Keynoting at PHPBenelux

Have you got your tickets for PHPBenelux yet? If not then I hope you will do so because I would love to see you there!

I’ll be delivering a keynote at the PHPBenelux Conference in Antwerp in January alongside my good friend Ivo Jansch. Between us we’ve got plenty of stories to tell from our experiences in various areas of development and we’d like to share those with you! I hope you’ll come along and join us, and if you are quick you can catch the early bird prices, saving 50 euro.

On a personal note I have many great friends in this part of the world and I’m super-excited to know that I’m able to visit and see both the old friends I know well and the new friends I haven’t met yet. I attended this conference last year and it had a great atmosphere; this year the content is better again and with three tracks, I don’t know how we’ll choose which sessions to see!

Are you attending? Leave a comment and make sure to come and say hi at the conference in Belgium :)

Be My Guest for DayCamp4Developers

This weekend I’m presenting at DayCamp4Developers, a virtual event comprising a full day of workshops for developers of all disciplines to improve their soft skills and move forward in their career. I get to attend since I’m speaking, but even after I’ve given my slot I know I’ll be online to watch the other talks and I know I’ll learn something myself! I believe that, however good your technical skills are, being able to communicate effectively means the different between being the bearded expert in the corner who knows everything but has been in the same job 10 years, and being the high flier that soft skills and technical skills combined could make you.

I have one guest ticket for this event, and I want to make sure that it goes to someone who will make good use of it. So, if you would like to be my guest for DayCamp4Developers, this weekend 6th November, then leave me a comment and tell me why you want to attend. In a couple of days (probably Wednesday evening, UK time) I’ll close the comments and pick a winner – put your email address in the comments box (it isn’t displayed) so I can reach you and let you know.

If you don’t win, and want to join us anyway, then you can still buy tickets. Check with your local user group if they have an affiliate code and if not – use this link to buy your tickets, using my affiliate code ;)

Looking forward to “seeing” everyone on Saturday!

Posted in php

Best Practices in API Design: Audio and Slides

Earlier in the year I gave a talk at PHP UK in London entitled “Best Practice for API Design”. I really enjoyed giving this talk, since I work so much with APIs and enjoy sharing my ideas. The audio is now online so if you missed the talk, feel free to have a listen. You can also see the slides (on slideshare) and also read the series of blog posts I wrote on this topic which originally inspired the talk.

PHPNW10: Teach a Man to Fish

Last weekend I gave a talk at PHPNW10 in Manchester, entitled “Teach a Man to Fish”. This is a keynote about teams and how to use the resources around you to create a team where individuals and the whole team continues to learn and develop. The slides are not very detailed, but I’ll be blogging some of the items I mentioned (requests welcome, if you saw it and would like to see any of it written down then just leave me a comment!). Slides:

How to Be a Good Conference Citizen

I get to a lot of events and the crowds at each one are different and there’s a different atmosphere – but at every event there are people who are making the whole thing less enjoyable for everyone else. Probably a lot of those people don’t much care what effect their behaviour has on other people, but if you want to avoid being one of those people, these are my tips:

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Tips for Event Hosting: Content, Feedback and Socials

This is the final post in a short series about hosting events, based purely on my own experience and no specific expertise, in the hope that they will be useful to others doing similar things. If you are interested, you can read the first two posts, about preparing for the event and what to do on the day. This post is about some of the additional things about an event; sharing the content afterwards, getting feedback from attendees, and the most important bit – the social event.
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Day Camp For Developers

I’m very excited by a new virtual event which is coming up, and at which I have been invited to speak. This is Day Camp 4 Developers, an event aimed at developers of all disciplines and focussing on the soft skills that sometimes we miss in our pursuit of technical excellence. I’ll be giving my talk “Open Source Your Career”, which looks at how being involved in open source outside of work can improve our professional development. The event is on November 6th, and you can buy tickets here.

There are a number of things that really appeal to me about this event: Continue reading

Tips for Event Hosting: On The Day

This post is the second in a series of three about organising and hosting events. If you’re interested, you could also read the first post about event preparation.

As an organiser you should know exactly where you are going on the day and what you need. Namebadges (sticky labels and pen if nothing else) will be needed at registration, if you have tickets and need to tick people off then rope in lots of volunteers (it sounds like a lot but 3-5% of your total attendee count is ideal) and brief them, and spread out across as much space as you have so you can parallelise as much as possible – registration is always chaos because of course everyone shows up at once and causes a backlog! Continue reading

Tips for Event Hosting: Preparation

I’ve been to a lot of events, mostly technical, software-related ones, and I’ve also helped organise a few as well. For people organising events for the first time there are definitely some pitfalls that might not be obvious until you actually, well, until you fall into them! I thought I’d capture my experiences into a series of blog posts, in case they can help any future organisers to avoid some of the traps. First up: what to do before your event starts.

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Working with Web Services – Froscon 2010

This weekend I’m at froscon in Germany, giving two talks. One had no slides (but may have video, if I see it then I will post the link here) and the other was “Working with Web Services” which I gave this morning in the PHP room. My slides are here:

Thanks to the PHP room organisers for accepting me as a speaker and to Sebastian for twisting my arm in the first place – it’s a fun event!