How CICONF’12 became our savior.
«English is not my first language» is always the first thing which comes to my mind when thinking about speaking in front of an english-speaking audience. Even though I’m quite confident with myself and know (for a fact) there is no problem with my level of english, I do always try to remember myself that there is always a need for adaptation, a small amount of time to allow my brain to operate the switch.
For this CICONF’12, there wasn’t. All went so fast : in a blink of an eye, on a friday evening, I went (with my two mates from Doodle) from my office in Belgium to a geeky and no-so-crowded pub in the center of London. The pub was located where-so-ever the cab dropped us. I’ve to admit that this place reminded me the scene from «The Social Network» where Mark and Eduardo are on this lame Caribbean party. It was a rubbish place but it was full of developers and CodeIgniter lovers and that’s all what mattered !
I consider myself like a pioneer of the CodeIgniter Conferences. Yes, I was there ! Yes, I was in Bristol on August 2010 ! And even if everyone has finally agreed to say that it was a complete disaster regarding the organization, I’ll always remember this event. From this moment, an avatar on a Twitter/Github/Forum account wasn’t an simple avatar anymore. From this time I knew who were Phil, Adam, Joel, Harro, Elliot, and so on.
And at this specific moment, in a dim light, there he was : the one and only Phil Sturgeon. He saw me entering the room and shouted : «James ! Hey guys, this is James».
Stop.
Phil used to say it in his biography on Twitter : «Nomadic web developer (…) and part-time alcoholic». And at that time of the evening (around 11pm) he, as the host of the Conference, had received a lot of free-beers. As funny as this anecdote could be, it made me realize that «wow», that picture of James on his Twitter is quite a look-a-like. Anyway, let’s move on.
The second pioneer I distinguished in this dim light was Adam Griffiths, better known as the CodeIgniter magic-trick guy. It was really great to meat you again Adam, I really enjoyed the catch-up talk and beside, you were even able to perform (by heart) a perfect english interpretation of my surname. (Try it. It’s not that easy)
It was midnight and my english was back. Rock’on.
That’s what we did. Dorian, Quentin and I, the complete Doodle team, asked a random guy in the street where was the place-to-be. I can’t remember which part of London we’ve been to (only Foursquare could help me there), but 15 pounds for the cab later, we completely agreed to the fact that the beer that we’ve been served was flat, expensive and awful. It was time to spend another 15 on a cab back to the hotel.
Wake up ! It’s saturday and it’s the start of the CodeIgniter Conference 2012.
«Book a room. Fill it in with an hundred CodeIgniter lovers sitting on chairs arranged in rows of 10. Give everyone a MacBookPro and an Iphone. Feed them with a free-wifi. Shake.» You’ll get a complete non-speaking-to-each-other crowd. Whoops, sorry, I meant : speaking-to-each-other by-using-hastags-on-twitter crowd.
Steve Jobs and Evan Williams (Twitter CEO) would have been so proud.
I was. Simply due to the fact that the CodeIgniter community had doubled since last UK conference. I knew since then that all those guys would go home 48 hours later as excited by CodeIgniter and its community as I was on 2010. Awesome.
And the day went by, great speaker after great speaker. Everyone contributed to the knowledge of everyone with slides, examples, codes, tips and techniques. I’m simply not going to make a recap of all speeches here, simply because I missed a few (yes, sleep is a need) and because Adam and Phil already did a great job.
The first day of conference was off and it was time to do what I was (really) coming for : socialize with the CodeIgniter lovers again.
Where should hundred of geeks go to ? «Let’s go to a pub. No, that’s way too easy». That’s why we all ended up in a pub/karaoke/bowling jazz concert/restaurant. You’ve read me well : a place where people can drink while playing bowling next to girls singing in a microphone after having eaten an hamburger in a booth chair while a live jazz band is playing random chords.
And for the first part of the evening, the venue made it great. I had the chance to speak more with people I had met the previous night. Great talk, great chitchat and great meetings.
About the second half :
1/ Remember when I was speaking about my brain which needs a little accommodation before being 100% english ready ? Yeah, about that : inside that loud pub/bowling/restaurant place, even in a french mode, my brain wouldn’t have been 50% ready. The evening went from great to «people shouting random words in my ears and me simply nodding and smiling»
2/ Being in a pub at 11pm is great. But not if you give a presentation the next morning.
Time to leave and go to bed.
It’s sunday, the sun is shinning and I had worked all week for this moment. My slides were ready, I knew my text by heart and I was even wearing the same polo I’m wearing on my Twitter profile picture. Isn’t that clever ? (Note to myself : this picture is two years old now, you were back from Tanzania, you’ve taken it in your bathroom mirror, please change it) (Second-note to myself : in a year or so).
By the way, my speech went very fine. Thanks for asking.
A little bit as Joel Gascoigne did on CICONF’10, I had chosen the path to take a business angle for my presentation. I wanted to be generic, to give a more open speech, to give thoughts about the real use of CodeIgniter for a business.
And I did. The single line of code I fed those hundred developers with was this one : <? display_form(); ?>
And I know maybe some of them wanted more. I know I’ve spoken for 30 minutes about how we (at Doodle) have used CodeIgniter to create a wonderful Content Management System and showed them nothing about it. I know and I still stick to this approach. My goal was to deliver a vision, not a showcase.
During my presentation I’ve insisted on the use of CodeIgniter as foundation, the importance of prototyping every line of code written, the gain of mixing framework and Content Management in order to create a personal and reusable system from the client’s specifics requests.
And I finished by saying that it is where every Codeigniter community member can help us all. Every developer which was in this room at that moment would write wonderful libraries and bits of code during in his life. We just need to blend them with the CodeIgniter spirit. And if a bunch of users joins their force to implement Content Management abstract functionalities into CodeIgniter, we can all bring the actual framework to a higher level.
That were my wishes for the future of the CodeIgniter development during this CICONF’12.
I really enjoyed being part of it. I really enjoyed meeting all of you. Once more, I feel like being part of the CodeIgniter family. And who knows how important that is.
See you next year.
Meanwhile, see you on Github and Twitter.
How Codeigniter became our savior ?
It has been officially announced this afternoon, I’ll be giving a speech at The Codeigniter Conference in London on February 2012.
The idea to go in front of all this amazing Codeigniter community came up since I’ve been attending the CICON2010 in Bristol. And it’s an honor the be speaking this year.
Because I think reactions, ideas and reflections may bring my speech to an higher level, I wanted to give you a small teaser of it.
How Codeigniter became our savior ?
Far from me the idea to give you the main reasons that everybody else may have already told you : CI is lightweight, there is no console commands required, the configuration is easy and the user guide is awesome.
Even if those are what makes this PHP framework one of the most accessible and loved one on the market, this is not what you really focus on when choosing your main technology for starting a web development company.
And this presentation is all about that topic : How can CI bring you efficiency, stable foundations and money-savings ?
Two years ago, my two colleagues and I founded a web agency. That makes one more in the world you’ll say. That’s right. And that’s where you’ll have to start to be creative.
Because the market is rough, you quickly understand that the key to success is time : Quick development = Quick delivery = Quickly get paid.
Without ever forgetting that web development is not a quick process. Whatever you try. So it’s time to start to cut time-consuming processes where it’s possible.
And that is what my speech will be about. Giving you a summary of all our ideas, reflections, experiences, tips, tools and method we’ve been using in order to realize this goal.
Let’s the fun begin in February.
Dear you
You’ve ended up on this website and there could be hundred of reasons to this. You could,
- Be using the CMS we’ve developped for you at Doodle Web Agency.
- Be listening to my french voice on a radio station.
- Be matsering your radio shows with Freqq, the smart player for radio stations.
- Be thinking about purchasing my CodeCanyon script.
- Have heard of me around the amazing CodeIgniter community.
- Be trying to connect yourself on the Knowledge Management platform for the Federation of Scouts and Guides of Belgium.
- Also have a MASTER in Public Relation from IHECS University.
- Be reading my Twitter or Facebook profile.
Wathever is your path, you should know I used to write a lot on my personal websites. I don’t anymore. Pitty time. Sorry.
Anyway, here is the crème de la crème for you. And to get the full and protocol version of my life, please have a look at this page.
