I’m always pleased to be accepted as a speaker but I’m especially delighted to hear that I’m speaking at TEK·X in Chicago this May. They had a crazy number of submissions for the number of slots available, and I really wanted to go since I spoke there last year and enjoyed the event hugely! This year I’m giving the following sessions:

PHP Best Practices (tutorial) – This is a half-day tutorial with my good friend Matthew Weier O’Phinney covering all sorts of good stuff you can do when you develop PHP. Its a general session and the aim is that everyone in the room takes away something new from our tips and tricks (and stories of what *NOT* to do!)

SVN in a Distributed World I’m giving this talk for the first time, looking at how traditional source control (subversion) compares with the newer distributed version control solutions (git, bzr). There’s been lots of buzz around git but in the PHP world we choose our tools on merit, not on cool factor, so this is a chance for me to share my experiences with both types of systems and talk a bit about which scenarios the various tools are a good fit for.

Open Source Your Career Another new talk! This one is about how much personal gain there is being an open source contributor. I’ve grown hugely, both personally and professionally, from my experience with user groups, events, and software in the open source space – so I’ll be sharing some tips on how things can work out well all round.

If you’re going to the conference, then do make sure to stop me and say “hi” – there are so many people at these events that sometimes I miss out on meeting people I’d like to have spoken to. You can’t miss me, I’m the woman with the English accent and curly hair!! I had an absolutely great time last year and I’m already looking forward to this year’s conference!