Who
Currently I’m responsible for doing most of the legwork – with EllisLab helping out when and where it makes sense.  Throughout the development of this program I’ll be looking for other members of the EE community to have involvement so that the program reflects a fair and accurate view of the EE ecosystem.

What
What the program will be, how it will be created, how it will be delivered – these are all questions I’m in the process of researching answers to.

Where
The goal is that the program will be available to all ExpressionEngine developers without restriction - regardless of location.

When
No set date yet.  The parties involved in this project so far are similar in one respect - we’ve never done anything like it before.  So for now just know we are working on it.

Why
The availability of a certification program is one sign of a healthy marketplace around a given technology. My goal is that it benefits everyone involved with EE:

• For developers - a way to qualify themselves for EE-related jobs and projects, a way to mark progress towards defined training goals.
• For end clients - another way to review potential developers and gain higher-quality results.
• For EllisLab/ExpressionEngine.com - a more reliable/defined referral channel.

How
My research starts here in West Michigan where I’ve scheduled some brainstorming time this week with some local peers. Represented in the group are heavy EE users, more casual/infrequent users, and developers who’ve never used EE. The group has also expressed a wide range of opinions on the subject of certification programs from negative to positive.

From there I go to SXSW with an agenda of speaking to as many people from the EE community about the topic as possible. If you’ll be in Austin make sure to hit me up via email or Twitter – and I’ll make every effort I can to meet with you to talk about this.

After SXSW will the the EE Meetup in Chicago where I’ll propose the skeleton of a program based on input received so far, and open it up for discussion and review.

After the Chicago meetup I’ll be looking to schedule some Skype chats with the some non US-based EE folks for additional perspective.

Questions?
We’re not ready to discuss this publicly, but when we are there will be announcements both here and over at the EE Blog. So for now, comments are off. But if you have questions, concerns, or want to schedule a chat about the project please feel free to contact me directly.

Thanks!

My hope is that by the end of the event on May 9th, a church will get the ExpressionEngine-based website built during the Building a Church Website tutorial series on Train-ee and we will have raised enough money to fully fund a fresh water well through charity:water.

I say “we” because I need your help.

To learn more about the project and the different ways you can help head over to the Water from a Website section.

SXSW
This was my second year at SXSW - or just “South-by” to those who speak of it often.  It was quite a different experience for me this year as last year I was there as an employee of EllisLab and spent a large part of my time helping out with the EE2 demo and other company activities.  This year was on my own dime and I was free to make the experience my own.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of what sessions I went to—suffice it to say that the panels proved to be a mixed bag, some really valuable and some unbelievably unfocused.  It’s hard to imagine how people who do creative work for a living -work that involves crafting messages for known target audiences, and have enough success at that work to get on a panel at SXSW can then fail so completely in this situation.  I quickly learned to sit as close to the outside of a row as possible to make for a quick exit if the session was going in a direction that I didn’t like.

On the other hand the larger keynotes I attended where the speakers were higher level (folks like Lawrence Lessig, Kathy Sierra, etc) were interesting and entertaining - even if the subject matter wasn’t of immediate interest or the practical down and dirty how-to’s that I prefer.

The schedule was a bit frustrating - in that it seemed like at any given time there was either nothing of interest going on or four things that I wanted to go to.  The latter turned out to be the most frustrating thing about the week - I don’t think I’ve ever been in a spot where the opportunity cost for any given action was higher.  No matter which panel, event, or conversation I had it always felt like there were other ones that I should have sought out instead.  Getting real-time updates from other attendees via Twitter didn’t help - they always sounded like they were either getting more valuable information or just having more fun than I was.

The EllisLab party got leaked out on a SXSW Twitter feed so was overrun with people in search of free beer and food but without a clue as to who was putting the party on.  It started at 6:00, I got there about half-past and the Moonshine was already elbow to elbow and the crowd made it difficult to actually connect with other EE users.  I suspect that if the event happens again next year there will be an invite system or some sort of challenge-response at the door in an effort to keep the attendance down to a more appropriate audience.

However - despite the crowds or constantly feeling like I was standing in the less-green grass I had a great time.  I met a number of people I have only known on-line, reconnected with a good number of folks that I met at SXSW last year and met some new folks as well.  I had a number of great conversations around the web in general, iPhones, ExpressionEngine, dealing with clients, publishing books, and more.  I’m coming back home with a number of new ideas and some fresh thinking around everything I do online. 

Thanks to everyone who made it such an enjoyable and exhausting yet energizing time.  To those people I failed to connect with - my apologies for that and I hope to try again next year.

iPhones
If you follow me on Twitter you probably saw that I bought an iPhone 2 days before leaving for SXSW.  I’ve been putting off getting into the smartphone world for some time as I just don’t use a cell phone that much.  What I’ve learned already is that the main value of the iPhone (and likely other smartphones) isn’t that it’s a better cell phone—it’s that it’s a small computer that also makes phone calls if needed.  I was able to keep up with email and Twitter on the iPhone - to the point where I really could have left my laptop at home (and will next time).  At SXSW it allowed me to connect with people for meals and meet-ups that would have been much more difficult otherwise.  It also allowed me to almost be in two places at once - about halfway through the weekend I discovered the value of Twitter hashtags - so when I couldn’t get into a panel on wireframing I chose another but kept an eye on the Tweet-stream for the wireframing panel (all tweets by people in the audience for that panel who included the hashtag).  Obviously it wasn’t as good as being there and watching Twitter distracted me from the panel I was in, but overall I felt it was an added value - especially when some of the tweets indicated that the wireframing had some technical difficulties and went into question-asking mode after only a half-hour. 

One interesting thing was that the members of the wireframing panel were also watching their tweet-stream and were getting and responding to audience feedback in real time.  I’ll bet more of that will happen in the future - possibly even the audience questions will only be asked via Twitter vs. the open microphone and the opportunity it presents for verbal spam instead of true questions.

EE2.0
OK - now that you’ve completely skipped down to this point we can talk about EE2..;)  I’m sure the folks at EllisLab will post a writeup with more complete information—but in the meantime here’s what I took away (in no particular order).

One caveat before going on however—I don’t intend this post to turn into a “tell me more about X” or “did it also have Y” type discussion.  Please save those type of followup questions for the EE forums in response to the more official announcements.

• New field types: File and Number
• Centralized file management with integrated photo editor.
• Images placed in via filmstrip-looking interface (people said more like Wordpress).
• Gallery will be going away as a module, gallery-specific functionality will be in the weblog/channel module instead.  Upgrade process will convert existing galleries over.
• Trackbacks probably not there by default but probably available as a module.
• New CP item - Accessories.  These will be a way to add items to the Control Panel - such as contact info, links to screencasts, online manuals, etc.  Pretty much anything you can build as HTML.
• Templates as flat files will save out with correct file extensions.
• Templates created at file level will be automatically generated within control panel.
• CP Publish/edit screen highly customizable, drag and drop field layout, re-arrange per tab, create new tabs.  Layouts will be member group specific so you can have different from clients.
• Overall the re-organization of the CP should save much developer time in the mundane, do everyday type activities.

I’m sure I’m missing quite a bit - but definitely some stuff there to be excited about.

Edit to add: I know there is a great demand out there for more information about EE2 - but I have to both give credit and ask for some patience for the EllisLab folks.  Imagine yourself with four back to back client meetings everyday where you had to show what you had been working on for the last year and field all the questions and concerns.  Now do that for four days straight and throw in some late-night activities as well as hosting your own party in the middle of all of it.  The EL folks were working hard and looking & sounding quite ragged by the end of it all.  I’ve never seen a software company use this approach to engage with it’s users and I found it quite refreshing and an indicator of why I like working with these guys so much.  So cut ‘em some slack, let them get caught up on family time and sleep, and I’m sure they’ll be back with some good info for us all…;)

Pinewood Derby
Which brings me to the Pinewood Derby - which was the reason I had to leave SXSW on the day I did.  I have a boy and girl and they are part of a Cadets and Gems program through the neighborhood church.  Both groups do a classic Pinewood derby where the kids each make a car starting from a standard kit of parts.  The kids actually do most of build - cutting out the shapes, sanding and some painting. The cars then come home for final detailing and assembly.  My kids both did well - my son excelled at being graceful while not placing (there are lots of boys his age and they are highly competitive), and my daughter swept the local church event and the regionals in the “best of show” category where the cars are judged on appearance.  Pictured is her winning Hersey-Bar car.  So I am now on the hook for a new display shelf where cars and trophies can be prominently displayed….

Well - at least it will be traditional in the sense that there will be four days spent in a classroom learning EE hands-on from an experienced professional, with the ability to ask questions and interact with others in the room.

That’s where any similarity to off-site training you’ve had in the past will (hopefully) end. 

The first difference is the location.  This class will be held in a vacation destination - a scenic resort town nestled close to Lake Michigan and renowned for it’s beautiful sunsets, clean beaches, bikepaths and a historic downtown with home-town coffee shops and microbreweries.

The second difference is the venue.  We’ve all suffered through training in an instantly forgettable generic space.  Through Train-ee you will learn ExpressionEngine in a brand-new, funky, hip and green hotel located within walking distance of restaurants and shopping.

The third difference is the after-hours activities.  Rather than leaving you to while away the evenings alone in your hotel room we’re planning a number of events to get you out to experience the area and hang out with the others in the class.

For more information on the location, venue, course content, and schedule/cost please visit the new Classroom Training page on Train-ee.com.

If you have any questions not answered by that page please feel free to contact me directly via either Train-ee or Boyink.com

Sign up now - the conference room is only so big!

I already had a mug as a result of being on-staff, but put together a video entry anyway (it’s nice to put that ole college degree to use once in a while….).

As a way of keeping it low-budget yet fun I attempted to play off the style of the CommonCraft videos that have been popular on the web.

The video is now being used as the example video for the promotion - and you can view it on the Show Us Your Mug Submission Page.

I’m considering a more detailed writeup of how it works down the road - but in a nutshell the select-boxes are dynamically populated by weblog:entries tags, a bit of Javascript assembles a URL from the entry_id of the selections, and the results are constructed with weblog:entries tags reading the entry_id’s from URL segments.

The nice part is that the results pages don’t use any cookies - and hence are able to be bookmarked by users, or sent via email by Espec sales people to prospective clients.

If you’ve looked over the changes and watched the preview video you know the biggest changes are that EE 2.0 is based on CodeIgniter and that the control panel has been reorganized and redesigned.

So first I thought of describing it like a sandwich - where the meat is the same but the bread is different…but that doesn’t quite get it.

I often think of houses and architecture when it comes to websites and applications, so next I thought about a house where the foundation is being revamped.  But EE 2 has more than just redecorating happening in the control panel - it’s also been reorganized which doesn’t quite map to the house metaphor.

So my working metaphor is that EE 2.0 is like taking your current CD/ DVD collection, buying a much nicer/sturdier/more expandable rack to store them in, and then re-organizing them while moving them into the new rack.  Same music that you love - just better organized in a better environment.  And maybe a few new CD’s to boot.

That’s better…but it still seems like there should be a better way to describe the changes that EE 2 is bringing.  How about it - any better metaphors out there?

You can read the full description on Train-ee.com, but the main goal of the screencast is that it gets you over that panic-attack moment of looking at a finished site comp, and now wondering just how the heck do I configure ExpressionEngine to power this site?

I felt this was an important one to get out there, as through my consulting work I’ve seen a number of EE sites that have foundational issues.  And—just like trying to build nice straight and level walls on a crooked and irregular home foundation is tough, so it is with EE.  The trouble is when you’re new to EE it’s just so easy to make poor choices that come back to bite you later—so hence this screencast with some recommendations for a solid ExpressionEngine Architecture.