Phly, boy, phly
the weblog and site of Matthew Weier O'Phinney

For the third year running, I'm pleased to be speaking at the Dutch PHP Conference, held again in Amsterdam this coming 10-12 of June.

I'll be speaking this year at TEK-X, this year's incarnation of the php|tek conference, in Chicago in May.

My good friend, Keith Casey, is once again chairing Zendcon's UnCon. For those who have never attended, it's basically one or more tracks running parallel to the main conference, but with content pitched by attendees -- sometimes presented by them, other times presented by others who are knowledgeable in the field.

Why should you care? There are great sessions already selected for the conference featuring some well-known speakers from the PHP world; why would you want to either attend or present at the uncon?

Today is the kickoff for CodeWorks 2009, a remarkable PHP road show hitting seven cities in 14 days. While I'm not joining the tour until Atlanta, I'm proud to be joining up at that stop and presenting a Zend Framework tutorial during the tour.

I announced this earlier in the year, but for those that missed it, I'm speaking at php|tek next week.

I'll be co-presenting a workshop entitled Practical SVN for PHP Developers along with the lovely and talented Lorna Jane Mitchell. In a way, it's a continuation of the unconference session we did together at ZendCon08, and will provide much more in-depth information on the subject -- including how to create and organize your repositories, branching and tagging strategies, how and when to commit, as well as more basic usage of subversion for day-to-day use.

I'm thrilled to once again be speaking at the Dutch PHP Conference.

Like last year, I'm giving two sessions; unlike last year, these are going to be more advanced. I noticed last year both in terms of audience participation as well as in speaking with attendees that I'd be able to step it up a notch were I to return.

Just about every day, I have an idea for a blog post, and most days, by the end of the day, I just don't have the time or energy to actually write anything up. The inner writer in me screams, "no excuses!" while the aging adult in me whispers, "time for bed, dear."

So, to keep my hand in the game, here are a few things running through my head, or that I'm working on, or that I'll be doing soon.

I'm a bit late on my ZendCon'08 wrapup; the conference left me both exhausted and with a backlog of email and work that has consumed me since it ended. However, this, too, is good, as it has given me time to reflect... and to finally get my slides up on SlideShare.

ZendCon was alternately exhausting, rewarding, educational, fruitful, infurating, and ultimately wonderful. I've been to every single ZendCon so far -- I started at Zend a scant month before the inaugural event -- and have spoken at each. My first time speaking was a fluke; David Sklar had just started at Ning and had to back out of his "Configuring PHP" tutorial session. Mike Naberezny and I were drafted to take it over, and we had N+1 attendees, where N was the number of speakers. Since that inauspicious beginning, I've gradually taken on more sessions and stuck around to participate in the conference more. I can honestly say that this was the biggest, busiest, and most community focussed ZendCon I can remember.

I have a number of updates and followups, and decided to post them in a single entry.

First off, you may now view my Dojo Webinar online (requires login and registration at zend.com). Attendance was phenomenal, and I've had some really good feedback. If you want to see it live, I'm giving the talk (with revisions!) at the ZendCon UnConference, at Dojo Developer Day Boston later this month, and at php|works in November. I hope to be able to show new functionality at each presentation.

Second, I've completed what I'm calling version 1.0.0 of the pastebin application I demo'd in the webinar. The PHP code is fully unit tested (though I haven't yet delved into using DOH! to test the JS), and incorporates a number of best practices and tips that Pete Higgins from Dojo was kind enough to provide to me. When using a custom build (and I provide a profile for building one), it simply flies.

• Download the pastebin application

The pastebin application showcases a number of features besides Dojo: Zend_Test_PHPUnit was used to test the application, and Zend_Wildfire's FireBug logger and DB profiler are used to provide profiling and debug information.

Finally, ZendCon is next week! I'll be around, but already have a packed schedule (1 tutorial, 2 regular sessions, an UnCon session, a meet-the-developers session... and that's just what I know about!). I look forward to meeting ZF users and developers, though, so feel free to grab me and introduce yourself.

I'm pleased to announce I've been selected to speak at php|works in Atlanta this November.

I'll be presenting my talk on Dojo and Zend Framework, demonstrating how to quickly and easily create rich and dynamic UIs using the various integration points with Dojo functionality provided by Zend Framework.

Looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta in November!