Summarizing the Summit
Elizabeth HillisThe Developer Summit was a few weeks ago, but our team is still buzzing. I asked a few my teammates to share their main take away from our first ever Developer Summit – here’s what they came back with:
Jake Goldman: There were so many highlights: learning from the smartest minds I’ve ever worked with about unit testing, advanced JavaScript, and Vagrant… seeing a great group of Portland-area WordPress pros show up at our social… seeing a few members of our team in person for the first time. The real highlight was being able to sit back and watch the team brainstorm the big process and technique questions we confront, so effectively. It’s one thing to have great “online” chemistry in IRC chat rooms, small video conferences, and status blogs, but it was amazing to see just how much chemistry this team has when we get together in person – more than any brick and mortar group I’ve ever led or been a part of.
Taylor Dewey: On the first day of our summit, only a few people had lunch together. On the second day of our summit, there were a few groups of folks in different spots. On the last day of our summit, everyone was eating lunch together in the same area. Seeing everyone come together organically proved that we actually do have a team, not a group of individuals, and that has tremendous value.
Megan Gray: Looking around the room during one of the sessions, I saw how absolutely engaged each person in the room was, and how passionate everyone on our team is about their work. That was incredibly inspiring and I can’t wait to see how we apply everything we learned to our client projects.
Darin Kotter: I am constantly amazed by the level of talent and knowledge we have on our team, and the chance to spend a few days together, learning from each other, was a wonderful opportunity. I came away overwhelmed with new things to think about and consider, but in a definite good way.
John Bloch: Sitting in that room with a score of the smartest people I know left me excited: excited by the opportunity to sharpen my skills, excited to get to know my amazing coworkers better, and excited to be a part of such a great team. My favorite moment from the trip was when I first arrived at the hotel. Everybody was gathered in the hotel lounge and, although this was my first time meeting most of my coworkers in person, we all already knew each other and the conversation quickly fell into a rhythm of easy friendship.
Taylor Lovett: Version control is an amazing tool to help us deliver powerful web experiences to clients. Using Git with uniform branching styles we can jump seamlessly in-and-out of each others projects without too much confusion. This allows us to more effectively collaborate as a team which will result in better, more thoughtful code. We decided on using the Gitflow branching model. I am currently drafting a document with version control company standards as well as some Git tutorials. This document will be given to all employees so we can standardize the way we do version control as a company. We also talked about using git-svn in conjunction with VIP projects. Git-svn is a useful tool, but can be difficult to use. We discussed the pros and cons of using it.
Vasken Hauri: The reality of agency work is we are called upon to work with a diverse and ever-changing range of technologies in order to solve a myriad of engineering challenges. Attending the 10up Dev Summit gave me a chance to step back and see the particular technologies that each 10upper was most passionate about sharing with our community, and the results were truly amazing.
Eric Mann: The best way I can summaries the dev summit is that it blew away my expectations. I’ve worked on teams that see each other every day, and the creativity of those teams stagnated as a result. Working remotely lets us all move at our own pace. Coming together once in a while, though, lets us accelerate that pace and all get on the same page. There is so much value in just being able to hash out questions over lunch, and we covered a lot of ground in the 3 days we spent together. The topics we discussed were hugely exciting. Not just because they were new areas for many of us, but because they’re new areas for just about everyone in the WordPress world. Recognizing that our team is consistently pushing the envelope when it comes to development workflows and technologies is as exciting as it is encouraging.
