Dear Reader,

Conferences are a big part of being a developer. Whether you organize them, speak at them, or attend them; they play an important role in the lives of developers. As a conference organizer myself, I know the problems that face organizers and the biggest problem I see is that each year, we get a lot of great talks proposed from the same people. There’s nothing wrong with these speakers, in fact some of them are pretty damn good. It is nice though, to see new faces – and new perspectives – being represented.

The most common reason I hear for not submitting is that developer’s don’t feel that they can speak in public. That or they’ve tried once, didn’t get accepted, so they assumed that no one is interested. I want to help developers, and conference organizers by trying to solve this problem. To that end, I’ve announced Day Camp 4 Developers #5: Public Speaking for Developers.

Check out our lineup for DC4D#5:

• Secrets to Success: How to propose a talk and get it accepted. – Laura Thomson
• Preparing to Speak – Lorna Jane Mitchell
• Baby Steps to Ballroom Dancing: Getting on the Path to Speaking Success – Elizabeth Naramore
• Worst Case Scenario – Keith Casey

Day Camp for Developers is a one-day, on-line, technology agnostic conference. You participate in this live conference from the comfort of your own home or office. Included in your price is access to the recordings of all the sessions for download after the conference.

Come join us, March 22, 2013, for a great day of learning. Invest a day in your career, get your ticket today for Day Camp 4 Developers #5: Public Speaking for Developers.

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

Dear Reader,

Recently on twitter, @johncongdon asked me about proposals for conferences. Specifically, he asked if I had any examples that I can share because he was considering submitting to a conference. While I don’t have any examples to share, I can give you some advice on the topic.

First things first

Read Tips on how to get accepted as a speaker at a PHP conference, if you haven’t already. The process of getting accepted starts a lot earlier than the proposal, you need to lay the groundwork first.
(more…)

Dear Reader,

Those of you who follow me on twitter (@calevans) know that recently I asked for opinions on conference attendance. I’ve collected what I learned in this blog post.

Who I asked

Speakers

First I asked my friends who were speakers why they attended. I got a lot of good answers but most were variations of “…because someone else picks up the tab.” :) (It should be noted that of the speakers I asked, only one was a professional speaker who collects a fee and even he attends some conferences just because they are fun)
(more…)

This is a list of the talks I’ve given and the slides for each of them if they are available.

Five things I wish they had told me before I started programming in PHP

Five things I wish they had told me before I started programming in PHP is a raucous romp through PHP, covering not only mistakes that programmers make, but skills they need to make sure they master.

This is a 101 level course. If you are new to programming or just new to PHP, you will get something out of this.

Five things Slides – Codeworks 09
Five Things Slides – Nashville PHP User Group

Design Patterns

An irreverent jog through the Temple of the Gang of Four. We will examine 10 design patterns, discuss when to use each and, when applicable, give example code.

This is a 201 level course. You must have a firm grounding in Object Oriented design and programming to really get anything out of this.

Design Patterns Slides – CodeWorks 09
Design Patterns Slides – IPC09

Zend Framework from the Command Line

Everybody knows you can build great web applications using Zend Framework. Few people know that you can build great CLI tools with it also. This is an overview on what it takes to write CLI tools using Zend Framework. It includes a look at Zend_Tool.

International PHP Conference 2009

Zend Framework from the CLI Slides
  tweetme Sourcecode
  Zend_Tool Twitter client

Dutch PHP Conference 2011

Zend Framework from the Command Line
  bugU sourcecode

Open Teams

Put yourself in your developer’s shoes for a moment.

You are a professional developer, you work on a project all day at work but you live to get home and start working on your passion, an open source project. Suddenly, instead of slogging through the day, you are actively engaged in a project that may be much more complex than the one you are working on at work. Worse yet, you may actually have more responsibility, more input, more voice on your open source team than you do at work. You wish your day job excited you as much as your open source project. You wish you could be as engaged in it.

Dutch PHP Conference 2011

Open Teams Slides