from the forums
Posted January 10th, 2012 by lineke
PHP Master by Lorna Mitchell, Davey Shafik and Matthew Turland
reviewed by Kim
At 357 pages (375 including index), this book provides a thorough grounding in the key topics todays PHP developer should strive to know, and know well. The back cover ambitiously states that the book is “guaranteed to take your PHP skills to the next level”. Keep reading to find out whether or not I agree. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted June 2nd, 2011 by lineke
About two weeks ago I attended the Dutch PHP Conference with many thanks to PHPWomen and Ibuildings for the ticket. So far I have attended almost all editions of the Dutch PHP Conference (DPC), I only missed one. So I knew it would be awesome before it even started and I was right! I arrived Thursday evening and spend the evening with some of the speakers and friends I know from other conferences and earlier editions of DPC. It was great to see everyone again.
So on Friday morning the first day of the conference started and it started with one of the best keynotes I have ever seen! Aral Balkan talked about User Experience. The talk was full of anekdotes and really inspirational. After that I attended the “TDD and getting paid” talk by Rowan Merewood. I had seen him speaking before and he is a great speaker with a lot of knowledge. Although I know quite a bit about TDD and Unittesting, the talk had a practical approach which was very interesting. The second talk of the day was about IPv6. It was a bit too technical for me and it somehow didn’t get my attention. After that it was already time for lunch.
After lunch I attended the Uncon. Last year was the first year there was an Uncon at DPC. I didn’t attend it back then, but this year the Uncon had some really interesting talks and I attended three of them during the two conference days. This talk was about the internals of DocBlox. DocBlox is a new tool, written by Mike van Riel, to replace phpDocumentor. It was interesting to see how he managed to reduce the amount of memory and time needed to generate the API documentation of a project. He even build his own Reflection API using the PHP tokenizer. Too bad the talk was only 45 minutes, because I would have liked to see more of it. Because it’s opensource I still can ofcourse, if I ever find the time. So then it was time for a talk by Stephan Höchdorfer about external depency management. It wasn’t quite what I expected unfortunately. After the break I decided to skip a session because I was really tired and the “hallway track” was also great, just talking to friends and relaxing. By then it was time for the last session of the day. It was a hard choice between Advanced OO Patterns and HTML5 for PHP developers. Since we are doing HTML5 at our company at the moment I decided for the HTML5 talk by Thorsten Rinne. It was an interesting overview of the new HTML5 functionality. So it was a really interesting first day of the conference.
Like every year there was a social organised and sponsored by Ibuildings, Github and Sanoma Media. In my opinion the place was too crowded and the music was too loud to actually have a conversation. So by the time I arrived most of the speakers and friends I wanted to speak to already moved to another bar right around the corner. We had a great evening and I made some new friends too. By the time I got to bed it was really late, so I forgot to set my alarm clock. I did wake up in time, but I was still really tired so I decided to skip the keynote about API’s by Helgi. Apparently it was a great keynote, at least that’s what everyone told me.
For me day two of the conference started with the presentation from Jouzas Kaziukenas about the new era of PHP frameworks. It was an interesting overview of the history and future of PHP frameworks. The two most used PHP frameworks are both working on a new major version which is PHP 5.3 only. If you missed the talk and still want to see it, you can at PfCongres in Utrecht, The Netherlands on September 17th. Next session was again an Uncon session for me about documentation. It sounded really interesting but somehow it didn’t get of the ground really well. At the end I finally managed to find out the talk was about Docbook, which sounded really interesting, but it was just too bad that the speaker didn’t get in the flow of the presentation so the story was a bit lost. I think Docbook is interesting and I certainly will look into it to see if we can use it at the company I work for. And then it was time for lunch again.
The talk I attended after lunch was by Ligaya Turmelle and Raymond DeRoo. They talked about Character sets in MySQL. Basically they said: Use Latin1 if you can, otherwise use UTF8. I asked them afterwards some advice for our own database since we are using utf8 and latin1. They confirmed what we already thought at the company that we should be using UTF8 only. Only because our application is international and we need to support different character sets. So thanks for the advice guys, luckily we were on the right track already! By then it was time for my last Uncon session about the PHP build tool Phing. I already knew about Phing because it comes with the database deployment system DbDeploy. I talked to the lead developer of Phing about changing the way DbDeploy works to fit our needs and got some great inspiration to change this (backwards compatible ofcourse) to fit our needs and hopefully the needs of more people looking for a database deployment system. After a short break it was time for the closing keynote from Cal Evans about Open Teams. I had already seen this keynote at the PHPBenelux conference in January, but it was very entertaining and good stuff to repeat from time to time.
And after the closing by Harrie Verveer DPC was over already. I had a great time, met old friends and made new friends and got new inspiration to last for at least a couple of months untill the next conference. DPC was awesome like it is every year!
Posted January 25th, 2011 by lig
On Saturday, March 5th from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM CT the DayCamp for Developers #2: Telecommuting conference (DC4D) will be held.
I bring this up *not just* because it will be a great conference on a subject that is “the holy grail for many developers” – Telecommuting, but also because it will again have 2 of our members in the 5 speaker lineup – Ligaya Turmelle and Lorna Jane Mitchell.
This time around Lorna Jane Mitchell will be speaking on “Could You Telecommute?” She will “take a look at what can make or break your remote working experience, and some ideas for coping when the reality doesn’t live up to the promises.” Ligaya Turmelle will be speaking on the “Work/Life Balance” She will discuss how she handles the work/life balance and the tools she uses.
For additional information on what is covered in this DC4D be sure to take a peek at the schedule. To just learn a bit more about the conference check out daycamp4developers.com or follow them on twitter.
If you are interested, there are a number of ticket options available here. There is the attendee/video option is only $35 USD! If you have a group of people that want to attend you also have the “office party” option for only $100 USD.
Posted September 17th, 2010 by lornajane
There’s an event coming up in November that I wanted to share for two reasons. Firstly, because it would be useful and relevant to us all, and secondly because the lineup of five excellent speakers includes two of our very own PHPWomen – Elizabeth Naramore and Lorna Jane Mitchell. The event is also organised by PHPWomen board member Cal Evans.
Liz gives a talk entitled “Technical Writing”, and Lorna’s talk is “Open Source Your Career”. You can take a look at the list of sessions to see what else is included but the line-up is fantastic. The emphasis of the day is on giving developers the soft skills they need to express their technical excellence to other people, including non-developers. As such it’s a great fit for anyone looking to grow themselves and their soft skills to the next level. Read more about the event on the site daycamp4developers.com, follow them on twitter, and buy your tickets here.
The event is November 6th, and all the sessions are recorded and can be accessed afterwards if you have a ticket so even if you can’t make it on the day, it’s worth it. The price is also very reasonable at $35! If you are attending then post a comment, would be great to know who else is joining in 
Posted February 24th, 2010 by ElizabethN
I am thrilled to announce a new endeavor for PHPWomen: our PHPwomen Partnership Program for Open Source Projects. A little about the program:
PHPWomen has launched a partnership program for open source projects that are committed to embracing diversity and providing a welcoming and friendly atmosphere for contributors. We work closely with project leaders to identify specific areas of need, and will actively encourage our members to participate by promoting those needs through various channels. In return, the project leaders will ensure that newcomers to their projects will be welcomed and their contributions appreciated. This includes fostering an open and friendly environment for all newcomers, not just females.
Basically the goals of the Partnership Program are as follows:
We are so proud to announce that we have many projects already signed up for our partnership program, several of which have fantastic Statements of Diversity clearly displayed on their websites. These are all projects that value respectful communities and can be considered a safe environment for contributors. In other words, as a newcomer to their community, you won’t be harassed by a bunch of jerks, and your contributions will be valued.
For a complete list of our Open Source Project Partners, or to learn more about how the PHPWomen Partnership Program works, you can visit our OS Partnership Page. If you are interested in volunteering your time and energy in one of these fantastic projects, check out the OS Project Opportunity page. We will keep this page updated as often as possible, so we encourage you to visit it regularly.
And of course, if you are a Project Leader for an Open Source project, and you are interested in partnering with us, by all means contact me! We would love to tell our members all about your awesomeness. (elizabeth.at.naramore.dot.net.)
Posted February 22nd, 2010 by BinaryKitten
This Friday sees PHP London host the PHP UK Conference for 2010!
The PHP UK Conference is now in its fifth year and is bigger and better than ever. Friday’s event has 16 different hour-long talks covering a plethora of topics from some of the world’s best PHP speakers. It takes place at the modern Business Design Centre in London’s bustling Islington area, close to Kings Cross and Euston and just two minutes walk from Angel underground station.
PHPWomen is a community partner of the event and will have a stand in the exhibition hall amongst a variety of other exhibitors. We also have two of our members speaking at the conference; Juliette Folmer who will be giving her talk “Regex-fu” and Lorna Mitchell will be talking about “Best practices in web service design“.
Finally we are also pleased to be able to offer all our members a discount on the event registration price. Head over to http://www.phpconference.co.uk/registration/phpwomen to receive a £20 discount on the cost that covers the main conference, as well as including a buffet lunch and dessert, refreshments throughout the day, cloakroom facilities, access to discounted books from O’Reilly and Packt publishers, countless networking opportunities, and a raffle with over 50 prizes on offer.
As usual there are social events arranged for both the evenings before and straight after the event – the former being free to anyone to come along and the latter starting with a sponsored bar by Facebook.
We hope to see you there on Friday!
For much more information please browse the rest of the PHP UK Conference site.
Posted December 11th, 2009 by ElizabethN
PHPWomen is proud to support the efforts of GirlsinTech and NYPHP in bringing holiday cheer to all those in the tech community by bringing them together (men and women alike). If you’re in the New York City area, we encourage you to participate in the 3rd annual New York’s Technical Community Holiday Party.
Come rub elbows with technology’s finest, as we unite diverse skills and interests, recognized industry professionals, IT managers, authors, speakers, and the business community that we’re all a part of.
Business casual attire is required.
Space is limited – RSVP is mandatory
The party is on December 21 at 7pm. For location information and more details, please visit http://www.bootup.io/holiday-party/.
Posted December 1st, 2009 by lornajane
The rumours have been flying around for a while, and we even dropped some hints; since its December it is time for us to confirm that there is a PHPWomen Calendar available for 2010, and it is now on sale. It features our charter members dressed as the beautiful women they are, with a guest appearance by our booth babes.
The calendars are available to buy on Zazzle, and can be ordered in a selection of sizes (Zazzle have local domains around the world; check where to ship yours from). 10% of every purchase goes to PHPWomen to enable us to use those funds to support the group and our members next year. Our gracious thanks go to our friend and booth babe Derick Rethans, who photographed us so beautifully (despite our diva moments!) and created the calendar products for you to buy – Derick, you rock
So – go forth and purchase! Surely there’s someone in your life who needs this calendar! Or maybe you’d like one for yourself …?
Posted September 22nd, 2009 by lornajane
PHPWomen is expanding its IRC presence with a new channel – and this one is just for the ladies. Our existing channel #phpwomen remains open to all but we’re adding a little space for the women to get
together without the men if they want to. This channel has a password – pop in to #phpwomen on freenode, introduce yourself and request access details if you want to join in!
Posted August 9th, 2009 by ElizabethN
We’re happy to announce that we are making variations of our PHPWomen t-shirts for sale! Now those of you who couldn’t make it to the conferences can get a PHPW shirt for every day of the week.
We have two places where you can buy your PHPWomen shirt:
US/Canada: http://phpwomen.spreadshirt.com
Europe: http://phpwomen.spreadshirt.net
For everyone else, you’ll likely have to see which shop can give you the best rate on shipping.
The shops are operated separately, so you’ll see a difference in the products we’re offering in each. We’ll be expanding our offering in the next few months, though, so keep an eye on us.
If you have any questions or comments about the shirts, by all means, let me know at elizabeth-at-naramore-dot-net.