EECI 2009 Wrap Up
The recent announcement of EECI2010, to be held in both the San Fransico and Leiden, reminded me that I’ve never actually got around to writing up a wrap-up of EECI2009. So here it is, my wrap-up post on the Expression Engine and Code Igniter European conference 2009.
The Conference
The Conference itself was hosted Leiden, in the Netherlands on the 22nd and 23rd of October. The whole event was organised (rather superbly) by the guys from Whooz!.
Before we even get onto to talking about the conference itself, I’d like to just say that the city of Leiden has to be the nicest city I’ve ever been to. It really is the perfect location to have a conference, and I’d move there to live in a heartbeat. I’m actually quite jealous of Lodewijk Schutte, who lives there, on a house boat no less!
The conference venue, the Scheltema Complex, is quite simply an amazing space. It once was a factory, but had been left empty for nearly 50 years until it was delicately renovated in the last few years. The exposed brickwork, woodwork and pipes really keeps the character of the place alive, and simply makes it a far nicer place to be than a purpose built (and therefore sparse, white and boring) conference centre.
After reading some of the write-ups from people that were involved in the conference behind the scenes, there was alot of running around and last minute organisation still going on right up the morning. It’s a real testament to the guys from Whooz!, that if there were any disasters, the conference goers didn’t see any of them, and the whole event felt polished, as if they’d done this a hundred times. (Though apparently this was the first event they’d ever organised.)
It’s been said in lots of different places, that this was one of the best organised conferences, and I totally agree with that. From the bowls of sweets to the goodie bags and open bars it was a great atmosphere for all involved. The only thing I’d like to have seen would be some stickers, or even t-shirts in the goodie bags, but then maybe that’s wishing too much.
The Lineup
For the first ever EE and CI conference the speaker lineup was simply amazing. All the big names were there. As an EE developer I’ve had interactions with lots of these people online, either on the forums, blogs or support systems, and to meet all these people and find out they’re actually real people, not just profile avatars and commit messages was simply great.
Quite a few times I found myself talking to someone and feeling a strange sense of deja-vu, only later mentally associating their online profiles with the person standing in the room.
The program itself was really good, but rather than rehashing each and every presentation it’d be simpler to point you on to the actual slides and some of the more complete round-up posts. Matthew Pennell’s round up posts are probably the most complete around and I’d recommend reading through some of this posts on Leslie Camacho, Simon Collinson, Derek Allard, Veerle Pieters, Brandon Kelly, Micheal Boyink, Leevi Graham, Ryan Irelan, Paul Burdick, Jamie Pittock, or Jonathan Longnecker’s presentations to go with the slides.
From my point-of-view, while all the presentations were useful, the one I got the most from would be Jamie Pittock’s Proactive Parenting, and some of the idea’s on how to manage client’s and their content I’ve already put in place.
That’s all for the my round-up of EECI2009, but I’m hoping to attend EECI2010 (in San Francisco if I can somehow convince the powers-that-be) next year.