Check out this fine group of ExpressionEngine geeks, and in the front row is our mentor and instructor, Mike Boyink of Train-ee.com.  This class was truly wonderful.  The amount of material that was covered was impressive.  Here was the agenda.  With that massive amount of material, I was worried that we weren’t going to get through it all. But we did without feeling rushed, and also had time for lots of side topics.  For his first time instructing a class, he sure was on his game.  That guy is like an ExpressionEngine Encyclopedia.  It is pretty impressive.  I’m sure it will take me weeks to review the material and go through everything that was presented, but I feel I have a very solid understanding of EE now.  I can’t really say what my favorite aspect of the training was because it is hasn’t all sunk it yet and there was alot. I can’t wait to get back home and implement what we learned into client websites.  I feel so much more confident about what I’m doing with ExpressionEngine.  I know it will take some time for Mike and Collective Idea to put together some other courses on ExpressionEngine, but I definitely will be attending other events put on by these guys. 

After day 2 of the ExpressionEngine class In Holland, I’m more excited than ever.  This has been a fabulous experience.  The hospitality that Mike Boyink and Collective Idea have extended to us has been above and beyond the norm.

About the class so far; there is a wide range of EE users in the class.  Some have never used EE before, while others have quite a bit of experience building sites with EE and well as other content management systems.  Nobody seemed bored with the elementary stuff, and yet nobody appeared overwhelmed with the nuts and bolts of EE.  Mike has done a great job of keeping the class focused, on track, and everybody on the same page.  Today we started building the architecture of the site by building new template groups, and using EE tags and variables to build navigation and pull in weblog data dynamically.  I can’t wait for the next two days of the workshop and to interact with a great group of people.