February 24, 2010
Posted in News, Planet, php at 5:33 pm 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:
- Highlight open source projects that have an open, friendly and welcoming community surrounding them
- Actively encourage anyone that is considering contributing to a project to participate by giving them specific details and letting them know what’s out there
- Improve diversity in open source by focusing efforts on open communities and notifying our members of opportunities
- Provide assistance to open source projects that are desperately in need of volunteers
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.)
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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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January 10, 2009
Posted in Members, News, php at 8:59 pm by lig
Just wanted to bring everyone up to date on some things that are happening with PHPWomen
1) the site is currently being housed on a temporary server as we get ready to move it over to new hosting. A big thanks to Cal for hosting us the past 2 years! Because of it being on a temporary server, you may notice problems with the forums and/or links. We know of these are will be working to fix things up when we go to our next host.
2) PHPWomen.org is now a not-for-profit incorporation in the state of Florida. I have a couple of other things left to do (like get a tax id for us) but after that I hope to file for a 501(3)(c) tax exempt charity. This will more then likely to take quite a while to get – but we are at least on the road to it.
3) Various volunteers are currently trying to pick the top 3 photos for elephpant world tour. It is a hard choice and I do not envy them the choice.
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April 15, 2008
Posted in News, php at 9:34 pm by lig
Today has been a fabulous day – MySQL really knows how to throw a party… umm Conference. Yesterday had the tutorials and I have to admit that the ones I attended (Advanced Stored Procedures and Memcache) were incredibly interesting and highly relevant. Learned about some things that aren’t even documented in the manual as of yet. And afterwards had a fun time hanging out at the bar with the MySQLers (great guys one and all).
Today I have been “womaning” the booth (Thank you again MySQL and Oreilly for giving it to us) with the help of Sebastian Bergmann and Raj Shekher – handing out business cards and stickers – talking with men and women about our group in between the sessions I am attending (Lost Art of Self Joins, EXPLAIN Demystified, Replication Tips and Tricks). Next to me is the silverstripe CMS group – and they had a gave away for an ipod shuffle… and I won! Woot.
I love this place.
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March 5, 2008
Posted in News, php at 11:03 am by lornajane
Leap Year Day, 29th February 2008, saw the annual London PHP Conference. PHPWomen were lucky enough to be able to get a stand at this conference to promote our organisation, and it was a great opportunity to get together and meet all the women that were able to be there. I didn’t get an exact count but I would say there we 20 women at the event … for a conference with 300 delegates that’s less than 7%, so it was fabulous to see so many there but its not a huge count!
What we lacked in numbers I think its fair to say we made up for in sheer enthusiasm. We took our phpwomen banner with us and it looked great tied to our stall. Maybe we should have learned from previous conferences but we didn’t take anything like as many t-shirts as people wanted, they were all gone by lunch time! It didn’t stop the torrent of people coming to the stand though, to chat to us, pick up a leaflet, or find out more about what the organisation is about.
We had a mascot too – one of the elephpants with a phpwomen branding of his own! Later in the day we also enticed visitors along with cake, which went down very well. I think the best way of expressing how much fun we had (and how much of an impact we made) is to refer you to the flickr photos.
A big thankyou to all the helpers – it was wonderful to meet you all and I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did!
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February 23, 2008
Posted in News, php at 9:13 pm by KathyReid
BarCampMelbourne2008 was, simply put, AWESOME!
BarCampMelbourne2008 was held at Thoughtworks [wikipedia] at 155 Queen Street, Melbourne on 23 Feb 08, and had approximately 60 in attendance. Key observations from the day included:
- The vast majority of attendees were male, with myself and only one other female attendee
- It was surprising to note the large number of presenters with Apple laptops. The attendees were largely from the FOSS community, and the popularity of the MacBook was interesting. This will be a trend to keep an eye on as the iPhone is released (and is likely to integrate well with other Apple offerings)
- The average age of the attendees was higher than I expected, with the majority in the 25-35 age range (I was expecting a a younger crowd). However, this meant that we had a number of seasoned professionals presenting.
My talk was on Deakin University’s use of PHP over the last 8 years and showed how our practices and use of PHP had matured over that time, and what challenges still lie ahead for us.
Other notable presentations included:
- An introduction to the APhpLix (pronounced “app-licks”) development framework, which is based on PHP and Javascript. The presenter, flame, was able to development a web application in around 45 seconds (no kidding!) using an existing data source. My only concern was the lack of accessibility (WCAG) compliance shown by the finished app.
- Jason King presented advice on why donating your technical skills to not for profit organisations can be so rewarding, and gave us tips on how to set appropriate boundaries.
- Ben Cornwell showed us all how PHP Under Control can be used to ‘build’ PHP packages, similar to compiled languages. This helps to prevent SVN/CVS commits breaking a package, and provides a good change management model. PHP Under Control uses Cruise Control.
Finally, last but not least, a very big thank you to Ben Balbo for organising the whole event, and making it such a success.
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February 5, 2008
Posted in News, php at 4:13 pm by lig
I am pleased and proud to announce that PHPWomen and DevChix have formed an alliance with each other that will hopefully help to strengthen both sites and their communities by providing mutual support. Working together we will hopefully be able to do much more then we would do apart.
I recently met with one of the founders of DevChix (Desi McAdam) for dinner and conversation. There we talked about our organizations and histories finding we had a huge number of things in common – from talks with others that led to our earliest beginnings to our shared workings to become a 501c3 tax exempt charity and our shared hope to help women come and be active in their respective coding communities. I had a wonderful time and want to thank Desi for taking the time out of her very busy schedule to meet and talk with me.
We at PHPWomen eagerly look forward to working with DevChix and are excited at what we can do together in the future.
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January 17, 2008
Posted in News, php at 10:40 am by lig
PHP elePHPants – get your PHP elePHPants here.
Cal Evans from the Zend DevZone – being the awesome guy that he is – has graciously offered to mail out to the first 10 people who donate to PHPWomen $50 or more, a PHP elePHPant. Yep – you get one of the hard to find and much sought after plushy PHP elePHPants.
Isn’t he cute!
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January 16, 2008
Posted in News, php at 10:20 am by ElizabethN
The PHPWomen.org site now has an easy way for you to help out, if you’re so inclined. We’ve added a “Donate” button so that if you have some extra cash and want to support a good cause, you can do so easily and securely.
Where will the money go?
As you know, we like to give out our free t-shirts at conferences to help spread the word about our group. Soon, you’ll be able to buy them yourself, but in the meantime the cost for all of those shirts (and the travel to and from the conferences) comes out of our pockets. Occasionally we get help from corporate sponsors, which helps tremendously, but other than that it’s really been up to us. So some of the money will go to promoting our group through giveaways and exhibiting and traveling to conferences.We also want to help out those who may be in need of training materials, help with the ZCE exam, or who want to speak at conferences, but may not afford to be able to do it. So part of the money will go to help our members achieve their goals.
Additionally, we have some cool fundraising ideas floating around, but there are times when you have to have money in order to make money. So some of the money will go to helping our fundraising ideas get off the ground.
What if you want to help out but don’t have any spare cash?
We can still use your help! We are always in need of volunteers for our mentoring program, website help, writing articles that will help our members, and help in other areas. We welcome anyone (and yes that means you too, guys) that wants to lend a helping hand. We can also use your ideas! If you have a great idea for a fundraiser or something that will make our group better and more effective, we would love to hear it! You can email me at elizabeth [at] naramore [dot] net.
Is this PHPWomen thing really making a difference?
I have had numerous women come up to me and say “thanks”. Thanks for giving them a place to go for PHP help and friendship, thanks for bringing us out of the woodwork, and thanks for saying things that they’ve always felt but couldn’t really say to anyone. I also had someone thank me for being “normal” about it and keeping the group open to everyone. Of course, the same issues exist in other languages besides PHP. Just last week I spoke to several other women at Codemash (Python, Ruby and C# devs) and while we laughed at the lack of the female presence there, it’s still unfortunate. It’d be nice to see a difference made in our PHP subculture that other groups can use to their advantage.
Incidentally, on our site, we’ve also posted the conferences where we will be exhibiting, so if you’re going to be there, please stop by our booth and say hello! (And make sure to pick up your t-shirt, sticker, or whatever we happen to be giving away at the time 
)
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Posted in Members, News, php at 9:13 am by lig
Just noticed a cool FREE webinar for those that are going after their ZCE. Zend will be holding on the 30th of January the webinar “Everything you need to know about the PHP 5 Certification Exam“
So if you are chasing after that elusive ZCE and feel like you need more – or are considering going after your ZCE, be sure to attend. Can’t hurt anything and may just give you want you need to feel confident taking the test.
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