This is my first week as the new Chief Technology Evangelist (CTE) at EllisLab and I thought I should start by coming clean about a few things.
1. At first, I thought the job title of “Chief Technology Evangelist” was a bit strange, but in a fun sort of way. In fact, I had never even heard of technology evangelism until Rick mentioned it a year or so ago. After months of painstaking research though, we decided it is the best title for what I’ve set out to do here.
2. My job as CTE is to focus on training, education, client success and, um, mischief . . . no really, mischief; just ask Les if you don’t believe me. Mischief is the one area of this new role that I feel the most qualified for.
3. I won’t be coding any future releases of EE, so you can relax and know that the future of ExpressionEngine remains in the hands and minds of our truly gifted, kind-hearted, generous, friendly, passionate and loveable development team at EllisLab.
4. Some my work at EllisLab is “behind the scenes” and some is open to the public. There will be times when I can’t tell you everything I know, but I will always tell you everything I can.
5. Let there be no misunderstanding; I love this company and have the absolute highest respect for everyone who works here.
6. My background is not in technology, my future is. You’ll find hundreds of posts by me in the community forums as I’ve worked tirelessly to get my brain around ExpressionEngine and web design/development in general. Who knows? Ask enough questions and you just might find yourself working here some day. Just remember, it’s not the quantity that counts, it’s the quality.
Got a Big Idea for how we should go about creating a thriving educational community around ExpressionEngine and/or CodeIgniter?
If so, I would like to hear from you.
I’ve been charged with fostering educational opportunities for the users of our software and services. I’ve got some ideas about how to go about accomplishing this, but I would like some more before we move forward.
During the next few weeks, I’ll be contacting some folks who’ve shown an interest in EE education in the past, and some folks who we think might be interested in getting involved in the future of educational offerings either at, or supported somehow by, EllisLab.
Please don’t wait for me to contact you if you’ve got some well thought-out ideas about the future of education and/or training at EllisLab. If you’ve got some big ideas about effectively training and educating the growing user-base of ExpressionEngine and/or CodeIgniter, I want to hear from you in the next few weeks at:
I’ll likely close down that special email account in mid March, so please try to get your thoughts into an email before then.
If you’re a technology ‘educator’ and just want to introduce yourself, you’re invited to drop me a note at that address also. I promise not to add you to mail-lists or fill up your inbox—honest.

Congrats, Kurt, to your first week as CTE … and the first post in your new role. I’m really excited to see the first results of your work, as we all know that training and education stuff are a bit lacking for new users. Big ideas? I’m sure the community will float your account - but its great to be asked!

And congrats to Rick as well for having the idea to offer you the CTE position.

-Markus

Kurt,

I sent you an email

Kurt, you know this is where my heart is so please let me know what I can do to help Ellis Lab and you! I don’t have anything specific I can suggest as of yet, but I’d love to toss around ideas and/or share in the brainstorming. Or, frankly, anything else. I love this new role in Ellis Lab and will do everything I can do support y’all!

Mrs. Flinger - 12 January 2008 10:39 AM

...let me know what I can do to help Ellis Lab… I love this new role in Ellis Lab and…

First of all Kurt, drill into everyone’s head that it’s “EllisLab”, not “Ellis Lab”, and “ExpressionEngine”, not “Expression Engine”. Not picking on you, Mrs. Flinger, but I know that was a sore point that was addressed in the blog and the forums a few weeks back! 

OY, my bad. Ellislab.

Mrs. Flinger - 13 January 2008 01:34 PM

OY, my bad. Ellislab.

EllisLab not Ellislab. Go to the back of the classroom.

stinhambo - 13 January 2008 07:59 PM

EllisLab not Ellislab. Go to the back of the classroom.

And that’s EllisLab, Inc. to you, sir! [You get an A-]. Wait, I thought it was Kurt’s job to do education, and here we are doing it for him! I think this also qualifies as mischief.

Man, he’s good!

His new position includes access to the orbiting mind control lasers.

Did you get my email Kurt?

Man, this is great! I won’t have to do anything around here. . . .

Seriously though, I’m confident that Mrs. Flinger probably feels just awful about the typos.

Good news is we’re getting email at the bigideas account, and the quality of the responses is really encouraging. I’ve just gone through and answered all the email in there as of this post. I’ll try and check the account every couple of days and get back to folks within a day or two of receiving their emails.

Right now we’re just collecting thoughts and ideas. At some point in the future we may share a few of the ideas here for feedback, but mostly we just want to hear from the educators and future-educators in the community; um. . . and the students too.

If you can imagine what kind of educational and training resources you would like to see in the future here at EllisLab, stuff so good that you might even spend some of your own money on it, then we would love to hear from you.

OK. . . I have get to back to MyDesk now and get SomeWork done before TheBoss catches me here visiting OurCommunity.

Just a quick update. I want to thank everyone that’s emailed, and remind folks that email account will remain open for at least the rest of February.