Meta Q&A:
Chad Crowell, Encaffeinated

This week, we drive 30 minutes north of the Golden Gate bridge to the small town of Novato, California. We're looking to get a taste of what it's like to work at Encaffeinated and what keeps president and managing director, Chad Crowell fueled. Crowell is an ExpressionEngine devotee who's good to the last drop. You can find him tweeting about #eecms at @chadcrowell (or @encaffeinated) or serving up some EE goodness at http://universit-ee.com.

MQ: What do you love/hate about ExpressionEngine?

CC: That is an interesting question - I can't recall the last time I thought about disliking something related to ExpressionEngine. As with any actively developed platform, it’s in a constant state of improvement. People complain a lot via Twitter, and really, if there is anything to say I hate, it’s that public complaining. EllisLab has provided a tool that, I feel, is the best on the market. It’s not perfect, and it won't be anytime soon. But I’ve built a successful business with it, helped clients better achieve their goals with it, and I feed my kids every day with money I make because of it. To me, that is a lot to love, and it easily drowns out any drawbacks.

MQ:  Tell us about your work in 140 characters or less.

CC: Encaffeinated is a development & design agency specializing in ExpressionEngine sites and applications.

MQ: What's your favorite thing about doing web development/design?

CC: I'm no designer - I bring in experienced designers who I can trust for projects where design is part of the process, but on the development side, I have what you might call a "Lego mentality"- putting the puzzle together is what drives me. Even though EE, as a tool, has remained relatively consistent with regard to feature set, every project has such divergent needs and goals that even though we always use EE, we still have a significant portion of the puzzle to piece together. That is where experience comes into play. With every project, I'm putting more time toward client management, communications, steering and planning and stepping out of production work. That is certainly where my future lies in this industry. And I do enjoy that aspect of my job - but I recognize that I am only be able to advise clients on that level because I've been doing this since 1997.

MQ: What do you do when you can't solve a development/design problem?

CC: Well, I always drink coffee, but that's unrelated. I tend to pound on a problem harder than I should. Taking a break or coming in from a different angle might help figure it out faster, and that is one area I could improve upon within my own work cycles. As I step out of production work, I'm happy to let others bang their heads on the wall.

MQ: Why use EE? How do you sell clients on using EE?

CC: Go with what you know. That sums it up for Encaffeinated five years into our relationship with EE. But in 2006 when I stumbled into EE, I could have just as easily bumped into Joomla or Drupal that day, and I consider myself lucky to have found EE via the Moxie Girls' website. It fit my needs at the time when I first discovered it, and I've not had too many projects come along that we needed to consider another platform for. These days, if we can't do it in EE or CodeIgniter, I turn it away. We get enough work that I have the luxury to do that.

MQ: My favorite EE add-on is: __________

CC: I'm not sure how appropriate that question is. Add-ons have become so much a part of extending EE functionality that we rely on quite a few for almost every site. Performance and philosophical arguments aside, if an add-on exists that provides functionality required for a site, you'd be a fool to try to recreate that functionality every time and stay within timeline and budget. We do have the expertise to build custom add-ons when required and have also been known to bastardize others' add-ons to increase performance or change their functionality a bit.

MQ: My favorite site I did in EE is: __________

CC: That's easy. In 2010 we had the good fortune to help build the new site for the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, widely regarded as the #1 graduate business school in the world. It was challenging- quite challenging, but we loved helping Flannel Brand, who brought us in to do some heavy EE lifting, and Tuck, achieve their goals. We built a robust system that gives content managers very granular control over which content lands where on the site. Our work on the project also got us invited to bid on a site for University of Colorado, Boulder, which is currently in pre-production.

MQ: My favorite site someone else did in EE is: __________

CC: Anything by Happy Cog.

As Encaffeinated has grown, I've looked to other agencies to model it after. That's not easy to do, as every company is unique for so many reasons. However, we all know that Happy Cog employs and works with some of the most talented people in our industry, so any time they launch an EE-driven site; I take some time to review it thoroughly and learn what I can from their methods.

MQ: How/why did you get into web design/development?

CC: We always had a computer, way back to a Commodore 64 in the mid-80's. I used to type in all the MLX codes from the back of Compute Magazine to build programs, and never really stopped. In college at CSU Sacramento in about 1994 I learned how to build a site in a Multimedia Communications class and I was hooked. Putting that site together was all it took. It was a map of the campus and it piqued my interest in the web, which was brand new at the time. CSUS was actually quite progressive with the public web. I started there in 1992 and got an email address upon registering. That's pretty O.G.

I worked for a manufacturing company out of college, and in 1997 their quasi-web guy left for a startup and I convinced the company to let me run the website. I had some decent web chops at the time, but knew the products very well, and they thought that was a good combination for the job. I learned classic ASP on the fly and developed a nice skill set. After being laid off in 2001 when the bubble burst, I got another job along the same lines in 2002, and then moved on to become the online marketing manager for a pro racing team in 2005. A year later I was ready to strike out on my own and haven't looked back.

MQ: What would you like to see happen with ExpressionEngine or EllisLab in the future?

CC: Mainly, I suppose, just continue to hire talented people and listen to your community. They've done a great job at both this year. I am friends with most of the EllisLab folks, and I just hope they have continued success doing what they love.