October is ExpressionEngine Month
This is going to be a big month for the EE Community, so let’s dig in!
The EE Roadshow
October kicked off with the EE Roadshow. Rick Ellis, Lisa Wess, and I took the short jump up to Seattle from Oregon to hang out with the community.
I was impressed with the quality of the presentations. From Happy Cog to Grist.org to the Add-on Dev Roundtable and everyone in between, it was high quality through and through. I was tired and worn out by the end, but every minute was worth it.
We EllisLab folk were the odd people out as we opted for a very short presentation that led into the 1024k Megashow, where it Pays to Know ExpressionEngine. It was an excuse to have some fun, give away cash, and do something different. The plan was to introduce the topic and make an offer to talk to people one-on-one about EE 2.0 and the future during the Roadshow.
While we consider it a success, got a lot of positive feedback on it, and enjoyed the light-hearted tone in an otherwise information dense day, I realize that some people felt misled or let down that we didn’t do a presentation on 2.0 itself or would have preferred a more traditional approach.
I’ve listened carefully to the feedback and agree that we did a poor job of communicating our plans. Rick and I would gladly do it again, but next time we’ll make sure it’s not a surprise. We’ll also find a better way to balance it with a more traditional presentation. I want to personally thank everyone who did take the time to introduce themselves and make use of my offer to talk 2.0 and anything else one-on-one. This is easily the favorite part of my job. I much prefer speaking with people than talking at people (which has its place, just not my preference).
The big EE 2.0 news from the Roadshow is that we announced that an official, carved in stone, release date for EE 2.0 will be made public by the end of October.
In terms of code, the best part of the Roadshow was seeing concrete evidence that moving EE onto CI was worth all the effort. The evidence? ShopIgniter, a stand-alone ecommerce system built on CI (currently in development) that is aimed expressly to leverage EE 2.0’s CI codebase. The level of integration they are aiming for simply would not have been possible with EE 1.x.
You can read a thorough report on the Roadshow over at EE Insider and check out the EE Roadshow’s News section for updates, including video and eventually PDFs and other downloads.
Dev Team Update
Today we launched a new two week Sprint on 2.0 development and its exciting because the task list is oh so short, even compared to the Sprint we just completed.
During the last Sprint the dev team made significant breakthroughs on the UI and the File Manager. There is also a lot of clean up work being done under the hood on the CP as we finish polishing up the three CP themes that will ship with 2.0 (Default, Fruit, and Corporate).
We also made some really tough decisions about what will make the cut for 2.0’s initial release versus a few things that will have to wait until 2.1. We’ll talk more about these types of decisions once the release date is public later this month.
This next Sprint is almost entirely in prep for Phase Two of the Beta in-addition to bug squashing and polishing.
Phase Two Beta
We received over 1200 Phase Two beta applications and I’m pleased to report that the initial 150 invites for Phase Two of the EE 2.0 Beta go out tonight! As I write this update our fabulous CTO Derek Jones is busy prepping the beta machine. The other 150 will go out in batches of 50 (more or less) during the week and possibly over the weekend.
As mentioned previously, this is the last beta phase prior to release. We expect to do a lot of tweaking and bug squashing but hopefully the big bugs are sufficiently dead.
Please do not email the dev team directly asking for invites. If you really feel the need, you can .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) instead. This will allow the dev team to concentrate on a successful beta and give you access to someone who will listen and respond.
Greg Aker, ExpressionEngine Specialist
The reason we have an opening on our Tech Support team is that on October 13th, Greg Aker will join EllisLab full time as an ExpressionEngine Specialist. The EES is a new position on the dev team that also shares some duties with support, sales, and EngineHosting. We’re very much looking forward to having Greg on full time as he’s already contributed a whole bunch to 2.0’s development.
ExpressionEngine CodeIgniter 2009 Conference
I can’t tell you how excited I am to head to Europe this month for EECI 2009. I’ve wanted to meet the community there for years. EECI 2009 is where we’ll start opening up the information stream regarding 2.0. My keynote is going to focus on EE 2.0 exclusively and pretty much put an end to the “silent mode” we’ve been in for a long time.
All the information we make public at EECI we’ll put up at ExpressionEngine.com as soon as possible. I’m going to prep to personally record the presentation on my laptop. If all goes well, you’ll be able to get the slides/audio pretty much same day. If there is a glitch, we’ll make sure to have an alternative plan so everyone gets the most important info in a timely fashion.
ExpressionEngine Meetups
We’ve noticed an increase EE Meetups lately and have decided to give them some front page love at ExpressionEngine.com. You can see them in the lower left of the home page. If there is a meetup happening, we’ll have it posted there provided that the organizer .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and let us know. We’ll have a few guidelines to make it on the front page which we’ll post on the EE Blog this month, just wanted to give an early heads up that we want to help promote these community led events.
Contest Winners
We’ve run a couple contests for the survey and EE quizzes. We’ll have the winners for both announced in the next week or so (hopefully sooner). Thank you so much for everyone who took the survey (over 1300 of you) and sent in quizzes.
Finally, thank you Lea for suggesting that EllisLab make October “EE Month.”
Whew! That’s it for this update. Between now and EECI the entire EllisLab staff is buckling down for Phase Two. You can help make these next few weeks of testing better by cheering us on in the forums!
