The ExpressionEngine Roadshow Report 2009

After an inspiring whirlwind in sunny (but cold) Seattle attending the ExpressionEngine Roadshow, we are back in Boise. Some of the things we learned were tangible, like the finer points of Template Caching. Other things were intangible, like meeting the sharp people at EllisLab and the calming, competent presence they engender. Being in a room full of people who do the same thing we do everyday and sharing experiences and ideas was enlightening and invigorating. The presentations ranged from technical to the more abstract and process-based.

The President of EllisLab, Leslie Camacho's short talk about EE 2.0 was a bit of a disappointment. I wasn't looking for a hard release date, but I did want to hear about the process and philosophy behind the total rewrite of the core using CodeIgniter. (I did get $100 out of the deal, so not too much complaining here and I know more information is forthcoming.)

Happy Cog walked us through their site planning process by using Page Design Documents (PDD) and their very thorough Inventory File (look for more soon @inventoryfile). Ryan Irelan's presentation on "10 Ways to Improve Your EE Site Development" was straightforward and helpful. It was fun to see him in person after listening to his screencasts. Matt Perry's comprehensive "Performance Tuning EE" was downright fascinating in its meticulous documentation of EE's inner workings.

Hearing Rick Ellis, Leslie Camacho and Lisa Wess speak about EE's relationship with Add-Ons was comforting and gave me hope that EE is built on a solid, sustainable philosophy. They want to make the EE core as sleek and flexible as possible and leave room for developers to add features rather than making them disable or work around a bunch of features they don't need for every project. Their process for choosing Add-Ons to incorporate into the default installation is right on. For example, they choose to include the 'jQuery for the Control Panel' extension because developers asked for it and gave them a valid reason to do so, it would cut down on the amount of code in all extensions that use jQuery. I now see the reasoning behind not installing a WYSIWYG editor by default, it gives the developers the flexibility to tailor the fields to the client's needs, we can either install a WYSIWYG of our choosing or go with something like Textile. (Although it could be a FieldType included with the install that you could choose to enable.)

The amount of EE moonlighters attending the conference was surprising. People whose day jobs don't involve EE, but by night choose to develop sites with their CMS of choice, ExpressionEngine. This speaks to the ease and power of EE and the dedication of the community of users, which is the source of its strength.

As exciting as the lineup for the ExpressionEngine/CodeIgniter Conference 2009 is, we probably won't make it over to the Netherlands. Maybe next year, but we'll follow it digitally. Meanwhile we'll take what we learned and put it to good use. We are excited about EE and its future and can't wait for next year's Roadshow!