ExpressionEngine Open Panel at SXSW
These notes are from a live discussion and may not exactly represent the orator’s intention. Each quote is merely a paraphrase and should not be taken as the literal presentation of the orator’s exact words.
If there is no name attached to a question, I was either unable to clearly hear the name of the orator or they did not mention a name. If there are any corrections, please feel free to leave them in the comments and I will correct. (The same applies to forum names.)
Q: Are there plans to extend Simple Commerce or add a more complex e-commerce system?
A: Yes. Internally, it’s Paul’s project. Though he set it aside briefly to help with EE 2.0. The EllisLab team needs it as much as anyone else.
Q: [Andrew] Will there be any future modules or upgrades to the 1.x branch?
A: [Rick] At this point, there isn’t a firm decision. 2.0 has taken a lot of resources and they’d like to keep things focused.
[Leslie] We really don’t make those decisions until after the product is completely developed. With MSM, similar approach. Even pricing and support decisions.
Q: Will the code stay open? Will it ever be encrypted/obfuscated?
A: [Rick] Always open. Never obfuscated.
[Leslie] That goes against the grain of our company values. We want it to be easy for you and we benefit from having such an honest community.
Q: Since you are implementing Ajax functionality, specifically pagination, within the Control Panel, will you release that as a module for use by developers in front-end development?
A: After-note from the editor: This answer came in fast and I had to move quickly past it. From what I remember, the general answer was that it would not be difficult for developers to adapt those things.
Q: [James Curry - UT] Rich-text editors? He has used TinyMCE in the past, but never found it stable enough.
A: [Derek J] We like the idea, but the issues with browser differences and instability we haven’t put much focus on it. Browser manufacturers seem to be adding RTE functionality in the browsers. We’d like to see what happens with that, but if that does not develop, we could look at an option.
[Leslie] It’s just not stable and we need such a high degree of control over the user experience. But we are “similarly optimistic” about this.
[Rick] This is really a philosophical issue. Should it happen when a page is rendered or when it is delivered into the database? I’ve always considered it a bad idea to have formatting inserted into the database. If you need to re-purpose content for some other platform, say RSS, then you need to have clean content to deal with.…
SXSW Interactive
I’m headed to Austin, Texas for a few days to enjoy SXSW Interactive.
So far, I have the first two days of the conference all planned out. I’ll play the other two by ear and schedule as I go. I want to leave a little flexibility. I already feel like I’m quite maxed out! It’s going to be a blast. I will likely need a day just to recover from the insanity of it all.
I’ll log updates here as much as possible. I’ll also post @Twitter, assuming they don’t have any downtime, on Pownce and possibly on Flickr.
A few events I’m looking forward to are:
Of course, those are all evening (non-official) SXSW events. I will be attending a plethora of sessions. One session I’m especially excited about is the ExpressionEngine 2.0 Preview. Hopefully, I’ll get a few free moments to meet up with the EllisLab folks and thank them personally for crafting such fine products, ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter.
If you are at SXSW and would like to meet up, send an email: sxsw@davidrussell.org
[tags]sxsw, flickr, google, godbit, events, schedule, expressionengine, codeigniter, ellislab, conference, austin, texas[/tags]
Information Management
Lately, I’ve been bombarded with information from a wide variety of sources. Most of the noise is self-inflicted. So I’ve been contemplating several ideas about managing information.
The Source of Information
I’m curious about how the source of information creates an amount of signal or noise. Since everything is either useful or useless to me, given that my experiences create such a filter, I should be able to find information sources that give me brilliantly useful information with little noise. And, in most cases, that’s where I aim.
But I have learned of other variables that play into the value of the information.
- Timeliness - If I receive the information in a timely manner, it is much more valuable than receiving the same information a day late. It might sound trivial to some, but poor information management could mean that you are simply not receiving good information when it is most valuable. Practically, we should learn to tap information resources diligently.
- Redundancy - Occasionally, we receive information from a wide variety of sources that are all saying the same thing. It might be a breaking news story, or a simple tidbit of water cooler talk surrounding the latest office memorandum. No matter the case, hearing information too often can be problematic. Practically, we need to pare our sources to prevent duplication.
- Volume - This is the toughest problem for information addicts. The tendency is to over-stimulate our minds with information in an attempt to feel complete. Yet, it is not humanly possible to gather and retain the level of information that most of us attempt to manage. Practically, we need to remove information sources, find the few quality sources that can make the difference and, most importantly, find contentment in retaining the top-level of information while disregarding the rest. Often, we gather for the sake of gathering and find ourselves rather inefficiently equipped with too much noise and not enough signal.
Certainly, the net can be cast much wider than that. Think about other ways that information sources bog us down.
The Use of Information
This is the benchmark for the value of information: how we use it. Good information is important. It can change a perspective, change a focus, or even change a life. Bad information is useless. It wastes time, resources and energy.
How we use information can determine its value to us and to others. Sometimes we mismanage good information and devalue it by irresponsibly passing it to people who are simply not relevant to the matter. We’ve all received that email CC from someone in the office. There are times when “out of the loop” is just fine! Other times we fail to pass on information that is pertinent to someone. We can so easily misuse information and cause conflict.
Managing information productively is an art form. It takes time to craft, but with experience you…
