SXSWi 2009 Wrap Up, Specifically, ExpressionEngine 2 Preview

My first SXSW has come and gone, and let me tell you, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.  I caught a fever on the plane home and am still suffering from the “SouthBy Scurvy” two days later.  Nevermind though, as the sickness is totally worth what I got out of the conference.

The rookie mistake my friend Bill Johnston and I made was staying at the Sheraton, which was way down on 11th st.  That added quite a few $6 cab rides into the mix.  Next year, its the Hampton Inn (close, free wifi and free breakfast).  We didn’t let it bother us, though, and went with the flow, which was the best way to deal with the entire week.

As for the panels and talks, I could have taken or left them, as most were not terribly engaging.  I certainly understand that these people can’t be expected to be everything to everyone, so I hope some other people derived more value from the sessions.  The best one I attended was the Spec Work panel, in which the insult slinging between the Threadless (99designs) guy and Crowdspring guy was pure entertainment, and the crowd loved it. 

The CSS3 panel made me mad, and I really wish I had gotten up and spoken my mind at the microphone.  While these panelists from Opera, Mozilla and IE showed off what can be done with full CSS3 implementations, they then proceeded to beat around the proverbial bush about getting consensus on a number of issues.  By the end of it, I felt like we had a lot of people at a lot of companies with a lot of engines thinking about a lot of methods for implementing a lot of features.  And were supposed to feel like this is helping us?  I challenge you, Molly, and your CSS working group to help me.  Help me be more efficient for my clients, help me pay my mortgage and feed my kids.  This stuff shouldn’t take multiple years. 

The parties were insane.  Frankly, I am a 34 year old married guy with a 1 and 3 year old, and my nights end about 7:30pm every night.  It was so much fun to stay out so late and remember the old days… I went to a mix of parties and dinners with new and old friends.  I had a pretty unique experience because my travel buddy Bill is very well known in social media circles and ran into people he knew everywhere.  So I met a lot of people outside the development circle that is my comfort zone, and ended up having some really enlightening conversations that expanded my knowledge of the space, and people were interested in what I had to say as well, as an outsider.  By far the best night was being on the rooftop at Six at the Mashable party.  It was a gorgeous night and it was such a great time.  I hear that is Lance Armstrong’s place, and that was kind of neat in that my son’s middle name is Lance, after one Mr. Armstrong.

ExpressionEngine was a recurring theme throughout the week for me, whether it was Saturday night’s EllisLab party, Monday’s Kaylee preview, or just talking shop with EE devs all week long.  The funniest thing was that several people came up to me out of the blue and wanted to meet me, knowing who I was when I didn’t know them.  Thanks for feeding my wannabe rock star ego, you have no idea what you started   The best thing was meeting people I look up to in the industry and feeling like an equal- it was clear that all opinions and levels of experience were respected.  I spent an hour with Ryan Irelan and Mike Boyink in the Hilton Lobby and we discussed quite a few intricate details of being an EE dev.  On a different day I talked for an hour with Kenny Meyers of Blue Flavor and Mitchell Kimbrough and his Solspace team where quite a few other topics surfaced.

Though the EllisLab party got overrun with moochers, about twenty of us had the pleasure of attending the World Domination meeting off in a different room where some big ideas from EllisLab were discussed with big wigs and little wigs alike.  Lots of great information all around.  Of a different value was Monday’s lunch with EllisLab, followed by a demo of ExpressionEngine 2 by Derek Allard.  Derek showed us lots of control panel bling and how functionality mapped to underlying controllers and functions in CodeIgniter.  Suffice to say, already knowing some CI, i could see exactly how things were happening and I’ll be able to jump right in to customizations.  You will all be very happy.  The enhancements to the CP were welcomed and will easily trim 20-40% of your setup time off by making multi click tasks doable in one or two clicks without leaving the page you are working on.  The organization of the new CP is also a welcome change.  Boyink has summarized some other functionality changes in his blog.  Along the way, Derek took notes about our ideas and concerns and invited us to send in some further suggestions.  EllisLab is very committed to making us happy.  I have no doubt they will succeed.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience, not for those that get nervous around germs.  People are very friendly and just as anxious to meet you as you are to meet them.  And we all have something in common… getting out from behind the monitor once a year to be “social”.  See you next year, Austin.