Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

I sit here this morning working on my sixth PHP conference (ZendCon 06, 07, 08, DPC 09, tekx and now ZendCon 10) I have to sit back and reflect on how lucky I am. I get paid to help select the sessions that developers from around the world will sit in and learn in. It is truly humbling when I think about it.

One of the few downsides to planning a conference though is that any given Call for Papers usually generates a nine to one ratio of proposals to speaking slots. Do the math and you will see that for every one person I get to make happy, eight more think I am a total douche, or worse. I call the email’s “Dear John’s” because “rejection letters” seems so ugly. No matter what you call them though, it is never a happy time.

I’ve sent out thousands of Dear John’s in the past 5 years. Most people simply sigh and move on. Occasionally David Coallier will rip on my for habitually rejecting him at every conference. (It’s not on purpose dude, I swear!) However, my favorite response is one I usually only get once per conference. Every now and then, someone will write me and ask “Ok, so how do I better my chances of being selected?” They really want to speak and want to know what it takes.

The selection committee has a responsibility to pick the topics and speakers that they know will give the attendees the highest return on their training dollar. That is why you see a lot of the same speakers at each big conference. Most of us know Derick Rethans, Sebastian Bergmann, Lorna Jane Mitchell, Nate Abele and Keith Casey. We know the types of talk they deliver but most importantly, we know that if they pitch a session they know their material.

So how does a new speaker break into the national level? Here is the advice I give each speaker that asks me after getting a Dear John, usually accompanied by specific advice on why their specific session was rejected if possible.

1. Blog on your topic. Blog it a lot. Blog it until people think of you when they think of your topic.
2. Start speaking at your local user group. Be willing to drive to the next city and speak at their’s also. User Groups are a great way to practice new material and user group leaders talk to each other. it won’t take long for you to gain a reputation.
3. Get accepted at a regional conference. As insinuated above, selection committees don’t like to take a chance on an unknown unless the content is very compelling. The way to overcome that is not to be an unknown. Get accepted at a few regional conferences and make sure they are using joind.in for feedback. I can’t count the number of times I’ve referenced a speaker’s joind.in profile in the last two years to read the comments. (Consider it your speaker’s resume)
4. Record your talks and put them on your web site. If nobody else will record them for you, do it yourself. Most cameras and even phones have 30-45 minutes of record time. Set one up in the corner and record yourself. Jeremy Brown has an excellent example of this on his presentations page. (And if you are into Zend Framework watch his “Zend Framework…without Inhaling” video. it’s worth the 45 minute investment.)
5. When you submit to a national conference, in the “Additional notes” section, give me links to all of this. Yes it is true, most proposals get between 10 and 30 seconds. However, if yours catches the eye of the committee, don’t make them dig to find out who you are or if you are any good. Give them this info up front.

There, that is my advice to speakers who receive Dear John letters. If you want it bad enough, go get it, don’t just shrug and give up. Trust me, we want you to be a part of conferences, big and small.

Until next time,
I <3 |<

=C=

Dear Reader,

I have given up on feed readers. I never did like them much to begin with and have found over the past couple of years that twitter does a better job of showing me interesting blog posts than Google Reader ever did.

In addition to recommendations from friends however, there are a hand full of accounts that I follow to keep up with what is going on. So here is my #followFriday for the next few weeks all wrapped into a single blog post.
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Dear Reader,

Those that know me know that the PHP community is near and dear to my heart. I am always looking for ways to support it, usually to the chagrin of my employer. We have the greatest community of any programming language I know of and I like helping people find ways to participate in it.
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Dear Reader,

I’m sitting in Schipol airport with Rob Allen waiting for my flight. (Rob is reviewing his photos) Thinking back over the past few days, the word that comes to mind is fantastic. DPC10 was fantastic.

For those that don’t know me, I have a personal interest in DPC as last year I worked at Ibuildings and hosted it. It’s always difficult to hand off something that means so much to you but I am happy to report that Lorna Jane took it and made it her own. It was everything I had hoped it would be.

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Dear Reader,

Back in March I had the opportunity to work on a project for Microsoft that is now coming to light. I was tasked with writing a PHP wrapper for the Bing API that Microsoft has been building. I’ve written API wrappers before and it is either a fun experience or it is a nightmare, depending on whether the API is easy to work with. I am pleased to report that the Bing Search API is well thought out and very easy to work with. For PHP developers, I am hoping that what I am about to show you makes it even easier.
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Dear Reader,

It seems like every six months or so I write a pro-Microsoft post. It’s not really on purpose, it just seems like two to three times a year they remind me that there are pools of brilliance in that company, even if they are surrounded by oceans of stupidity.

This post’s catalyst

I have a lot of contact with Microsoft due to my job. However, most of it is at a detail level where it is easy to lose the big picture. It wasn’t until TEK·X and the session Tips & Tricks to get the most of PHP with IIS, Windows, and the Windows Azure Cloud by
Sumit Chawla & Kanwaljeet Singla that I got a glimpse of the big picture again. I began to see all of Microsoft’s efforts together as one, instead of seeing them as a series of individual efforts.

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Dear Reader,

I’ve written a version of this email twice today so I thought I would post it for the other 4 people that read my blog.

The question posed to me is this.

I am new to PHP, but not necessarily to programming. How do I get hired as a PHP developer.

In both cases, I wrote something like this.

Dear XXXX,
First welcome to the PHP Community, there is always room for more! :)
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Dear Reader,

Short version

If you have a library of code you want to convert to PHP 5.3 namespaces and it follows the Zend class naming standard, this tool will do the grunt work for you. Clone the repo using git or just grab the archive and start playing with it.

The fun version

RALPH! That’s how these conversations usually start. I can feel Ralph cringe over IM every time I do that too. (And I can see Matthew smiling reading this because it used to be MATTHEW!) Ralph Schindler is one of 2 full-time Zend employees whose job it is to work on the Zend Framework. (Yeah, awesome job if you can get it!) Ralph works on a lost of stuff but my favorite is Zend_Tool. Every time Ralph releases a new version of Zend_Tool, he and I end up having an extended debugging session making sure that my zf twitter client still works.

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Dear Reader,

I love Zend Framework. I love it so much I wrote the very first book about Zend Framework. (Note: It’s no longer the best Zend Framework book, but still, it’s a good one) I’ve written projects using it and I now find myself teaching another class on it. One of the cool things about Zend Framework is it’s cli tool, Zend_Tool. (zf) When zf works, it’s awesome. However, when it breaks, it’s a real pain in the butt. Thanks to buddies like Ralph Schindler though (the author of the tool) when it does break, I can usually get help getting it back up and running.

The latest version of zf that comes with Zend Framework 1.10.x and better is much better than previous version and it shows that Zend (well, at least Ralph) listens when people point out problems and work to solve them.

Even though it’s made great strides, setting up zf is still not seamless. To that end, here is my list of steps needed to setup zf.

My setup

I should note before I start that I am running Windows 7. This means symlinking stuff is right out and we have to resort to physically copying files around. On top of Windows 7, I’m running XAMPP. (anyone know, is that pronounced X-AMP ot ZAMP?) this means that my PHP sits in \xampp\php. I’ve added that directory to my WIndows path so I can execute php from any cmd window. With that understanding, here’s my list.

The steps

1. Download Zend Framework and unpack it somewhere on your harddrive where you want it to live.
2. Make sure php.exe is in your PATH and make sure you know where php.exe is.
3. Find the bin directory in your Zend Framework directory. In it there are 2 files, zf.bat (or zf.sh for Linux) and zf.php. Copy those to the same directory php.exe is in. (Linux users, feel free to just symlink them)
4. Your Zend Framework directory should contain a library directory, change directory into it.
5. from the library directory, test your zf to make sure it works, zf show should give you what you need.
6. Type zf --setup storage-directory On Windows 7, this will create a directory named .zf in c:\Users\<Your Profile Name>
7. Type zf --setup config-file. On WIndows 7, this will create a file .zf.ini in c:\Users<Your Profile Name>
8. Using your favorite text editor, open c:\Users\<Your Profile Name>\.zf.ini. There should only be a single line in it that contains the include_path zf will use. Add the full path to your Zend Framework directory here. It should end in “\library\”.

Test it

That’s all there is to getting it setup. (I remember the days when it took twice as long and required cursing just to get it working) To test it out, cd to any directory other than the Zend Framework directory and type zf show version That should give you the current version of the framework you have installed.

Now you are free to start using it to create projects, etc.

Small problem

There is still a problem with defining your own providers. I tried to add my twitter provider (yes, I can use zf to tweet!) and it won’t yet recognize it. I’ve brought this to Ralph’s attention and impressed upon him the importance of being to tweet from zf. I have no doubt that a solution will be forthcoming.
UPDATE
As pointed out in the comments, this has been fixed, just not documented. This page shows how to add your own providers either manually or via a command.

You can either manually add a line to your .zf.ini

basicloader.classes.0 = "My_ClassName"

or you can use zf to update itself

zf enable config.provider class-name

So now I can tweet from zf again. :)

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

[Disclaimer: I use to work at Zend and still have great friends there like the lovely Nili and the walking ray of sunshine that is Andrea. That having been said, it's been a long time since they gave me any money. So the point of this disclaimer is really just so I can mention Nili and Andrea. :) ]

Dear Reader,

This weekend’s Flex project was more successful that last weeks. At least the code has survived this far without me declaring it a bust and moving on to the next project.

This week’s project involves (among other things) calling an API that returns a graphic and then displaying it on-screen. Being the Flex neophyte I am, I assumed that this was a simple call to HTTPService. Unfortunately, as I found out, that won’t work. HTTPService is designed specifically to work with APIs that return specific types of data.
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Dear Reader,

After several years in the PHP Community I’ve come to realize that there are 4 major events on the PHP social calendar, tek, DPC, ZendCon and MSWDS. (Microsoft Web Development Summit) There were 3 MSWDS that took place while I was at Zend and try as I might I could not score an invite to this private party. However, last year my number came up and I was luck enough to be invited. (My thought from MSWDS08 can be found here.) While I had a good time last year, this year was an order of magnitude more interesting, fun and productive for me personally.

I met some new people

This year wasn’t just about the PHP core community, we had attendees that represented the Joomla, Drupal and WordPress communities. I don’t think any of them were official representatives of those communities but they were developers who worked in and around those projects. It was great to meet these guys and I look forward to growing the friendships that started there.

I reconnected with old friends

There are a lot of people in the PHP community that interact with each other almost daily but we only get to see each other in person a few times a year. It was great seeing all my old friends and just hanging with them.

I was co-host this year

Those that know me well know that I’m an attention whore. I love being up in front of a crowd. So I was honored and happy this year when Karri asked me to help host the event. I got a lot more credit for the success of the event than I deserved but was happy to play my small part.

I learned a few new things

To be brief:

• Even if you don’t like installing plugins, Bing Maps makes Silverlight worth installing. It’s not a game changer but they are doing some things that Google isn’t and competition is always good.
• WebPI is continuing to grow and get better. Each time I look at this tool they have either added something new and cool or sanded down a lot of the rough edges to make it more useful.
• WordPress will run on Azure. I seriously had no idea. I can’t afford Azure just to run my blog but if they adjust the pricing a bit, this could be a serious game changer for small-time bloggers like myself.
• The more people I get to know at Microsoft, the less I’m able to despise the company. Oh sure, they patented sudo and nobody at the conference was able to do anything about those “special kind of stupid” decisions that big companies make. As long as they keep hiring people like Josh, Peter, and Karri though, it’s hard to just paint them with one big evil brush.
• Blocking irc on your “guest network” is an exercise in futility. It does no good and 30 minutes after we’ve all connected and found ways around it, we just laugh at you.

fClose()

Again, I can’t seem to say thank you enough to Karri and Tanya for all the work they did to put this summit together. Y’all were awesome hosts and we are all in your debt.

I want to say a special thanks to all the attendees. This year’s summit was great because only a few people just sat there and listened, almost everyone participated at some point. A special thanks to Keith for standing up and getting righteously pissed off because it was the right thing to do.

Most of all though, thank you Microsoft in general for asking my opinion and listening to it. Be warned though, I’m watching you. I want to see if you actually listened.

Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Dear Reader,

UPDATE:
My tests were performed on a Release Candidate of the code. The final code has now been released and Ibuildings has published a benchmark of WinCache 1.0.

Those of you who follow me on twitter know that recently, I tweeted that I had installed Microsoft’s new PHP Opcode Cache, WinCache on a test machine and didn’t see much difference in performance. I then later tweeted that it was probably due to my inexperience in managing II7 and not necessarily a failing of WinCache. In between those two posts, I received 2 messages from people working with Microsoft, the most helpful being from Ruslan Yakushev. If you recognize that name it’s because he writes a lot of good stuff over at iis.net including the getting started guide for WinCache.
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Dear Reader,

I’ve been teaching a Zend Framework class this week and my students have been throwing all kinds of questions at me. Most recently, while we were discussing creating a Bootstrap class for an application a question came up about the _init* functions.

The manual states that

$bootstrap->bootstrap();

will fire all of the _init* functions in the bootstrap class. However, the question came up, in what order? Thanks to friends like Rob Allen (author of “Zend Framework in Action“), I was able to give them the answer.

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Dear Reader,

Recently, I wrote a blog post for the Ibuildings blog titled “PHP Rated Top Scripting Language by Evans Data Corp“. In it, I discuss the various aspects of a report published about Dynamic Languages. Overall, PHP came out the top rated language, however, in community, PHP ranked second. By their own admission, this was a subjective and not objective measurement.

Community is a bit more subjective. For example, the Ruby community is quite small but also very dedicated and vocal.

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Dear Reader,

Ever wonder where you could get one of those cool PHPWomen T-Shirts? Well now you don’t have to travel to a conference just to get one. Now you can order your very own from their new PHPWomen T-Shirt Shop. They have a variety of styles and colors including one just for guys to show their support for the organization.

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