Communication is a broad topic and communication in a distributed company gets complex quickly. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to do this (and how not to do this). Today I’m just going to focus on the tools we use at EllisLab to stay connected with each other in real time (vs. intranets, forums, private blogs).

GoToMeeting: Company wide pow-wow

We use GoToMeeting for a few key meetings. These include meetings where we need full staff attendance, and especially when we wish to bring in third-parties to gather feedback. 

GoToMeeting allows offers us several features that help, including the ability to dial in to meetings, use a variety of mobile devices, share webcams, and other collaboration tools.

GoToMeeting does require that the “Organizer” be present, which isn’t always possible when random staff need to collaborate.  So enters Sococo…

Sococo: The “Virtual” office

Sococo is a GUI based interface that gives us the look and feel of an office.

Each of our team members has their own individual offices, plus we have two conference rooms and the courtyards for socializing. We hang out in our offices while working and use it for daily stand-ups, impromptu meetings, and general socializing.

Sococo’s strengths include a push to talk option, which can be invaluable in our sometimes pet and/or child filled homes, and super easy screen sharing.  Because it is an office concept, there is no need for a single organizer, and our team can use it as needed without asking for a particular person to be present to keep the meeting space open.

HipChat: “The Watercooler”

Our entire team uses HipChat, staying online while working, for all instant messenger needs. This gives us an easy way to talk with each other, see if we’re in a “do not disturb” mode or whatever else we might be up to.

It’s also really easy to setup “rooms” and get group chat discussions going quickly. Here are the current list of “rooms” in the EllisLab HipChat.

• Board Games: Yes, we play board games together!
• Dev Robots: Where our development team come together to discuss any coding issues, gain peer support, rant about missing semi-colons and commas, and communicate as needed.
• EllisLab Lobby:  We use this for attending Apple events.  No kidding!  We come together as a company, hang out in the Lobby, and chatter about whatever live blogging for that Apple Event has just said.
• Thunder Cats:  This is where our Support Team hangs out.  In here they share threads to avoid doubling responses, get assistance with threads when floundering, and generally socialize

HipChat has excellent mobile applications, and can work through XMPP/Jabber to allow our staff to choose the application of their choice to connect.

HipChat and Sococo especially are important parts of our team feeling connected to one another, sharing space, and having someone to vent at or soundboard new ideas.  Essentially, HipChat and Sococo function as our ‘water cooler’ for those small, impromptu, but often critical connections and communication needs.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Last, but not least, we use “old fashion” methods to get together 1-2 times a year, most often at EECI.

All of us look forward to these trips.  We get away from our homes and join our other family - EllisLab.  These often include work sessions, but of far more importance is the downtime, socializing, and bonding that getting together bring.  Yes, the in-person element is absolutely critical, and the team getting together for a few days is invigorating, exciting, and FUN!

The danger in working in such a distributed manner is always the lack of connection and communication, the distance, and the feeling of isolation.  This makes a commitment to each other, to honesty, and being geniune humans the most critical tool. Each member of our team has to make a special effort to reach out to each other and say “hi” for no reason other than we just like each other and enjoy working together.

I was honored beyond words to have been asked. I said yes immediately. The conference, Made By Few, took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, on the 24th of March 2012. Little Rock is close enough to Nashville to make driving an option, so that is exactly what we did. I said we, because I took my lovely and supportive family along with me. We drove down on the 23rd, getting into Little Rock just in time to attend the delicious speaker dinner.

The next day I took my family to the Little Rock Discovery Museum, where we all had a super fun time, had lunch and walked down to the venue, where I took the podium at 2pm.

I spoke on Respect and how it relates to everything I do in this industry. The team at Made by Few filmed the whole thing, and posted it to the internet, so now you too can hear every word I said.

James Mathias - Made By Few from Made by Few on Vimeo.

I want to thank Arlton Lowry, Made By Few organizer and visionary for giving me the opportunity to speak at his wonderful conference. I have nothing but respect for the man and what he accomplished. I want to thank the Made by Few audience for being so welcoming and gracious to this first time speaker, and hearing me out. I appreciate it beyond words.

Getting Connected
The community means a lot to me and has so much to offer! I would like to share with you a few different ways to get plugged into the community.

The first way to get connected, and one of the most fun in my opinion, is through Twitter.  You can start by following @EllisLab. Please note that while there are several accounts you can follow @EE, @CodeIgniter and @MojoMotor most of the tweets will be coming from @EllisLab. I also found that keeping an eye on a few hashtags, like #eecms, #codeigniter, and #ExpressionEngine to be extremely helpful. Conversations in the community often happen around these three hashtags, the most popular one being #eecms.

After coming on board with EllisLab, I found that a fellow Customer Advocate, @KyleCotter, runs EE Hash. One of the nice things about EE Hash is that it shows you a one page view of all the conversations on twitter for the more popular hashtags. I also like visiting it as it aggregates news from some of the top EE websites. So I can stay up to date on EE news by visiting this one site.

What hashtags do you find helpful for staying connected in the community? Who do you follow on Twitter that helps you feel a part of the community? Tell me in the comments and be sure to check the end of this post for a list of ElliLab folks on Twitter.

Twitter is not the only way to join in the discussion. The ExpressionEngine forums and the CodeIgniter Forums are a great place to meet other talented web professionals. You can get help with code and questions, as well as gather around your favorite EllisLab products and discuss new ways of approaching web design and development. The members of our community have a lot in common, this becomes evident as you read through the threads. So, if you are not a member of the community, I invite you to join us! The cost for joining our forums is NOTHING. It’s free! I think you’ll find a community of helpful and respectful people passionate about making the web better. If you are new, you can expect more experienced users to come alongside and help you. If you are experienced, we would love to have your input and expertise!

Speaking of expertise, another way for those of you with a passion for ExpressionEngine and PHP to get involved in our community is to become an ExpressionEngine developer! We actually encourage the development community surrounding EE to build and charge for their commercial add-ons. There are several Feature Requests in the forums that could be modules! And I hear new ideas everyday in the forums and on twitter that I wish users would turn into reality! Make sure to check out Devot:ee to see the bustling activity of the developer community around ExpressionEngine. We have some documentation to help get you started.

In addition to Twitter and the forums, we’ve recently started to notice quite a bit of discussion taking place on Quora. Both CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine are popular topics! It’s a great community and as fellow Customer Advocate @dan_decker pointed out to me, we are seeing some people over at Quora that we do not see in the other gathering places (Twitter and the Forums). It’s an opportunity to flex your ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter muscles in a different dynamic. Have I mentioned that teaching is a great way to learn?

Lastly, I want to thank you all for letting me serve you. I wake up every morning looking forward to logging in because of our awesome community. I would love to see more of you join the conversation as I know you have much to offer. At EllisLab, we want to help you succeed!

In closing, I had a user tell me the other day that for every question he asked about CodeIgniter or ExpressionEngine on the forums, he made it a point to answer or chime in on three different threads. Just another example of how you guys rock!

Happy Coding!

Tweeting from EllisLab
@RickEllis - Rick Ellis
@Knight777 - Leslie Camacho
@jmathias - James Mathias
@Wesbaker - Wes Baker
@_KevinSmith - Kevin Smith
@Marcusneto - Marcus Neto
@KyleCotter - Kyle Cotter
@amnotsam - Sam Wilson
@pkriete - Pascal Kriete
@KevinCupp - Kevin Cupp
@brandon_h_jones - Brandon Jones
@dan_decker - Dan Decker
@shaneeckert - Shane Eckert

On a number of occasions, including at EECI 2011 New York, the principals at Gippy’s expressed a desire to move on from our current relationship, freeing them to pursue business goals that would not be permissible within our current contract. So while EllisLab is saddened to see the relationship end, today we are officially ending our association with Gippy’s.

The ten year relationship has been so seamless that most are not even aware that there were two different companies behind EngineHosting. That experience is difficult to craft and both companies succeeded, which was a huge win for all of the ExpressionEngine clients that have enjoyed rock solid hosting over the years. We are proud of what both companies were able to accomplish in that regard.

Gippy’s has always been an excellent hosting provider and upstanding contributor to the Community and we have every reason to believe that will continue far into the future.

The only practical change for the Community is that ExpressionEngine is now available exclusively through ExpressionEngine.com. If you previously purchased your ExpressionEngine license through Gippy’s, it will of course remain valid.

The contest was simple. The first reader to correctly identify a comic strip reference would receive a free ExpressionEngine license. Of course, that’s hardly fair for a thousand reasons, so I’ve expanded the winner pool.

We have a three way tie for “first reader.” Congratulations to Travis Smith, Natalia Ventre, and Michael Rog! You all win an ExpressionEngine license (you’ll be emailed shortly).

They won the contest within 120 seconds of the newsletter being sent. So I decided to give away three more licenses at random to anyone who answered within the next 24 hours.

Additional congratulations go to Jack Tse, Mike Foate, and Joe!

Not signed up for the newsletter? Distinguish yourself as being of “superior intelligence and good looks”* by signing up now.

*This is the reference that had to be identified to win the license. Much love to all fellow DNRC members out there.

I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past ten years but to a large extent its meaningless. That’s not how our industry and our Community works. What follows is not a list of amazing accomplishments and back slaps. It doesn’t matter what we did last year or the year before. What matters is what we’re doing right now and where we’re going next. I am proud of what we did last year (more growth, expansion, hiring, building, shipping). But I am not satisfied, not even close.

I have a very clear picture of where I want EllisLab to be and we’re getting there, but we’re not there yet. I want to go faster. A few days ago Greg Storey wrote:

Lets conquer 2012 together and make it a point in time when we can all look back and agree that’s when it all really began.

That tone resonates deep inside my soul.

I’ve initiated Phase Two of my plan for EllisLab, “Irrevocable Change.” As a team we’ve committed ourselves to the sort of change from which there is no going back. It puts front and center that what we’ve done won’t take us where we want to go. Every single person at EllisLab is working on building and creating better products and services to make your lives and the lives of your clients better.

Here’s what we’re doing for you right now and what’s next.

ExpressionEngine 2.4 will ship this month, most likely early next week (the team is doing its final checks today). This is the first release with EE Reactor contributions and we’re very excited to get it out to you.

ExpressionEngine 2.5 will ship 6-8 weeks after EE 2.4 ships. Yes, that’s two major releases fairly close together. We decided to take this approach because EE 2.5 will ship with a default Editor. We just code reviewed the Editor last week but haven’t had the chance to give it full testing or review. We don’t want to delay EE 2.4 but neither do we want you to have to wait any longer than necessary for the Editor. The solution is to give you EE 2.5 sooner rather than waiting out ExpressionEngine’s full twelve week release cycle.

In February EllisLab is sending Pascal Kriete to CodeIgniter Conference in London. We’ve always wanted to have an official presence at a CI event over the pond and we’re happy we can finally make that happen this year. If you’re going to be there, make Pascal buy you a drink and then talk his ear off about what you want in CodeIgniter. CI is Pascal’s passion and he leads CI development at EllisLab. Between Pascal, Phil Sturgeon, and the impressive CI Community, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to influence what’s next for CI.

MojoMotor 1.2 will be released in February. Brandon Jones worked extra hard over the holidays to get it ready and is working with the team to prep the release. If you want a preview of it (along with EE’s forth coming Editor) sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already.

There’s a whole lot more in the works, but I think this covers enough ground to get the year started. Here’s to 2012! It’s going to be an epic adventure.

Also, keep in mind that CodeIgniter’s OSL 3.0 license does not apply to your own code (the application folder) unless you have chosen to license that as OSL 3.0 as well.

The content in this article is neither legal advice nor a legally binding interpretation of OSL 3.0. We are sharing our opinions, thoughts and conclusions which we hope are helpful to you. You should consult an attorney with questions regarding your specific legal needs and the terms or interpretation of any software license.

Web Sites and Services for Myself

My name is Webb Tinkerer, and I use CodeIgniter to build web sites and services mostly for myself.  I use it for my personal site, for instance.  I have built sites for my friends and some coworkers, but I’ve not yet billed anyone as a client, as I’m still learning and have a full-time job that’s unrelated to the web.

My use of CodeIgniter is an unmodified stock installation, in fact I update it nearly daily from GitHub’s develop branch.  My application folder is a hodge-podge of my own code, and all kinds of libraries and classes I’ve found around the web.  Some are MIT licensed, some are BSD, there are a couple LGPL, and I even have one commercial script with a proprietary license.  I don’t share my application folder with anyone.

How did I decide to reasonably make the source code of the OSL 3.0 licensed CodeIgniter files on my site available for those who want it?  I have a Powered by CodeIgniter link in my footer that points to the official GitHub repo.  CodeIgniter rocks!

Self-Employed, Powering Sites and Services for Small to Medium-sized Businesses

My name is S. E. Owens, and I am a self-employed web developer.  Most of my clients are small to medium-sized business either looking to improve their web presence, or to execute their idea for the next great tool or service on the web.  Some of them even come to me because they’ve chosen CodeIgniter already so they can ensure that it’s easy to find a skilled developer down the road, and they found me via the CodeIgniter community.

Most of the time I use CodeIgniter off-the-shelf, but every once in awhile I apply a simple hack here or there to change the system to how I prefer things to work.  For instance, there’s this hack that I make to the Session library every single time, and rather than maintain a MY_ class, I have a fork on GitHub that includes my improvements, so that when I make changes to it, it’s super easy to deploy to all of my clients.

How did I decide to reasonably make the source code of the OSL 3.0 licensed CodeIgniter files that I’m distributing available for those who want it?  Well, as I mentioned, I forked CodeIgniter at GitHub, and my fork is public.  My hack to system/library/Session.php keeps EllisLab’s Attribution Notice, but also includes mine:

Modifications to this file by S. E. Owens are Licensed under the Open Software License 3.0 and Copyright (c) 2012, S. E. Owens.  Questions regarding the modifications or the license should be directed to s.e.owens@example.com

And though OSL 3.0 doesn’t burden me with doing so, on my online portfolio, I highlight that I am an top-notch CodeIgniter developer and link to the technologies that my client sites were built with, including CodeIgniter.  I have a lot of PHP projects and CodeIgniter related work at GitHub that I also link to from my web site, including my fork mentioned previously with my Session improvements.

Agency Building Sites for Medium to Large Businesses

My name is Joey Bloggs and I’m the CEO of Fake Foo Creative.  We build sites for many large organizations: Fortune 500 companies, universities, government agencies, and non-profits.  We use a variety of technologies in our work, and typically our clients do not allow us to disclose the technologies nor the source code used to build their sites.

A few projects are for distributable open source applications, so we just licensed the whole shebang as OSL 3.0 and the source code is available from those products’ web sites.  However our client work is largely unshareable, so when we use CodeIgniter, we are careful to make the changes only within the application folder, either with new libraries or by extending CodeIgniter’s classes. This way, we are sure that all of the code that relates to our clients is under whatever license we or they desire, even if we are modifying or extending CodeIgniter significantly.

How did we decide to reasonably make the source code of the OSL 3.0 licensed CodeIgniter files that we’re distributing available for those who want it?  On our company web site, we link to our official presence on GitHub, and one of our repositories is an unmodified fork of the official CodeIgniter repository.  We have separate repositories for our open source OSL 3.0 licensed CodeIgniter applications since those are not linked dynamically to the official CodeIgniter repository.

Conclusion

These scenarios were hypothetical examples that encompass nearly all of the reported use cases of CodeIgniter.  Hopefully you were able to identify yourself somewhere along the way and if you were previously unsure what CodeIgniter’s upcoming use of OSL 3.0 means for you, we hope you’ve gained some clarity.  These examples do not limit your options either.  Remember that the license’s wording is as follows (emphasis ours):

Licensor reserves the right to satisfy this obligation by placing a machine-readable copy of the Source Code in an information repository reasonably calculated to permit inexpensive and convenient access by You for as long as Licensor continues to distribute the Original Work.

We used GitHub in the examples not because that’s required - OSL 3.0 doesn’t allow us to demand that specific methods are used - but because for most, it will be the most obvious and the simplest.  You could:

• host downloads on your own sites
• use other public source code repositories (BitBucket, Sourceforge, Google Code, etc.)
• mail physical copies to people who call you asking for it
• ...

The interpretation is broad because what OSL 3.0 (and EllisLab) asks is essentially to use good judgment.  If you are using CodeIgniter, acknowledge and share the original or modified work in some way under the same terms you received it in a location and method that is reasonably determined to be inexpensive and convenient.

We hit the ground running and planned a conference for April 9th, 2010. We attended Future of Web Design back in November. That left five months to plan, organize, and do something none of us had ever dreamed of doing. Somehow, we got David DeSandro to speak. Somehow, we got Dan to come down from Pennsylvania to be the keynote. Somehow, we pulled this off. That’s not to say it was without flaws. It was full of issues. But, I get to say I organized a conference at age 15. The event was successful enough that we went back and did it again the next year. And the next year. Which brings us to Friday, January 6th, 2012.

The third annual Student Web Conference. Now a senior in high school, I had one more shot at doing this. No doubt doing this the past two years taught me a lot. I was ready to go out with a bang. There was a major difference between this year’s conference and those of the past; Zac Gordon was no longer my teacher. With that being the case, I hadn’t even envisioned a conference happening this year. I thought it had run its course. Well, apparently, I was wrong. I found a faculty member to be my liaison between the administration and myself, and we were going to make this event happen. At this point it’s October, and we had established the conference to be January 6th. This left three months to organize everything, by myself.

I started thinking about speakers. Having networked with enough people in the area at various events, I had an idea of who I wanted. ExpressionEngine community member Trevor Davis was cool enough to be a speaker. Brian Talbot, User Experience designer at ThinkGeek also came. Yeah, I said someone from ThinkGeek came and spoke. Dan Philibin came again and reflected on what he’s done over the past few years. And for the keynote, the amazingly talented Martin Ringlein agreed to speak. The fact that the people I wanted to speak, agreed to do it, really pumped me up. Also the fact that David DeSandro, Russell Heimlich, and John Croston came just to come, made it worth my while.

The audience was going to be a group of high school students who were interested in computer programming and art. Though a select few knew about the web, the majority were mainly there out of curiosity. For the talks, I wanted to cover as much of the industry as possible. I wanted to hit on design, code, and business. And that’s exactly what we accomplished with the variety of speakers we had coming.

This event being a web conference, I wanted to make it relevant, fun, and interesting. EllisLab was kind enough to donate an ExpressionEngine license for me to give away. So, to enter into the drawing for the license, one would have to tweet something they learned during the event and tag it with a hashtag. This kept them engaged in the event all day, and was a great way to get them involved.

So, the day of the event came. By this point, I was fueled only by caffeine the past 72 hours. Everyone filed in, the speakers presented, everything was perfect. Having done this the past three years, this was the smoothest it had ever gone. Technical difficulties were minimal to non-existent. The speakers connected with the audience. The audience was attentive. I couldn’t have asked for it to have happened any better. I genuinely feel that the students learned something, or at least, a curiosity was sparked about what we all do everyday.

We had five speakers in total. Five people certainly can’t represent an entire industry, which is where my next crazy idea came from. As a finale to the event, I wanted to show a broader, more diverse, concept of the web industry. So, I turned to all the professionals I knew, and asked for a simple clip in Photo Booth having them say why they love this industry. The final result was amazing, and I think the students really benefited from seeing this.

What a way to end the event right? The entire day was surreal, and goes down as a success in my book. I really enjoyed hosting this the past three years, and honestly, planning it, though stressful, was a lot of fun. Perhaps one day I’ll try this type of thing again, but on a larger scale. We all love what we do, and there is no other industry who is as passionate as we are. If the students walked away with anything that day, that was it.

For those interested in reading a more in-depth view of this event, I wrote up a reflection on my blog.

Take the survey.

Update (11:40am Pacific): as we quickly discovered, I forgot to check a box on the multiple choice drop-down form questions that have “Other” that includes “Other” as a drop-down option.  Unfortunately, I cannot edit the survey since it’s already collected responses.  Go ahead and select an item from the list in addition to your answer for “Other”, and we will remove the selected item from the results.  Sorry for the inconvenience!

The A List Apart Web Design Survey is one of the most important tools we have for doing the above. It helps us all measure how we’ve grown as a Community.

Please take a few minutes and take the ALA Web Design Survey.

To get an idea of how important this information is, take a look at the ALA 2010 Web Design Survey results.