Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 12:37pm
Want That Golden Ticket
By Niki
In 2018 I went to my first conference - EEConf. It was held in Nashville, TN, somewhere I’d never been to prior to this trip.
I optioned to attend two of the workshops held the first day, and then it was onto the the following two days.
The first workshop I went to was "ExpressionEngine Best Practices", which focused on Fluid Fields. I learned enough to know that Fluid Fields are something I should make use of, and I am doing that on this site now.
The second workshop I attended was the "Marketing Workshop for Freelance Dev's". In that one I volunteered my two sites - this one, and my personal portfolio site - up for a tear-down review. One of the workshop leaders suggested, if I wanted, to rebrand myself using my hair color. While that may sound odd, I don't have what you'd call a 'typical' hair color... No, I have it dyed rather bright shades of red - and sometimes pink, like right now - and orange. So, that is what led to the color choices I made when I rebuilt my site using EE. Pink and orange. 😊
At the time I was working on redoing my portfolio site, refactoring it to use my own CSS vs. a framework, and to cut back on any javascript it was using. But, I wasn't making a lot of change to the actual look of the site, and even though those doing the review liked the color choices (mainly blue, white and 'notepad yellow'), I think I've grown bored with it. I might redo it again (yeah, before I'm even done with its original refactor) in similar colors to this site. That way my 'brand' is synced.
Unfortunately when I picked out the design for this site, I pretty much ended up stomping all over the main point of the rebuild of my portfolio site; it's a pre-built template that I tore out parts I did not want or need to use, and it uses a CSS framework, and it also relies on a good chunk of JS for some nifty effects (primarily the scrolly nav on the homepage). Oh well. At some point I want to do the same thing for this new design and tear it down and redo it with my own rolled CSS and as little JS as I can get away with, which will probably happen when I start over with my portfolio site.
But anyway...
Enough about my rebuild plans. Back to the conference talk.
The two days of the conference are mostly a blur as it seemed to go by way too quickly. Plenty of photos were taken and, since my husband stayed home (kid still had school), he had some fun playing "Where's Niki" (you know, like "Where's Waldo"?) when the conference posted pics - which isn't hard given my hair color. LOL! But, I did take away quite a bit to digest, and I can always go back and watch the videos that were taken if I need refreshers.
So where does that "Golden Ticket" come into play?
This year's conference will be held in Minneapolis, MN, but a couple weeks earlier in the month of October so attendees don't have to deal with the really cold weather that will eventually land on the city. Or to put it another way - so folks like me, who live in places that barely experience winter, let alone "cold" temperatures, don't freeze our butts off. 😁
Something that was announced just a couple weeks ago, maybe a week and a half now, was something the conference organizers are calling a "Golden Ticket". Basically it covers the conference ticket itself, as well as forty - yes, 40 - add-ons for ExpressionEngine, for one price of $1k. While that seems like a lot of dough, considering the cost of all of those add-ons separately, it's an awesome deal. Sadly, I don't just have $1k sitting around doing nothing, so I haven't been able to grab one just yet. I'm really hoping that, if our tax refund is fairly decent, that I can use that and grab one then, if there are any left. There were only ten to start with and the shop doesn't have a counter on it to indicate how many are left, so I'll just have to wait and hope.
Want so badly...
*ahem* Anyway...