December 11, 2009
Posted in Events at 4:15 pm 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/.
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July 16, 2009
Posted in Events, Members at 1:49 am by lornajane
One of our regular members, Kana Yeh, attended DPC this year and wrote about her experiences there:
This is the 3rd PHP conference I been to within a year; that is quite a lot for me! First the PHP conference in Apeldoorn by Eduvision, then PHP UK 2009 in London. Thanks to PHPwomen I could attend the most recent one: DPC09 by Ibuildings in Amsterdam.
Being in London for only 4 months and working at Touchnote seems short but it was nice to be back in Holland for a few days. I do miss Holland a bit and all the things I can’t get my hands on in London like: Hollandse drop (Dutch Liquorice candy), Hollandse nieuwe (Salted herring), frikandel speciaal and a broodje kroket. 7 more months to go and I will be able to have all of that again! and then it is my turn to miss the wonderful things in London 
The PHP conference added more sweetness to my short stay in Holland. PHP or web related conferences are mental energy boosters for me. It is very motivating to absorb the new or more in depth information and to learn more and more. I seem not to be able to get enough of it.
But, what to do if there are multiple tracks with interesting talks at the same time?…panic? I didn’t know what to do. With agony I had to sacrifice the one for the other. How do you deal with multiple talks at the same time that you both don’t want to miss?
Here is a recap of a few talks that I attended and found interesting.
An intermediate talk about Caching for Performance
by Rob Allen
Do not try to get data more than once. First measure performance, how fast/slow your website is, using software like Siege. Do not guess what is slowing down your site, instead use a profiler to find out what is going on, for example: xdebug and Webgrind (http://code.google.com/p/webgrind/): What you’ll be looking for is:
- unexpected function calls
- functions called too often
- functions take too long to return result
Types of caching in order, from fast to fastest are database, filesystem or memory (i.e. memcached, Zend_Cache). Examples of when to use caching:
- names of countries doesn’t change often (if at all), use a cached version.
- a news page, update cache when a new article is added
Another way is browser level caching. This is not forcible but it is possible to provide the hint and ask browser to cache it. Get browser to cache files that are called constantly like css, js and images that are on every page. This is ideal if visitor visits many of our pages.
State & Ajax – How to Maintain Browser and Application State in an Asynchronous World
by Paul Reinheimer
- The ‘back’ button is not ours to take! Give back to the visitors.
- Ajax requests sent have no guarantee to come back in the same order. To solve this, queue the requests. It might be slower, but it is reliable.
- One reason why visitors abandon shopping cards is because they are frustrated by the shopping experience. They give up and try somewhere else. This is easy because of the low barrier: type in an other address in address-bar. To keep your visiting shopers focus on user experience.
- User experience is the new brand! “Websites that continuously provide excellent user experiences are more likely to be visited, re-visited, shared, and praised”. Provide an experience that works exactly like it should work. For the developer it sounds like a lot of extra work. But that is 10% more work for me for 30% less effort for every user who will every use the site.
Habits of Highly Scalable Web Applications
by Eli White
- Performance = speed or rendering
- Scaling = web app that works with current and future load of new level of traffic
- Don’t write code that is meant for 1 server only.
- Use Master/Slave replication. This way you have a backup if 1 machine dies
- Isolate load on the server is a crucial aspect of scaling. CUD on master and R from the slave
- Avoid slave lag! Especially with lots of traffic and CRUDS at once.
- Partitioning: Break database in smaller ones.
- Vertical, horizontal or application level partitioning
- Cache small pieces of data that can be reused often, eg: friends stories
The conference was well organized with over 300 attendees. Not only were most talks of great interest to me but the breaks, the lunch and the atmosphere was great. The times in between talks everyone seemed to be networking and meeting new interesting people. I too met interesting new people who you see around on the internet! It was also great to see the guys and girls again who I met before at PHP chatrooms on Freenode and other conferences/events.I also had the chance to promote Touchnote postcards. Giving everyone who attended DPC09 a free Touchnote postcard to send to anyone, anywhere they wanted! Thank you Cal Evans for the nice intro in the opening of the last day. I hope everyone sent a Touchnote card to their friends or family. If not: Do it! (you have the code)..
A pat on the back for the Ibuildings’s organizing team and sponsors. I hope to see you next year with more in depth topics.
Thanks Kana! Were you at the event? Got something to share about your experience? Add a comment!
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April 4, 2009
Posted in Events, News at 9:17 am by KathyReid
Many of us in the PHP community have attended BarCampus – informal, unorganised gatherings of like-minded folk, dedicated to sharing information, exploring new technology and forging relationships. BarCamps tend to be held in urban areas and capital cities, with easy access to space, wireless internet etc. This struck the founder of BarCampMelbourne, Ben Balbo, as a contradiction. BarCamps are open, transparent events, which encourage participation from people of all technical abilities. Barriers to participation are reduced as much as possible – with entry fees kept low and sponsors brought on board to help bear costs. However, those who live in rural areas often face different hurdles to participating in BarCamps, and IT in general – such as poor access to internet services (particularly broadband), fewer people to network and share with, and less access to hardware and software.
From this situation was born the idea of StixCamp – a BarCamp held in a rural area. The very first StixCamp was held in Newstead, Central Victoria, Australia on 14th-15th March and saw a number of seasoned presenters share their areas of expertise with the nearly 50 attendees. The presentations included;
The post event survey indicated that StixCampNewstead was a roaring success, in no small part due to the generous support of sponsors, in particular Multimedia Victoria.
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March 12, 2009
Posted in Events at 4:22 am by lornajane
This came up on the forums a while ago but this year’s Ada Lovelace Day is very soon, on March 24th. As a celebration of women in technology, there’s a pledge running – where you pledge to publish something on that day about a woman you admire in science or technology.
There are a few of us signed up already, and I hope others will join us too. So that we can share in the excitement, please post a comment here with a link to your post – so we can all read around one another’s and learn about more inspiring women.
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February 5, 2009
Posted in Events, Members, News, php at 12:13 pm by lig
If you happen to be in Jacksonville, Florida on March 9th be sure to drop in and see us at the Florida Linux Show. We should have a small booth set up to sit and chat about whatever you wish.
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March 9, 2008
Posted in Events, News at 9:27 am by lig
Yep – I’ll be at the MySQL Conference so be sure to come and find me for talk, a sticker and maybe a drink or two.
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Posted in Events, News at 9:23 am by lig
Be sure to find Melanie at the PHP Quebec conference!
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Posted in Events, News at 7:54 am by KathyReid
PHP|tek will be held in Chicago, Illinois, United States on 20-23 May 2008.
Check out their website for more information.
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