A 20 Point Review from EE2 One Day Workshop
01.11.2010
Read Brandon Vaughan’s review of of the workshop on Trinity Consulting’s web site.
First, Thanks
I would like to thank everyone who made this workshop possible:
- The awesome folks at EllisLab for helping spread the word about the workshop and answer questions of mine about preparing materials and resources.
- Alex and the great staff at CDIA for letting us have the workshop at your school and for helping set everything up before hand.
- Viget labs and Nclud for helping advertise the workshop.
- Alex from Baked and Wired for helping me get the coffee ready (next time four pots!)
- Michael Boyink for writing the first book on EE and for setting up the first workshops on EE. You’re awesome man.
- All of the wonderful nerdy and talented people who came to the workshop!
What I thought went well
- I think that we did a pretty good job staying on schedule and covering the content intended.
- While we didn’t cover nearly everything you would love to have known the first time you built a site with EE, what we covered laid a good ground work and we covered it in a good amount of depth.
- People were great about helping each other out when their were problems.
- Pretty much everyone walked out of the workshop with a working example to go off of in the future.
- Experienced EE developers had wonderful little tips and tricks to share.
What I want to improve next time
- If it is possible to improve the speed of the internet connection or have more people develop locally that would have been helpful.
- I did not include the snippets for the example in download files (I partially blame EE for not saving them like normal template files - we all agreed we would like to see this capability).
- Apparently when I printed name badges out, it printed out badges for people who paid, not attendees (sorry folks who had the fortune to have a business pay for the workshop).
- A few people asked if I could write out instructions for the second half of the day.
Good Questions and Topics of Discussion
- Best practice question: When to use a global variable, snippet, or template.
- Performance discussion: Whether to use path or stylesheet when linking to a CSS file and issues of performance with the new file extensions for template files.
- The big question: Would we use EE2 for a current project?
The next workshop
At the end of the day I announced the date for the next workshop and presented attendees with a choice of two different workshops to have next. Their votes will determine the content for the next workshop I have in March. Don’t forget to vote this week, either in the comments below or on twitter! @zgordon #advee or #introci
What did you all think?
I would love to hear feedback from people who attended the workshop.
Comments
Holler at this article
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Social Networking
DaBrook Tweets
- Setting up github to share CodeIgniter source code with Springbrook web dev students. (03-09 11:37)
- Just posted up information on the High School Web Conference next month http://bit.ly/9bkgXr (03-09 9:26)
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- Refresh Rockville: Project Management (Tues. night 7-8 @ MC) Will post details tomorrow (03-09 12:48)
- Just setup Web 1 students at Springbrook with accounts on welovewebdesign.com ... look for cheap hosting for all web students soon! (03-08 9:06)
- @mrbhachu Thanks about the jquery tutorial. I'll put it in the docket to make a new example for dropdown lists! (03-07 3:37)
- Just submitted the reading list for the CMS course at MC: http://digwp.com/book/ http://bit.ly/boVz1n http://bit.ly/a3teWI (03-06 10:53)
- A free event on preparing content for 508 accessibility! Great follow up on the accessibility lecture from last night http://bit.ly/bZRJUO (03-05 10:14)
- The DaBrook.org forums are now live! http://dabrook.org/forums/ (03-04 11:04)
- Great Advanced Web class tonight. I really enjoy the students this semester ... your forum is coming! (03-04 10:41)
- First example of a student using the "Steal this theme" download from DaBrook - Nice work thrasher! http://bit.ly/bI4NIX (03-04 5:19)
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- The MC Advanced Web class now has an archives page! http://bit.ly/aiRUhw (03-04 9:31)
- Looking forward to subbing tonight for a class at CDIA working on WordPress theme development (03-03 2:57)
- Web 1 students are working on their portfolios. Coming along nicely! (03-03 7:43)
- First tweet for DaBrook.org Tweets http://dabrook.org (02-23 11:14)
What's current:
- Web Design: Begin Working with FTP
- Web Development: Get blog entry’s to add to database
- ITGS: Review Justin’s ITGS Project
Mike Lok 01.12.10
Hi Zac,
I enjoyed the workshop a lot and learned a good amount from it—I feel like I’m ready to get rolling with an EE project.
One area of improvement for the future: I feel that the big picture concepts could be delineated a little bit better—I thought there was a little bit too much jumping back and forth between key concepts and very detailed topics, and this led to some “getting lost” on my part.
BTW, do you know of anyone who teaches EE and CodeIgniter workshops in Boston? That’s where I’m from, and DC is a bit far for me to travel.
Best,
Mike
Nate Eagle 01.12.10
First off, I thought you did a really good job with the workshop. You’ve clearly developed the ability to speak clearly and effectively in front of students.
The one-day format is a real challenge for exactly the reasons you mentioned: how does one provide sufficient depth to be useful without missing the context essential to using it?
For me, personally, I would’ve liked less plugging in code from an example: when I’m just following steps based on someone else’s instructions, it’s harder for me to internalize new concepts. Being presented with a problem or a challenge, checking a reference, and then typing in the answer myself is a big part of learning for me. That said, this type of teaching can be time-consuming, and I appreciate what a challenge it might be to incorporate more of it.
Post-script: the functionality on your comments is charming and clever.
James 01.12.10
Zac, thanks for hosting us. For a guy that works solo with no talk with other designers/developers, it was a refreshing experience.
I wanted to second what Mike said about the big picture concepts. We got into Field Groups, Template Groups, Custom Fields, Category Groups, etc…but I’m still not sure how they relate to a layout I’d like to convert over to EE. I think a “here’s a layout, let’s build this thing out step-by-step” approach would work for me personally.
Thanks again! I’m going to continue to look into EE.
Trevor Davis 01.13.10
I thought the workshop went well, and I know how much time it can take to prepare for something like that, so I appreciate your time. I don’t think I was necessarily the targeted audience for this training, but I hadn’t played with EE2.0 at all, so I figured it would be good to at least spend time with it.
I agree with Nate about the second part of the day. I would have rather seen a challenge presented, and seen how everyone approached the problem differently (especially since there are so many different ways to do things in EE). I actually gave Nate a mini challenge after he had finished adding the previous and next post links. I challenged him to combine the portfolio listing and individual portfolio item into a single template. Which is how he learned about conditionals and segments, which are vital to understanding EE.
It is absolutely impossible to cram all of the EE knowledge into a single day, but I think that enough foundation was laid for people to get started by building a simple site. All in all, I enjoyed spending the day playing with code and enjoying the company of fellow web people.
As for the next workshop, I think both of them are interesting to me. I haven’t played with CI at all, but I am also interested in seeing how other people use advanced EE techniques.
Trevin Wagner 01.13.10
Hey Zac. I think you did a great job covering as much as you did. I do agree with Mike’s comments. You lost me a few times when jumping from 30,000-foot view to code.
As you mentioned, many things in EE can be accomplished a number of ways, some of which truly take a toll on site performance. I would have loved learning some best practices. Maybe that is nothing more than some time spent going through the default templates of a 2.0 install? Why they did what they did, and the benefit.
Sign me up for an Advance ExpressionEngine workshop in March. Thanks again for a day well-spent!
Zac Gordon 01.13.10
Thank you everyone for your feedback. I will do my best to incorporate your great suggestions into the next workshop.
There is a clear lead so far with the vote for the advanced workshop or ci workshop. Looking forward to announcing it later this week!
Joshua Hill 01.15.10
First, a big thank you for putting these workshops together. As a novice EE developer, I found both the overview and hands-on examples to be enlightening. The sample EE site has been quite useful as a starting point, and the class itself was well-run (props on the public speaking skills!).
I’d love to see more time set aside for smaller exercises—try creating this, tweaking that. As others have voiced, it’s easier to internalize new knowledge when it comes at the cost of effort.
I’m all in for the Advanced EE class come March, and I hope you’ll consider doing the CodeIgniter class later in the year—I’m eager to push development boundaries on all fronts. Thanks again!