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 News, Members, 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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January 15, 2008
Posted in Interviews, php at 3:23 am by sree
I am very glad to present my first interview for PHPWomen with NancyW
NancyW - a well known drupal developer, documentation contributor, module developer/maintainer apart from these a prestigious WOMEN in the world of opensource.Here in this part of the interview she shares few of her experiences with us giving motivation to the fellow new comers (especially women new comers into open source).
1. Can you give us a walk through about what is that ‘PMP’ all about?
It stands for “Project Management Professional.” It’s a professional certification for project managers and is administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). To obtain the certification, one must demonstrate having met certain education and experience requirements – and pass a hellacious test. You could look at it as like a “CPA” for project managers.
2. What was your college major?
Okay, no laughing! My major was physics. Of course that required a minor in math. To help with my homework, which had a lot of plug-in-the-numbers-and-turn-the-crank, I took a Fortran course. That turned into an intensive minor than almost became a second major. I did look at graduate school in computer science, but there was no real “standard” curriculum between schools then and my undergraduate studies were almost the same as the graduate school, so I just went to work as a programmer.
3. Which is your major interest - management or technology?
Yes and no. 
I originally went into management because I had pretty much exhausted technology in the mainframe environment, which is where I was at the time. Then I was asked, because of my planning skills, to lead a project that involved the technology I knew so well. That was the birth of the project manager. Management without the headache part; new challenges on every project! I can learn as much or as little as I want about the technology involved. So, I guess you could say my interest is really in challenge. (Does anyone know about the “DaVinci” personality?)
4. How did you find interest in Drupal all the way from project management?
This is a somewhat condensed version of the whole boring story.
I had begun learning HTML several years ago and knew enough to be dangerous. After my husband died and being unemployed, I created a web site for me to try to organize the things I had written (and myself). Along the way, some trouble started brewing in a group to which some friends belonged and they expected it to get worse, so they asked me to prepare in case their web site to go away suddenly. When their fears came true, I was able to quickly get their site back up with some improvements.
Unfortunately, both that site and mine were using frames, and I found out that search engines don’t like frames. Converting to non-frames wasn’t hard, but maintaining the navigation was. During my time with IBM, I had a [very] slight knowledge of content management systems, so I decided to look into it. I don’t remember why, but I started looking at XOOPs, but they couldn’t keep their documentation servers up long enough for me to get a grasp on how to proceed.
So I started looking at Drupal and liked it. It did everything I needed – and a whole lot more. I downloaded it (using the package from DeveloperSode.net) and started playing. Converting my site that was all static pages is pretty close to trivial for Drupal, so it went quickly. Then my host didn’t like that I bothered them with questions and they pulled the plug suddenly on both of the sites. I found a new host in a matter of minutes and transferred my site; it was down for less than two hours. The other site still had to be converted to Drupal, but I had time while the registrar released the domain (that was a major hassle). To make it short, when the domain finally got released – a week later – I had the new, Drupal-based, site ready and it went right up. I haven’t looked back.
Since then I have created several more sites, some live, some just for me (on my PC). All of them use Drupal. I got involved on the Drupal forums as a way to help me learn more. I wrote a “book” to help other newcomers get up to speed. Then I started getting people asking for help, so Nancy-the-Drupal-web-site-builder was born. Then I needed to do something that didn’t work quite right in core Drupal, so I developed a module (an add-on feature), with help from another helpful soul, to do it. Since then I’ve written several more modules and a lot more documentation. [I’m actually a bit amazed at all that I have done in the first year with Drupal.]
5. Can you list out your best as well worst experiences that you have come across in your career path?
At the risk of sounding philosophical, I’ve come to feel that experiences are neither “good” not “bad.” They simply are; and each one contributes to who you are now. Hopefully one learns something from all those experiences whether others consider them good or bad. Having said that, let me try to answer your question.
When I joined IBM, I didn’t know that project management was something you could study, let alone be certified in. I just thought you either had a knack for it or didn’t. So I learned a lot about project management from IBM’s education and I try to pass it on when I get the chance.
Another thing I learned from IBM was how to be a consultant. Not everyone is cut out for it. In some ways it’s harder than being someone’s employee.
As for “bad” experiences, one of my most traumatic also came from IBM: being laid off for the first time (along with about half their workforce). For the first time in my life I was unemployed involuntarily. This was a big shock and an unpleasant education.
6. Have you ever had problems with people not taking you seriously because of who you are or your background?
Yes, this has happened, and will probably continue. People from all over the world adopt OS applications so you run into people from cultures where women are not supposed to work or are considered second-class citizens. You have to try to ignore those attitudes and move on.
The second problem I’ve run into, and it should diminish over time, is that I’m new to OS, so people think I can’t possibly know what I’m doing. This is largely the error of the young – they have trouble realizing that experience elsewhere can be carried over to the new environment. For example, while I am new to PHP, I have been programming for over 30 years so organizing my thoughts into a program, whatever language it is written in, is nothing new. Those who started with, or have only used, PHP may have trouble realizing that my experience gives me a leg up.
And then that brings me to some attitudes I have run up against with Drupal. Being new AND a woman, many don’t take me seriously – including other women. There was one module that I was told that I couldn’t write. What a shock when I did!
But there are still those within the Drupal community who belittle me, even though I am now the fourth highest contributor to the documentation and have (at this writing) contributed six modules (more on the way) and taken on co-maintainer status on three others. What’s a girl to do?
7. What are your likes/dislikes about open source?
Hmm, this may be a case where the two are intertwined; that is that the things you like may also be the things you dislike.
I like having the source code, particularly when I’m having trouble understanding the application. It allows me to dig in and find out what it does (as opposed to what it “should” do). This can be a double-edged sword: reading and understanding the code takes time away from implementing it.
I like being able to extend or improve the code, but, again, this takes more time than asking someone else to do it.
Often OS applications are written (and maintained) by people who do not make much, if any, money from it. That means that her or his motivation to make improvements waxes and wanes with their interest and other circumstances. This may very well place the burden of fixes or improvements upon you, the adopter. Further, submitting those changes also takes time and energy. But, on the positive side, you get those changes on your schedule, not theirs.
8. Any advice from your side to newcomers to the field of open source?
These first two things I learned a long time ago, but many people don’t seem to have realized them:
· The computer is a high-speed moron. Barring electronics breakdowns, it does what you tell it to, when you tell it, and only what you tell it. If you don’t get the results you wanted, you made the mistake. Note that “you” here is plural – it includes the programmer as well.
· Don’t be afraid of the computer. It has no feelings or ulterior motives; it does not intend to scare you. If it “breaks,” it deserved it; someone didn’t do his or her job right.
Here is a bit of advice more specific to open source:
· Since the developers are often poor documenters, a good way to start is to contribute by writing better documentation. You will learn more and the developer will usually be happy that you did.
· Most OS applications have forums (or is that fora) for discussion, questions, issues, etc. Get involved; it’s a great way to learn.
· If you find a bug or need a new feature, make the change and contribute the changes (a “patch”). Most developers also welcome this. Be prepared to explain why the change is needed (also called a “use case”).
9. Can you tell us more about yourself? - Something about how you started your career, how was your journey, what are your present assignments, etc.
Well, I mentioned earlier that I started programming to help with homework. When I left college, I got a job with the State of South Carolina as a programmer. For several reasons, that led me into being a systems programmer – at that time, this was the person who maintained the operating system on your mainframe (there were no PCs then). I stayed in that role, evolving with the operating systems, for about 15 years, then became the manager over a staff of systems programmers. Then there was a need for someone to oversee a project for another division and I filled in doing that. That led to my becoming the “Manager of Special Projects” for the company.
After that, my husband and I started our own franchised business. That didn’t work out as we planned, so I went back to work as a programmer, eventually moving back into being a project manager at a large credit card processing center. But we didn’t like California, so when IBM came along, I moved. That got me into being a consulting project manager until I got laid off (the second time).
At that point my husband was noticing some serious physical problems and the job market for project managers was almost non-existent. We eventually found out it was terminal (ALS) so I decided to stop beating my head against the employment wall for a while to stay with him. After his death there was still not much of a job market and our savings were almost gone. My mother needed a caregiver so I started doing that.
I mentioned above how that morphed into doing web sites, and that’s where I am today.
10. How do you manage your time among all these things?
Poorly! 
My personality style is that I tend to work on what I want to at the time. This is not good when you want to work for someone else – they want your undivided attention. I am much better at managing other people’s time than my own.
11. What are your other hobbies?
Well, at the moment, I don’t have the time or money to do much, so I guess that my current “hobby” is improving, extending, and promoting Drupal.
When I had regular, gainful employment, I enjoyed “artsy” type photography, landscaping, and sailing. Unfortunately, circumstances caused me to lose my sailing partner and boat, so that’s gone. The other two I just can’t afford.
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January 9, 2008
Posted in News, Members, php at 10:07 am by lornajane
Happy New Year! Our New Year’s resolution is to dust off the mailing list and start using it - we have quite a few subscribers already so let’s get started already.
You can find the signup pages and information at http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/phpwomen, where you will find all the information you need - if you already signed up you can also change your settings and get a password reminder from this page. So no excuses, we’ll see you on the mailing list - everyone is warmly welcome.
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November 21, 2007
Posted in News, Articles, php at 10:54 am by lornajane
At the beginning of November I attended the International PHP Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. This was my first attendance at any of the larger conferences and I thought I’d share my experiences as a conference newbie. The most noticeable thing was that all kinds of minorities were wildly under-represented. There were very few people over 35, female or with non-caucasian appearances. On the women front I counted about ten, excluding organisers, and I’d say most of these were attending the AJAX strand of the conference - on the PHP front there were only two female speakers.
The hotel itself was a really nice venue, and well-suited to an event of this kind. Between talks there were plenty of drinks and coffee laid out for everyone, and the snacks which were provided in some of the breaks were really tasty. Their meeting rooms were well-equipped with projectors and so on, however the wireless network didn’t survive the strain of so many geeks in a small area and was intermittent at best. The “expo” was about 5 stands clogging up the entrance hall, with the main sponsors each having a stand. EZ Systems, SugarCRM, Code Gear, Mayflower and some german-language publishers were there, and there was a Zend Lounge in the corner consisting of three sofas.
The night before the main conference, there was an event called “Code Camp @ Night” where two internals developers (Marcus Boerger and Johannes Schluter) delivered a workshop on extending PHP. The session also featured pizza and beer which I saw as a major selling point. The website listed the session and said that it was imperative to register for it, however there was no means to do so on the site and my repeated emails to the organisers met with no response. Since we weren’t registered on the conference until the following day we didn’t think we’d be able to attend but we dropped in to the hotel a day early and were told we’d be welcome at this event, which was great news! The event itself was really interesting, if a bit over my head.
Pizza aside, the food throughout the conference was extremely good. The days were very long, with two meals being served on the Tuesday and a main meal on Wednesday. It was a hot and cold buffet setup with large dining spaces - I think everyone managed to find something they were happy to eat, with fruit, salads and dessert being available as well as a selection of hot food.
One thing I found strange throughout the conference was that almost all the attendees and speakers had German as a first language. There were sessions in both English and German but even the English sessions often started with “does anyone NOT speak German?”, with the speaker hoping to be able to communicate in the majority language of the assembled group . Since I only speak English I felt quite awkward about the whole thing and having sessions in both languages didn’t really work that well for me as there were quite a few that I couldn’t attend. The keynotes were all in English and perhaps it would have been more straightforward to have everything in one language or another - in the end I had to go through and highlight which sessions I _could_ attend and then choose from those.
The keynotes were of varying degrees of interest and quality. First up was Zak Greant with his “Age of Literate Machines”. This was a fantastic and inspiring talk, Zak was eloquent and interesting and his slides were excellent. His point, that only open systemns should be used for government of society in order that everyone can understand the mechanism that controls their lives, was noble and thought-provoking. The following day Derick Rethans’ talk “Personal Home Page Tools Have Grown Up” showed a clear (and amusing) history of how his experience has grown alongside the language and how much he and it have developed along the way. The final talk was much less interesting, Bill Scott on “Design Patterns and Principles”; this didn’t involve design patterns but instead revolved entirely around inaccessible, client-side technologies. I’m sure the point of this talk was to cater to the AJAX conference that was happening in tandem with the PHP one, but it didn’t do anything for me and I hope it wasn’t representative of the content in that strand.
The sessions themselves were generally very good, with four to choose from at any given time. On the first day I think I picked the mainstream topics since quite a few of the talks I attended were standing room only. I can’t speak in general about the sessions as of course I only attended a small sample of the choice of sessions that were available, but what I did see was very interesting, put across well, and were well-prepared which is always a bonus!
There were long breaks between the sessions which was excellent and allowed for plenty of chattering, coffee drinking and table football (I lost count of the number of times I was asked the English word for it!) and enabled everyone to mingle. On the Tuesday evening, the middle night of the main conference, there was a Casino Night, with Poker, BlackJack and Pontoon tables running with a free bar. The games looked like fun but basically I couldn’t stop meeting new people for long enough to try them out! Certainly it was a good ice-breaker and people who didn’t know anyone could sit at the games tables and get talking with others as the evening progressed. To add a finishing touch to the conference I was also able to tag along to dinner in a local eatery with a bunch of speakers and others who were staying over the night following the conference - talk about being in with the cool kids!
All in all I am really glad I made the effort to go, I met quite a few people in person that I knew of by reputation or had met online. Having never attended a conference it was interesting to see how things work, see different styles of speaking and presenting, and generally get a feel for these things. The party atmosphere I heard so much about from ZendCon and the php| conferences was definitely missing from this one, however I did have a good time regardless. Would I go again? I don’t think I would, I paid for the conference and the trip myself since my employers didn’t see it as worthwhile, and for two days I must say it really did seem like a lot of money. I won’t say it was a bad conference, and I don’t have a lot to compare it to - certainly there is nothing else close to it in Europe. Perhaps if I wish for it enough the rumours of a European ZendCon will come true one day …
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November 13, 2007
Posted in News, php at 12:46 pm by lornajane
Zoe’s talk at the conference was entitled “TEST || die”; she talked about how she got into testing PHP itself and her hopes for the future. There is little activity on the PHP QA mailing list and a great need for more tests to be written so that changes to fix known bugs or add new features will not break existing functionality. She is disappointed that more people aren’t already involved in writing tests as it’s a really good entry route into being more involved with the core of the language and the entry level for it is much lower than submitting patches for PHP itself. I caught up with her the next day to ask how she ended up here and championing this cause!
How did you get started with PHP?
I was a manager at IBM for some time and the nature of my job meant I had little time for coding. I picked up PHP because it is easy and quick to learn when I wanted to write a tool.
Why did you start writing PHP tests? What made you decide to help PHP in that way?
One of my colleagues (Graeme Johnson) went to the PHP International Conference last year and met Derick and Marcus there. Graeme came back with the message “PHP needs more tests”. I was just moving out of mangement and had 9 months to fill before I went to University - I needed a project that was going to be useful to someone, self-educational and that IBM would be happy for me to do. Writing PHP tests met all those criteria. I’ve always been a better tester than anything else - I think it’s a combination being able to see the way users will do something and be able to read code enough to understand what the developer meant. I suppose that other factor that influenced my choice to do this was that I’m a fanatical supporter of open source development …. but that’s another subject
You’re taking a year out, what are you up to?
I’m going back to university, taking an MSc in Software Engineering at Southampton University. The course will cover Java but maybe I’ll get to do PHP as part of my course as well. It’ll be good to bring my technical skills (which got rusty when I was a manger) up to date with subjects like OOP.
Have you made contact with any groups in the PHP world?
I do keep up with the mailing lists - internals, QA and the CVS list. I do also sometimes use the #php-pecl channel on IRC. In the real world I go to the London PHP User Group meetings as well, they’re really interesting. There is a broad range of people there and you find out which companies are using PHP. People often show off their various applications there too, I’ve seen some really good ones.
Do you have a particular support network?
When I started out writing the tests for PHP I did feel really alone. Once I started submitting tests though, I started getting feedback from the internals guys like Marcus Boerger and Tony Dovgal. It’s really scary at first, working with people that are very expert developers working on complex software … but they really appreciate the input and responded well.
How did you come to be speaking at this conference?
When I saw the call for papers I submitted the proposal and they offered me a quick talk slot (15 minutes in the evening). There was nothing special, I just thought the subject was important and went for it.
Have you got much speaking experience?
The last time I presented at a conference was 30 years ago! I was really nervous but actually I quite enjoyed it once I got there and I have had lots of practice at presenting inside IBM and to IBM’s customers – but somehow it’s not the same.
Can you tell us a bit about your talk for those that weren’t there?
The point was to raise the profile of testing PHP. We really don’t have enough test coverage for PHP, but people don’t see it as an area they can contribute to. It’s seen as being difficult but its not! Maybe because I’ve managed a lot of software development I have more of a “bigger picture” awareness, it’s really clear how important this is to the future of the PHP project.
You’ve had a long technical career AND children, how has that worked out for you?
I have always been determined to have both, even though having dependent children of any age makes it hard to concentrate on anything else. I have twins who are now at university and I’ve worked for IBM since they were 10 months old; it helps that my husband has always been around and done his share. When I went to work for IBM I made arrangements for working hours that fitted in with my family and I stuck to them. I don’t know what my colleagues thought of it but it worked well and IBM are a really good employer. They have fantastic maternity arrangements and also make a big effort to bring in women from all sorts of backgrounds and to raise their awareness of the possibility of a technical career. I think being a woman can be an advantage - people will always explain things to you, and we’re better at asking for help.
You’re trying to get people writing tests for PHP - where do we start?
Go to qa.php.net and there are instructions on what is needed for a test for PHP. To find out what areas need tests writing, visit gcov.php.net for the current test coverage of the various libraries. We are considering making this simpler by having a list of testing priorities that people can pick from. At the moment you have to submit tests to the QA mailing list main PHP CVS repository if you have access, but there has been discussion around making an intermediate “safe” area to submit your tests for review by other testers before they go into the main tree. If your test is then used, we’d let you know and make sure you were credited for your contribution.
You’re trying to single-handledly get PHP tested and overhaul the process for submitting tests. Do you know what you are getting into?
Yes! But I really do feel that this is a really, really important factor of the project, and trying to help is important. Actually – it’s not single handed – my colleague Raghubansh Kumar has submitted over a 1000 test cases, Rob Nicholson has added some too. Tony Dovgal, Marcus Boerger and Derick Rethans have all reviewed the tests and made helpful comments, Nuno Lopes fixed run-tests.php pretty nicely too. So, I’ve had lots of help.
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October 25, 2007
Posted in News, Members, php at 10:13 pm by lig
Well maybe not so quietly. We hit our one year anniversary for PHPWomen while at Zend Con this year and had a great time. In that one year we have set up this site, been to 2 conferences sending 2 people who would not of normally been able to go, handed out t-shirts at those conferences, grown a member list of 250+ strong and made some really strong connections to the PHP Community as a whole. Not bad. Hopefully this next year will allow us to do even more, so wish us luck.
What started out as a call for the women in PHP to stand up and be noticed on Oct 8th, 2006 has grown into the current site and organization we now have. I want to send out a great big thanks to Elizabeth Naramore, Elizabeth Smith, Sara Golemon, Lorna Mitchell, and Kathy Reid for all the incredible help in building the community and site. I would also like to send a big thanks to all our booth babes - Cal Evans, Curt Zirzow, Chris Cornutt, Ben Ramsey, Paul Reinheimer, Derick Rethans, and Jay Pipes for wearing our shirts, talking to people, helping to promote our site/community at the various conferences and just being all around sex objects for us. Another big thanks has to go to Zend and PHPArchitect for donating passes to their conferences. Zend was also incredibly generous and give us a booth during Zend Con and helped us with cash to offset the cost of the t-shirts we gave out. Lastly I would like to thank the PHP Community as a whole. You have been great in supporting us and we couldn’t be here without you.
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October 16, 2007
Posted in News, php at 10:28 pm by lig
OK - I finally broke down and made a facebook group for PHPWomen. Feel free to come and join us.
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October 15, 2007
Posted in News, php at 12:04 am by lig
Well maybe not officially but we did have incredible support during it. We managed to give away (almost) all of our t-shirts (~200) on the very first day of the conference (had about 20 left over that were quickly gone the next day) and caused a sea of purple every day afterwards. So if you see a purple shirt in a picture from the conference - it is ours! Yes!
Did learn a couple of things from this conference.
- Need more small and medium sizes. Smalls were gone in under an hour and mediums weren’t that far behind it.
- Guys kept requesting Booth Babe shirts… sorry those are only for those our official booth babes. if you want to volunteer to be a booth babe at a conference - let us know!
- we did not realize how many bosses/coworkers would want shirts to take back for their female associates back at the office.
Here are a couple of links for pictures from the conf:
The booth:1 2 3
The Official Booth Babes: Cal Evans Ben Ramsey Curt Zirzow and Chris Cornutt Jay Pipes
Random pictures of our shirts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 (there are more if you care to look at the flickr stream)
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August 22, 2007
Posted in News, php at 9:29 pm by lig
Just wanted to let the world know that we will be handing out t-shirts with 2 designs at this years Zend Conference. Below you will find a mock up I made (not the printers) for what the t-shirts will look like. You will be able to pick a t-shirt at the PHPWomen booth in the exhibition hall that Zend has been so kind to donate to us.
Hope to see you at Zend Con.
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My personality style is that I tend to work on what I want to at the time. This is not good when you want to work for someone else – they want your undivided attention. I am much better at managing other people’s time than my own.
