On Tour
This year is turning out to be the Year of Conferences for me. With a total of four speaking gigs around the world, it almost feels like I’m touring like a band.
First, there was the excellent EEUK in Manchester, where I did a workshop on add-on development. It was great to have a classroom full of people sweating away at some tricky exercises I had lined up for them. Eight hours (or nine, including lunch) seemed like a long time, but it flew by, just like that.
Yesterday was the fourth edition of the online Engine Summit, an online conference. I did a talk about ExpressionEngine’s error messages, which I titled “Errare Humanum Est”, the famous phrase coined by stoic philosopher Seneca. Although the subject may seem a bit dry, I think I got my message across clearly and hopefully helped the people who attended to not be afraid of errors as much.
Then there’s Peers in Chicago. Ah, Peers, maybe the one conference I look forward to the most. It doesn’t just focus on ExpressionEngine only, but also welcomes people from Craft, Statamic and Laravel. And because the audience is diverse, I decided to try and do a non-tech talk for the first time. Following the philosophy hint in my Engine Summit talk, I will be taking a closer look at work. It will be contemplative, thought-provoking and maybe even provocative to the audience. I’m already soaking up inspiration from all around me, which will hopefully result in an engaging lecture about what keeps us busy on a daily basis.
Finally, there’s the all-new ExpressionEngine Conference in Portland later this year. I will be revisiting the workshop I did at EEUK, which I have tweaked slightly based on the feedback I received from attendees. Both the line-up and the location look amazing, and the conference itself will no doubt be superb as well.
In between conferences, add-on development continues steadily. I’m still working hard to make sure my products are the best in the industry, even with people trying to sneak up behind me, and I thank you for putting me in the position that I can.