop up on ExpressionEngine sites and how to start leveraging the EE super object ($this->EE) in add-on development.
4. E-commerce is big. After years of e-commerce drought, we now have three powerful commercial add-ons – Cartthrob, Brilliant Retail, and Expresso Store. Brilliant Retail’s presentation was eye-opening – the pre-built templates, product customisation options and promotions functionality got me really excited. I also learned about the recently released Reeservation module while at the conference, which might be an answer to event and accommodation bookings.
5. Multi-environment workflows. It was affirming to see that Erik Reagan uses a similar workflow to us at Flow. I had a great chat with him afterwards, exchanging notes on how we use version control and database synchronisation tools. I’m keen to see progress on the database sync side of things and, since Reagan is part of the EE reactor team, I’m expecting great things.
6. ExpressionEngine 3 is being talked about. We are starting to hear murmurings about EE3. This time though, the Ellislab team are very tight-lipped about their release dates. EE2 suffered numerous delays, so Camacho is not saying anything until a firm date has been set. Apparently an entirely new UI is being planned, which is good news because the current control panel needs some work.
7. EE Reactor is a reality. EE Reactor is a group of developers from the community who will commit code into the main ExpressionEngine repository. This is great news for the community as it starts to allow community input directly into the product. We now have six more developers we can bug for extension hooks!
8. ExpressionEngine is coming to the enterprise. The term enterprise is used quite loosely these days, but ExpressionEngine is starting to become the tool of choice for large corporations (e.g. 10 000+ employees). Enterprises usually have quite onerous security, authentication and support requirements, and Ellislab is working hard to provide the type of enterprise offering that would appeal to the corporate folks and directly compete with the likes of Sharepoint.
9. ExpressionEngine has the best add-on developers in the world. I had some massively interesting chats with the developers of over a dozen add-on modules, including Structure, Cartthrob, CE_Image, Expresso Retail, Libraree, and others. Each conversation left me knowing a little more than before, inspired to try out new things with their modules, and secure in the knowledge that they have my back covered.
10. Meeting the community physically beats the digital space. Meeting the faces behind the Twitter handles is important in our increasingly non-physical world. Having been part of several open-source communities, I can safely say the EE community is the friendliest, but also the smartest, that I’ve come across. And having one-on-one chats with top Ellislab staff would not likely happen in any other setting.
Unfortunately, the sessions weren’t recorded, but most of the presentation slides are available online.
It is really great to see that you were able to grasp key factors from the conference of Codeigniter and Expression Engine that will essentially change the whole outlook of the Internet World. I guess understanding the bugs so as to troubleshoot the PHP errors correspondingly is very much an ideal method. Furthermore, taking the competition to the Ecommerce level is also important now and now that there are sufficient and proper add-ons for the same, I am sure Expression Engine will soon get a whole new dimension.