OMG ATTENDS EECONF2018 RECAP

October is good for a few things that we love to partake in fundraising galas and ExpressionEngine Conference, a.k.a. #EECONF. This year's conference is in Nashville so fittingly we drew straws to select our OMG representatives, packed our bags and hopped on the plane and headed to spend time with our friends and family who swim in the ExpressionEngine ocean.

What magical new information will we learn? What new friends and associates will we make? Rumor has it, there’s a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT to be made, what on earth could it be?

Conference Agenda  | Day 1 & Day 2

Rick Ellis, founder of Ellis Lab creators our beloved CMS, has made a very big announcement! ExpressionEngine will soon be open source (OSS). This will have a huge impact on the community we have been apart of for more than a decade. These changes will also impact us here at OMG in some very exciting ways. Ways in which we will explain more later, or as soon as we’re allowed to.

On our first day in Nashville, we had every intention of exploring the ins and outs of Music City. But, the OMG Monsters woke up early and had work to do. We went to dinner and crashed out early. Living life on the edge!

Our second day, was the  conference kickoff! We heard from amazing speakers, including James Mathias, the CCO of EllisLab, James talked about the importance of User Experience.

It is vital to have multiple layers of User Experience testing and designs, according to James.

“Life it’s a drama, just one period, all kinds of commas”

Importance of User Experience

Tracy Osborn kicked off the series sessions with her awesomely, entertaining and very educational session, Clueless, where she discussed how she has leveraged her vast experience to pioneer her own print series Hello Web and her first two titles Hello Web App” and Hello Web Design.

Lunch was pretty epic, we had a variety of Acme Seed & Feed’s cuisine. Some of us had seconds, not naming names. John.

ExpressionEngine Community Association (EECA)

The wonderful team of eeca’s committee spoke and introduced the new EECA and what they want to do, stand for, and how the rest of the community can be a part of it.

Andy McCormick, Ben Fjare, Brian Litzinger, Susan Snipes, Paul Larson, TJ Draper

A lot of other great sessions happened, read more about them!

The evening finished off with the annual party. This year’s venue was none other than The Stillery on 2nd.

Check out our gallery below to see some of the fun.

Day 2

Day 2 started off with two tracks, the coding track, the other a business track. 

Business Track:

OMG's own Brad Nietfeldt kicked day 2 off with a session about “Building, Growing and Sustaining a Successful Digital Agency” which was filled with fun, laughter, crying (not really), and other great information for those aspiring to become a digital agency legend. 

“You WILL FAIL!! You are destined to fail. Your failure will be subjective, scary, meaningful, and powerful. Your failure is necessary to get to where you're going.” - Brad Nietfeldt

Other sessions included “G.R.I.P.I. Managing communication conflicts” by Creative Arc's own Tim Hoppe. “UX & You: A Simple & practical approach to UX design” by Oracle's own UX Designer & Strategist Susan Snipes, “A/B Testing - Using science to make UX decisions and increase conversions” by BoldMinded's owner Brian Litzinger and Jamf Software legend Charles Kolner, “ How to sell ExpressionEngine in a competitive situation” by Lydia Chiu from Jub Jub ending with Erik Reagen's “Creating Your Culture”. 

Dev Track:

On the DEV track Khaliq Gant talked about “3rd Party Services in EE”, “ Demystifying EE Services” from Vector Media Group's Julian Fann, and Kevin Smith of AxicCare session “What the Ã�©Ð”ã° is going on!?”. 

One of the coolest things EECONF does each year is the community awards. This is where the EE Community recognizes and awards community members from around the world for their work. 

Omaha Media Group LLC's own Brad Nietfeldt was proud to accept not one, but two, community awards for: 

• Best Non-Profit Website (Madonna Rehabiliation Hospital)
• Best Self-Promotion Website (Omaha Media Group)

We cannot thank the voting panel enough for these awards! They mean so much to us and we'll be back next year to stake our claim on next year's too. 

Summary

If you haven't attended ExpressionEngine Conference (EECONF) we highly recommend you do. We waited too long to start attending because we're so busy but ever since 2016 we've made lifelong friends, associates, and not only helped others in the community learn and grown but have learned and grown ourselves. We cannot recommend going enough. 

See you all at EECONF2019 in Minneapolis!