Posted
April 23, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
We’ve built lots of networking opportunities into the SpreeConf schedule to allow you to connect with the Spree community and build lasting relationships to improve and grow your business. You’ll have a chance to meet face-to-face with the creators of Spree, Sean Schofield and Brian Quinn, to learn more about Spree 2.0 and discuss and debate the future direction of the Spree platform. SpreeConf is also a great opportunity to compare notes with other Spree Developers about projects you are working on and implementation techniques. And of course, SpreeConf isn’t just for developers. We have plenty of founders and store owners that come to our conferences as well. Whether you’re a startup or an established online business, there will be other business owners for you to network with and learn from. There’s something for everyone at SpreeConf.
Check out our full lineup of social events.
Inaugural Ignite SpreeConf Gaming Gala – Sunday, May 19th
We’d like to welcome those of you arriving Sunday evening to our Ignite SpreeConf Gaming Gala. Brian Quinn and Chris Mar are your Game Night hosts and are committed to delivering an evening of unforgettable fun and intense competition. They’re turning in their consoles and are returning to their gaming roots with some old school board games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. The evening will include lots of board gaming fun with plenty of beverages and snacks and an opportunity to meet your fellow conference attendees and the Spree team before the serious tech talking starts on Monday.
Lightning Talks – Monday, May 20th
At the end of our first day of presentations all SpreeConf attendees are invited to join us for a few cocktails and a series of five minute lightning talks on the subject of your choice. This is an opportunity to publicly share interesting projects you are working on as well as to suggest your ideas for the future direction of the Spree project. We’ll begin taking lightning talk registrations two weeks before SpreeConf starts.
Happy Hour – Monday, May 20th
Enjoy a few happy hour drinks with your fellow attendees courtesy of Braintree. Share what you learned during the training day and find out what interesting projects your colleagues are working on. Get a chance to check out Policy, one of DC’s hottest restaurant and lounges located in the vibrant U Street neighborhood. Join the SpreeConf Turntable.fm room and help us DJ the evening with some of your favorite tunes.
After Party – Tuesday, May 21st
Join us after the conference for a few hours of drinking and lively debate courtesy of Rails Dog. The Spree team will be in attendance along with most of our speakers. The after party will take place on the rooftop of Lost Society, a boutique restaurant and lounge located in the U Street corridor. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather. Lost Society has a great view of the Washington, DC skyline.
There’s less than a month until SpreeConf and tickets are selling fast. Get your ticket now before we sell out. See you there!
Posted
April 23, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
Last Thursday we introduced you to SpreeConf speaker, Adil Wali who will be talking about lessons learned scaling multiple e-commerce businesses at SpreeConf DC May 20th – 21st in Washington, DC. Today we’d like to introduce you to one of our own, Ryan Bigg. Ryan is the Community Manager at Spree Commerce and will be speaking at SpreeConf about open source war stories.
Ryan Bigg
Community Manager at Spree Commerce
Ryan is a Ruby and Rails technical writer based in Australia. He co-authored the book Rails 3 in Action with Yehuda Katz. He was granted the Ruby Hero award recognizing his documentation for Rails. Ryan joined the Spree team in 2011 as Community Manager. His job is to make your life with Spree an amazing experience by triaging issues, replying to user questions, and contributing to the Spree project. He enjoys writing (text + code) more than most people would deem normal.
Open Source War Stories
At the end of 2011, Ryan switched from being a Ruby consultant to being one of the lead maintainers of the Spree Commerce open source project. During that time, he learned an awful lot about what it means to be responsible for something as massive as the Spree project. Refactoring the code without causing tears for loyal users has been an extremely challenging problem to have.
He has some rather interesting stories to tell, like the time he renamed most of the files deliberately on purpose, or that time he ripped out a component that people depended on, and everyone was still happy. There have even been instances where code has been moved out of the models and into new classes, which seems to be the cool thing to do.
Getting to Know Ryan
We asked Ryan to give us his thoughts on the latest happenings in the Ruby on Rails space and some of the interesting projects he’s working on right now.
What trends are most exciting to you right now?
The most exciting trends to me right now are more JavaScript heavy apps that use frameworks like Backbone, Angular and Ember. There’s still quite a lot of change going on in this area. It’s in a constant state of improvement. I think having a JavaScript-based frontend on Spree would be a step in the right direction, showing off what Spree’s API can do.
Any interesting projects you are working on that others might be interested in?
There’s this e-commerce platform I’m working on right now called Spree ;) …
Besides that, I’m working on my Multitenancy with Rails book and keeping Sharon (my girlfriend) happy. Oh, and sleep. Sleep is highly recommended.
What are you most looking forward to at SpreeConf this year?
It’s SpreeConf. What isn’t there to look forward to? Amazing talks by amazing people at an amazing location. DC will be nice during the Spring, too.
What do you hope SpreeConf attendees remember about your talk when they get home?
Maintaining a project as large as Spree and having it be open source is a huge undertaking. We deal with the incoming posts and issues for Spree in very smart ways, and I’ll go through some of those in my talk.
Do you have any interesting picks – blogs, technology, books, new companies to follow?
I don’t read blogs as Twitter is my main source of information. If there’s a good blog post out there, it’ll be on Twitter.
Regarding books: While I haven’t read it yet, I hear good things about Sandi Metz’s Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby book. Like, really good things about that book. She’s speaking at SpreeConf, so while I’m semi-obligated to cross-promote her, I honestly think that this book is good.
Another one that’s been doing the rounds is Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler, which covers some great patterns (Data repository, Active Record, Data Mapper).
Technology + company wise: Tesla, Deep Space Industries and SpaceX. These guys are the future. Look at all the cool stuff they’re doing.
Come meet Ryan and hear his talk about open source war stories at SpreeConf DC, May 20th – 21st. get your ticket now. Less than one month to go!
Posted
April 22, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
We’re delighted to announce that RailsDog, which specializes in Ruby on Rails web development, Spree e-commerce development, and UI/UX design, will be sponsoring the SpreeConf after party. SpreeConf is a two-day event taking place May 20th – 21st at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC and features training on Spree as well as presentations from thought leaders in the e-commerce and Ruby communities including Sandi Metz, Adil Wali, and Eric Koester. The Rails Dog sponsored after party takes place the second evening of the conference on May 21st on the rooftop bar of Lost Society. The Spree and Rails Dog teams will be in attendance as well as most of our speakers.
Get To Know Your Fellow SpreeConf Attendees
SpreeConf is a great opportunity to get to know the Spree core team and to meet your fellow Spree community members. This year’s SpreeConf attendee list includes folks from all areas of our community – developers, marketing managers, design agencies, store owners, founders, and investors. We’ve built lots of networking opportunities into the schedule so you’ll have a chance to meet each other, have some fun, and chat further about your Spree projects.
Conference tickets are selling fast so make sure to secure your spot at SpreeConf DC before we’re sold out.
Posted
April 18, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
If you’ve attended SpreeConf before you know what a great experience it is. We want to make sure that you don’t miss out on the great lineup of speakers and events we have planned for the conference this year. As a thanks for your ongoing support, we’re offering past attendees a special discount off the regular SpreeConf ticket price. Email lynne at spreecommerce.com for the discount code.
#1 Learn About Spree 2.0
The Spree 2.0 release is just a few weeks away. SpreeConf offers the opportunity to talk with the Spree core team in person about how you can take advantage of the new Spree 2.0 features including: split shipments, the re-architecture of the Spree core, and internationalization improvements.
#2 Get Testing Advice from Sandi Metz
Tests are supposed to save us money. How is it, then, that many times they become millstones around our necks, gradually morphing into fragile, breakable things that raise the cost of change? Many times we write too many tests and we test the wrong kind of things. Sandi Metz’s SpreeConf talk will offer simple, practical guidelines for choosing what to test and how to test it.
#3 Put Rails 4 into Action
Rails 4 brings a bunch of really cool, new features including: Multithreading and ActionController::Live combine to provide clients with Server-Sent Events for real-time activity feeds. Turbolinks has blasted application performance way beyond what we’re used to seeing. And, changes to how rails applications cache information has made caching simpler and easier to use.Nick Gauthier will show some of the ways he’s used the new Rails 4 features to build applications efficiently with the latest web technology.
#4 Get Lessons from the Field
eCommerce is one of the hottest and highest-growth spaces driving the world economy right now and while most companies attempting this space have quality products and a solid target customer, many of them will fail because they cannot execute quickly enough to beat their competition. Adil Wali will cover lessons learned scaling multiple e-commerce business, including ModCloth, one of the fastest growing companies in the world of fashion. Denis Ivanov will also offer advice about how to perfect your e-commerce frontend through SEO techniques and conversion rate management.
#5 Find New Clients and Developers
SpreeConf is a great place to meet store owners looking for help with their Spree stores. It’s also a great place to find developers to join your team. We’ve built lots of networking opportunities into the SpreeConf schedule so you can discuss future Spree projects together.
There are less than five weeks until SpreeConf and tickets are selling fast. Make sure to secure your spot at SpreeConf DC before we’re sold out.
Posted
April 18, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
Last Thursday we introduced you to SpreeConf speaker, Gregor MacDougall who will be talking about his experience migrating a large scale PHP based e-commerce store to Spree at SpreeConf DC May 20th – 21st in Washington, DC. Today we’d like to introduce you to our keynote speaker, Adil Wali. Adil is the CEO at Kemists and will be speaking at SpreeConf about lessons learned scaling multiple e-commerce businesses.
Adil Wali
CEO at Kemists
Adil is a passionate entrepreneur and product visionary who loves the startup and high growth environment. He first connected with Spree through Crowd Interactive, a web 2.0 development company he founded that specializes in Ruby on Rails. Adil gets bored easily and likes to have fun, so he starts companies. He’s never had a ‘real job.’ He’s been a founder or investor in a bunch of stuff that’s failed. The stuff that hasn’t: ClearGears, ModCloth, Crowd Interactive, and Kemists where he is currently CEO. Some of you might remember Adil from SpreeConf Dublin. Adil was one of our most popular speakers and we are really excited to have him back at SpreeConf this year in DC.
Lessons from the Field: Scaling an eCommerce Business
eCommerce is one of the hottest and highest-growth spaces driving the world economy right now and while most companies attempting this space have quality products and a solid target customer, many of them will fail because they cannot execute quickly enough to beat their competition.
At SpreeConf, Adil will discuss lessons he learned scaling multiple e-commerce business, including ModCloth, one of the fastest growing companies in the world of fashion. The topics covered will be driven significantly by the audience, with the goal of providing tangible-lessons-learned with real ideas that you can try tomorrow whether you are on the technical side or business side of things.
Some of the topics Adil will cover include:
- Data: why it’s important and how it breaks
- Building and scaling a brand
- Community, authenticity, and how to scale without losing your voice
- Curation, product-mix, and how to not bore your customers
- Premature scaling and how to avoid it
- Scaling teams: ensuring structure and decision-making still work
- Process: how to keep it minimalistic, but functional
- Content strategy: taking SEO, SEM, and content seriously
- Capital strategy: when and why money is important (and when it’s not)
- Fulfillment and customer service: does it REALLY matter?
Getting to Know Adil
We asked Adil to give us his thoughts on the latest happenings in the e-commerce space and some of the interesting projects he’s working on right now.
What trends are most exciting to you right now?
Marketplaces of all shapes and sizes have come a long way since the early days of eBay. I think the future of e-commerce is being defined by some of the innovators in marketplace experiences. In particular, the use of location-based commerce and latent-inventory models is super interesting.
I think ‘the way we work’ is changing. The distribution of teams is no longer a setback, and for some pioneers, it is a distinct advantage. Furthermore, collaboration technology and global bandwidth have come a long way. This is changing the landscape of company creation and growth, not to mention fighting worldwide poverty in a serious way.
Any interesting projects you are working on that others might be interested in?
Yes! We’ve been thinking a lot about ‘the future of work’ and have been heads-down working on a way for worldwide freelancing to be merit-based and frictionless. That project is called Hiiro (pronounced ‘Hero’). It’s currently in private alpha, but we hope to release it just as soon as we feel like we’ve nailed the user experience.
What are you most looking forward to at SpreeConf this year?
I’ve been to a lot of conferences, and I’ve found the overall level of talent and scrappiness to be the highest among the SpreeConf crowd. That’s not to mention that the Spree platform has come a very long way in the last 24 months, and there are still a lot of new things for me to learn from the great tech talks.
What do you hope SpreeConf attendees remember about your talk when they get home?
I hope that folks will remember at least one interesting ‘company-building’ pattern that they can go home and USE within 60 days.
Do you have any interesting picks – blogs, technology, books, new companies to follow?
I know it’s a classic and that most people have read it, but Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the kind of book you need read once every couple years. I also think that Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink deserves a lot more attention, even though it was one of his earlier works.
There are tons of new companies that are worth looking at: TaskRabbit and SilverCar are some of the folks that are really innovating with marketplace technology. Blank-Label is probably my favorite supply chain innovator right now.
Come meet Adil and hear his talk about lessons learned scaling multiple e-commerce businesses at SpreeConf DC, May 20th – 21st.
Posted
April 17, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
It’s a really exciting time for Spree. We are now one of the top open source projects in the world. We have 3,835 Github watchers and 372 GitHub contributors who have made more than 9,000 contributions. SpreeConf is your chance to meet the creators of Spree, Sean Schofield and Brian Quinn, and to hear their plans for the future direction of the project first hand. Sean and Brian will share in depth details about the Spree roadmap and the new features included in Spree 2.0. Don’t miss your opportunity to meet Sean, Brian, and the rest of the Spree team in person at SpreeConf, May 20th – 21st in Washington, DC.
How it all Began
Most of you probably know that Sean Schofield and Brian Quinn are the co-founders of Spree. But what you might not know is how the Spree open source project started and how Sean and Brian met. Sean created the Spree open source project in July 2007 after trying several open source alternatives and finding they lacked the flexibility to build exactly what store owners wanted. Brian discovered Spree when he was searching for an open source, Rails based e-commerce solution for one of his client projects. Brian contributed several internationalization features to Spree and in the process got to know Sean. They began working on client projects together and agreed to start an e-commerce consultancy company which eventually turned into Spree Commerce Inc. Since then Sean and Brian have worked diligently to improve the Spree platform and grow the Spree community.
Sean Schofield
Sean is the co-founder and CEO of Spree Commerce. He is an experienced programmer and entrepreneur and has over a decade of experience working with open source in both Ruby and Java. Sean is also a member of the Apache Software Foundation as well as a committer on several popular Apache projects including Struts. Sean dedicates his time to the Spree open source project and ensuring that it lives up to his vision of being the most flexible, open source e-commerce platform in the world. At SpreeConf, Sean will share details about the new features included in Spree 2.0 including split shipments, the re-architecture of the Spree core and internationalization improvements.
Brian Quinn
Brian is the co-founder and CTO of Spree Commerce. He has been using Ruby for fun and profit for several years now (before Rails 1.0.) He is also the author of the innovative Deface project. He enjoys tackling hard problems, learning new things, and building awesome software. At SpreeConf, Brian will introduce the Spree Integrator, a project our team has been quietly working on the last six months which enables stores to integrate with all the internal “stuff” that companies need to run their stores like drop shipping, accounting, analytics, warehousing, etc. Brian’s Spree talk will include a live programming exercise that everyone can join in on.
See You at SpreeConf!
Here are a few closing words from Sean about why he is excited for Spree Conf…“Conferences are all about connecting with people. We have a great online community but sometimes there is no substitute for meeting in person. There are people I’ve been working with from all over the world for several years now. It’s always fun to see them in person. Each year there are also new people in the online community that show up for the in-person conference. It’s great to meet the people behind the code.”
Don’t miss out on your chance to meet the creators of Spree and to connect with the Spree community. Tickets are selling fast. Less than 5 weeks to go!
Posted
April 15, 2013 by Andrew Hooker
Why new guides?
A while back, we put a lot of work into creating documentation for our API independent of the developer guides. Our designer Alexey (aka devilcoders) did a great job on the API guides, and we wanted to bring that great work into the developer guides as well. We also used this as an opportunity to go through the guides and clean out things that were confusing or out of date. To top it off, John Dyer ( LBRapid ) put together a few new tutorials, going step by step through getting started with Spree and using and creating extensions and deface overrides.
Starting with Edge
Currently, the new guides are available on Edge. Edge is our repository for documentation about Spree features that haven’t been released yet. Once the next major Spree version is released, the guides in the Edge repository will replace the current guides. We will continue to make the old guides available as we have in the past with our legacy guides. The Edge guides include documentation on the new Split Shipments functionality included in Spree 2.0. Make sure to give this section a read and let us know what you think about the new feature.
Preview the Spree Integrator
You’ll notice we included a section in the Guides called The Spree Integrator. The Spree Integrator is a project our team has been quietly working on the last six months and is the pillar of our new Spree Professional packages. The Spree Integrator is a new platform for extending the reach of your Spree store into a myriad of crucial business applications and services like drop shipping providers, accounting systems, transactional email services, custom applications and much more. Brian Quinn will explain more about the Spree Integrator at SpreeConf and will show how easily you can get started using the off-the-shelf services that we’ve built into the Spree Integrator and how you can create custom endpoints to process all the events as they happen in your store.
A Community Effort
While the Spree core team and staff did a lot of the work getting the guides converted, there were a number of community members who also contributed. We had 229 commits by 29 authors, including 14 commits by first time open source contributor Dana Jones. You can see all the contributions in a github compare
Contributions Welcome
We couldn’t do it without you! Especially if you’re new to Spree, or new to contributing to open source, the guides are a great place to get started. There’s constantly cleanup and improvement to be done. To contribute, simply follow the instructions here.
Watch for More
There’s more coming! We’re going to be looking at improving the developer guides in the future, as well as adding a guide section for users, covering things like how to use the admin interface. If you’ve got ideas for how we can continue to improve the guides, submit a pull request, leave a comment on this post, or open an issue on the repo.
Come Meet us at SpreeConf
The next SpreeConf is taking place May 20th – 21st in Washington, DC. SpreeConf is a great opportunity to learn more about what’s coming in Spree 2.0 and how to apply it to your store. We also have a great lineup of speakers from both the e-commerce and Ruby communities. Don’t miss your chance to meet the Spree core team in person and to connect with the rest of the Spree Community. Get $75 off with code “GUIDES” when registering at the link below.
Posted
April 11, 2013 by Lynne Brehmer
Last Tuesday we introduced you to SpreeConf speaker, Gregor MacDougall who will be speaking about his experience migrating a large scale PHP based e-commerce store to the Spree platform at SpreeConf DC May 20th – 21st in Washington, DC. Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandi Metz. Sandi is a software architect, programmer, and author and will be speaking at SpreeConf about practical guidelines for choosing what to test and how to test it.
Sandi Metz
Software Architect, Programmer, and Author
Sandi was a long-time software architect at Duke University, for whom she still consults. She has been solving real problems in large, long-lived object-oriented applications for more than twenty years. She is also the author of the book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer.
Practical Guidelines for Testing
Tests are supposed to save us money. How is it, then, that many times they become millstones around our necks, gradually morphing into fragile, breakable things that raise the cost of change? We write too many tests and we test the wrong kinds of things. Sandi’s SpreeConf talk will strip away the veil and offer simple, practical guidelines for choosing what to test and how to test it. Finding the right testing balance isn’t magic, it’s a magic trick; learn the secret of writing stable tests that protect your application at the lowest possible cost.
Getting to Know Sandi
We asked Sandi to give us her thoughts on the latest happenings in the Ruby space and some of the interesting projects she’s working on right now.
What trends are most exciting to you right now?
I’m excited about the increasing interest of the Ruby/Rails community in object-oriented design (OOD). OOD is both a passion and a bias of mine, and I see a lot of applications that have grown to where they can reap its benefits. We’re in the midst of a massive integration where the ideas of the masters of OOD are being stirred in a pot with the needs of programmers to get real product out the door; we’ll all benefit from what comes from this mix.
Any interesting projects you are working on that others might be interested in?
I’ve agreed to create a video series for Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby. I’m currently at the ‘watching video creation tutorials’ stage so it will be a few months before they appear, but I’m learning something new and pondering object-oriented design. This is a treat for me and with luck, will be useful for others.
What do you hope SpreeConf attendees remember about your talk when they get home?
I hope that SpreeConf attendees walk away with an understanding that testing is easy. And, experts are no different than you—they just know a few more tricks.
Do you have any interesting picks – blogs, technology, books, new companies to follow?
I’m intrigued by the Go language but haven’t found time to more than be interested. I’m reading Thinking Fast and Slow, which outlines how we think and is, well, thought provoking. I’ve also been enjoying Implementing Domain Driving Design, an informative and approachable exposition of DDD.
Come meet Sandi and hear her talk about practical guidelines for choosing what to test and how to test it at SpreeConf DC, May 20th – 21st.
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