SolidusConf 2017 Speaker Gregor MacDougall

There is a buzz around the office as SolidusConf 2017 gets closer. We want to share a little piece of that excitement in the weeks leading up to the conference. That’s why we’ve created a series of speaker interviews that include teasers from their talks, their story, and what motivates them to contribute to solidus. Our series begins with the Master of Ceremonies and speaker, Gregor MacDougall.

Please give us a quick introduction for those who don't know you

My name is Gregor MacDougall. I work remotely out of Toronto, Canada for Stembolt. I've been working with Spree and Rails for approximately 5 years now and have been a member of the Solidus core team since its founding.

What do you use Solidus for?

Over the years I've worked with a variety of clients selling physical and digital goods; lots of different things. In my daily job, I operate as a developer on a team helping to organize our planning process while also turning out code.

What is your talk going to be about?

My talk is entitled Scaling Solidus: Handling the Traffic of a Successful Business. Over the years, I've worked on a variety of stores, from small businesses happy to sell a few hundred dollars a day to multi-million dollar enterprises. The needs of each of these sites is very different. I want to show how Solidus can be a platform that can serve both of these types of companies adequately.

For any successful online business, being able to stay on top of your growth is one of the keys to maintaining that level of growth. If your site is being slow or encountering errors, people are going to be dissatisfied and turn away a potential new customer and advocate of yours.

I think every successful business goes through several phases where the business has grown faster than the technology powering it. I plan to review the structure of the stack that we use to power the sites we maintain and look at common signs that you're having performance issues. Additionally, I'll talk about problems that you're likely to encounter in Solidus as you scale and how you can limit their impact on your site.

What are you most looking forward to at SolidusConf?

I look forward to meeting some new people and spending time with friends and coworkers. As someone who works remotely, I don't often get face to face with the people I work with on a daily basis. It's also nice to meet some people in the greater community who I have spoken with in Slack or on Github.

Do you have any other plans for London?

It will be my first time in the UK. I'm probably going to be a bit of a tourist and walk down the Thames for an afternoon. I'm also a big theatre fan, so I'll be escorting some of my coworkers to the West End for a play and a musical.

Thanks for your time!

SolidusConf 2017 is May 22 - 25 in London, UK. See more details at the SolidusConf Website.