So…about last week. The great and the good of the Expression Engine world descended upon London for the annual EECONF at the Business Design Centre in Islington. I arrived via an early morning flight feeling tired and coffee-deprived but in no way comparable to the journeys completed by our American and Canadian friends.

As a first time attendee, a phrase I repeatedly rattled off is that it’s both odd and cool to finally meet previously 2D people in the 3D world. These are the people we communicate with every other day online - primarily on the EE Slack group - so meeting them in real life and putting a name and voice to their avatars was amazing.

Meeting others from across the community is a welcome change to being siloed alone as a freelancer or one man band as many of us are. And just meeting other members of the global tribe is very energising.

And what a strong community this is - we are so fortunate to have a group of intelligent, dedicated and motivated people that push not only Expression Engine but web development in general to greater heights.

So our first encounter with the formerly 2D people in the 3D world was at the Monday evening mixer event at the conference hotel where drinks, tshirts and event badges were liberally distributed. This was great icebreaker and made the following morning congregation around the coffee machine much less awkward.

Over the next two days we listened and laughed to a wide range of perspectives, use cases and work practices that really underline the flexibility of our chosen software. It’s this flexibility of approach and the ease of use that has attracted and retained Expression Engine devotees from designers to programmers, marketers and even regular humans.

So while I’m not going to go deep into the detail of every single presentation - you had to be there! - there are some things that should be mentioned.

Tom Jaeger announced that there will be an announcement!!! EE as part of 5G may not be true. Also we heard about some interesting future developments including LIFT as well as some forthcoming features in EE7.6. We await more details with great interest.

Travis Smith of Hop Studios spoke about his work on the nebulous concept of cross-site scripting and security protocols that are still being defined but more importantly shared his love of the EE community which was both inspiring and motivational.

Day one ended with at the conference party at nearby the Fox on the Green courtesy of Gavin and Jelle followed by the thing that no-one is supposed to talk about - Flight Club!

Day two began with Rowan Sentesy’s fantastic, honest and hilarious talk about vibe coding with A.I. emphasising the vital importance of structured process and documentation.

Geoff Cowan went deep into site performance and optimisation in pursuit of the holy grail of reducing TTFB or “Time to First Byte” which apparently is not an estimate for when lunch is arriving!

Wednesday closed with a visit to Stamford Bridge, courtesy of Tom and PacketTide for a football match between home-team Chelsea Women and Paris FC. As usual, bracketed by pre and post-match food and drinks. Chelsea won comfortably 4-0 with some impressive displays of skill and speed. Women’s football is of course often compared with the much bigger men’s game which to a large extent misses the point.

What we saw was a highly-motivated tightly knit team executing their gameplan with precision supported by an engaged, vocal and more importantly growing fanbase. I’m sure there’s a parallel in there somewhere - if only I was clever enough to see it!

Again there were post-event drinks followed by post-post-event drinks extending into the small hours for the dedicated or deranged few!

It’s easy to write-off the social food and drink parts of these conferences as less important than the technical discussions of the daily schedule but in reality it’s those interactions that forge the connections and friendships that remain long after everybody has finally made it home.

So what are the takeaways from our time in London - I would say firstly, gratitude, for all of the work done by the organisers to make it all happen for the benefit of the whole EE community, no easy task, Lydia, Oliver, Greg, Karen and Paul take a bow.

Secondly - inspiration - as digital workers we’re accustomed to having information relayed in the driest and dullest way possible through our screens. But when you see people excited over ideas and methods it really does fire the imagination.

And finally - motivation - we have some amazing people in our community, generous with their time and expertise and if we can all put the same effort into growing our collective knowledge, expanding the user-base and increasing the visibility of Expression Engine this community will only get bigger and better. Or should I say big-ee-r and bett-ee-r? 

No, I should not, it would be too chEEsy!

ChEErs!