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?

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Last year, I did a tutorial session with Mike Naberezny covering PHP development best practices. Following the session, several attendees approached Keith and said they could really use a session just on Subversion; the material covered in the tutorial, while good, did not go into enough depth for them.

Keith then approached me about doing an uncon session, and I in turn tagged Lorna Jane Mitchell about doing the session. We ended up doing it together, after sitting down for about 10 minutes of planning. We had the flexibility to both go over what we thought were core basics everyone should know, as well as to answer very specific questions. The session was very well attended, and those people who gave us feedback indicated that it was exactly the amount of detail they were looking for.

So, in summary, the uncon allowed attendees to get more information on a topic that was covered only briefly in another, regular session.

Springboard to Speaking

Was your talk rejected for the conference? Are you having trouble getting accepted to any conferences at all?

Conference organizers have a catch-22 they face every time they put together a schedule. On the one hand, there may be some really interesting talks submitted by unknown speakers; on the other, scheduling known speakers helps put money on the table (attendees want to hear from established experts). As a result, you see a lot of the same speakers at each and every conference.

So, how do you break in? You speak.

Speaking at area user groups is one way to break into the system; good sessions often generate buzz that extends beyond your user group. But an even better way is to speak at an uncon session at an established conference. Oftentimes you'll have conference organizers attending these, or friends of conference organizers, and this can have a huge impact on your chances at speaking. Additionally, I've seen a ton of buzz generated on twitter and blogs by uncon sessions -- and this buzz gets noticed.

Don't believe me? Let's revisit that talk Lorna Jane and I gave. We pitched it as a tutorial session for php|tek this spring... and it was accepted, largely on the basis of our uncon session. It was the only talk I pitched for that conference that was accepted. (Believe it or not, I have to submit talks just like everyone else, and get a fair share of rejections just like everyone else.)

At php|tek, I also pitched two uncon tracks, one on using Git with SVN, and another on how to write domain models for your MVC layers. This latter session, on models, generated a lot of buzz, and was later picked up by MTA for a CodeWorks 2009 webinar, which was very well received. I also pitched it for ZendCon this year... and will be presenting it there in two weeks.

In short, if you want to speak at conferences, start by pitching ideas to the uncon tracks at conferences you attend. Prepare well for it, make a good impression, and you may be delivering it as a regular session at another conference.

Explore new ideas

Conference organizers, besides having to choose well-known speakers, often also need to stick to known topics. Part of the reason you see topics on the buzz words du jour is because people want to see sessions on them. But what about things like PHP-GTK? or using PHP to write CLI tools? or using PHP to connect to a specific web service? These may all be interesting, but may not attract crowds. But what if you, as an attendee, want to hear about these topics?

One aspect of the uncon is that you can vote on topics and/or suggest topics you want to hear about. This gives you a chance to help shape the direction of the conference to cater to your own interests. It also allows you to explore some areas of the language you may not have known about, but, when you see the presentation abstract, could benefit the work you do.

So, use the uncon to explore the language!

Vote now!

If you're going to ZendCon, plan on speaking at or attending the uncon! And help shape it, by heading over to Joind.in and voting for sessions now! See you there!

Here's the short version:

• One trip to Belgium and The Netherlands.
• Two trips to Israel.
• Two trips to Atlanta, GA (not counting the return trip from Europe, when I was stranded for a day due to storms in the Northeast).
• Three different user groups attended, with three presentations.
• One major Zend Framework release
• One PEAR release.
• One podcast.
• One webinar.
• One book published.
• One conference attended.

What follows is my month-by-month breakdown:

January

I finished up the last of my three chapters for The PHP Anthology, 2nd Edition, and promptly used my advance to buy the family a Wii.

I was also introduced to Ivo Jansch through work, and had him wow me with one of the ibuildings products.

February

Mid-month, my boss at Zend, Boaz, got the go-ahead to use the ibuildings WDE platform to build our new website CMS; part of the plan would include training at the ibuildings home office in Vlissingen, NL... which meant I had to get my passport pronto.

Towards the end of the month, I was invited to BostonPHP to present building a simple Zend Framework CRUD application, along with Chuck Hagenbuch of the HORDE project. While there, Nate Abele heckled me, and then joined Chuck and myself for an impromptu framework panel; a good time was had by all.

March

I flew to Brussels, Belgium, where I met my supervisor, Boaz, so we could go to Vlissingen. We spent the day in Brussels, walking around and visiting such sites as the Cathedral of St. Michael, La Grand Place, and the Mannekin Pis.

Our visit to ibuildings was very productive, and I was very impressed by the team there; everybody was very knowledgeable and skilled. I presented a Zend Framework overview, as well as an abbreviated version of the Best Practices talk I'd given with Mike Naberezny at the 2006 ZendCon; the latter ignited a ton of questions and enthusiasm.

On returning home, I had a ton of work to do on the zend.com CMS, and this continued in spurts through November. The job was made much easier by the ibuildings WDE product.

I closed out a ton of MVC issues in the Zend Framework, and we released the first beta version late in the month.

April

At the beginning of the month, our landlord threw us for a loop and announced he was going to sell our apartment... meaning that we either had to step up our plans to purchase a home, or start looking for a new rental. Ultimately, we ended up looking for a rental, due to time constraints. The next two months would be highlighted with the look for a new place as well as countless showings of our apartment to potential buyers.

Mid-month, we packed up the family and flew down to Atlanta, GA, to visit my wife's family. While there, we were able to go to the Atlanta Zoo and see Mei Lan, their baby panda -- way cute!

May

Mid-month, we found a new place in Richmond, VT -- a small village about 10 minutes from Burlington, near where we originally lived when we first moved to Vermont.

During the first RC for Zend Framework, released at the end of the month, I introduced the ViewRenderer, a feature for auto-rendering views based on the current controller and action name -- a feature common to many frameworks. However, it ostensibly broke a ton of existing applications by being enabled by default -- not one of my more popular decisions. Since the 1.0.0 release, I've heard little grumbling about it, and it's now often cited as an ease-of-use feature -- go figure.

June

The first week of June, I flew to Tel Aviv, Israel, to start training people on the new CMS, as well as to work with our entire ebiz team to finalize the work plan for completing the CMS. It was, needless to say, my first time to Israel or the Middle East, and I was constantly confronted with culture shock. Europe was an easy transition to make, but Israel was completely foreign to me -- everything from the way people drove, to the architecture, to the food was different. Unfortunately, I arrived a day late due to a flight cancellation, and missed the tour of Jerusalem my supervisor had planned for all of us. However, he took me to the city of Yafa, an Arabic city where the Israeli's originally tried to settle before building Tel Aviv to the north. The architecture was amazing, as were the winding, narrow streets of the old city.

I was also told during this trip that Andi had requested transferring me full-time to the Zend Framework team. I would spend the next week or two weighing my options, and ultimately decided to do so.

A week after I returned, we moved into our new rental in Richmond. The kids love the new place, which has a bedroom for each of them, a yard, and porches on each entrance.

Somehow, I also found time to record my first (and so far only) PHP Abstract podcast.

July

We released Zend Framework 1.0.0 at the beginning of the month, marking our first stable release. While many still view it as incomplete, the overwhelming feedback has been positive, and we've had over 2 million downloads to date.

I accepted the transfer to the Zend Framework team, but the condition was made that I would stay part-time on the ebiz team until the new site was launched. This meant that the next 5 months were spent splitting my time between the two projects, often working late and on weekends to get work done.

Towards the end of the month, we took a long weekend camping in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. The weather was unseasonably wet, but we persevered and had a great time. 5 days of offline time was definitely needed!

I also finally released the first stable version of File_Fortune on PEAR, over a year since I'd first proposed it. The package interfaces with mod_fortune files, allowing both the ability to read and write such files, with full binary compatability.

August

Not much to report in August, except work, work, and more work.

September

My ebiz supervisor, Boaz, flew me to Tel Aviv for a second time, this time to perform a "brain dump" for the rest of the team before I transitioned fully out of the team, and also to help setup our new data center and release procedures. This time, Boaz took me to Jerusalem himself during my last full day in the country. If you've never been to the city, you should definitely put it on your list of things to do before you die. With my degree in religion, the place was full of meaning for me, but it would be putting it lightly to say that religion is palpable in the air there. We visited the Wailing Wall, the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and listened to the muezzins sing the call to prayer for the muslims. The tour was simply amazing.

A few days after I returned, I flew down to New York City for a special meeting of NYPHP, where Mark de Visser presented on various Zend products and initiatives, and I gave a Zend Framework overview.

A week after the NYPHP presentation, I did a zend.com webinar on the Zend Framework MVC layer.

October

October was the month of ZendCon. I presented a full-day tutorial on best practices and unit testing with Sebastian Bergmann and Mike Naberezny; despite the length and subject matter, we were SRO for most of the day.

I also did a main-stage presentation on Zend Framework's MVC components, directly following Terry Chay -- an intimidating situation at best. From the feedback I've seen, the presentation was well-received, and I had somewhere between 120 and 150 attendees -- phenomenal! (Even more amazing was how many people were familiar with MVC in general!)

One great thing about the conference was the fact that I got to network with a number of framework developers, both Zend Framework and otherwise, including Nate Abele of CakePHP as well as Paul M. Jones of the Solar framework. Many good conversations were had.

Late in the month, The PHP Anthology, 2nd Edition, my first published book as an author, was finally released!

November

I spent much of the month working on Zend_Layout, a much requested component that simplifies and automates Two Step Views in Zend Framework. I also started work implementing Zend_View Enhanced, a set of view helpers for making complex views with Zend_View possible.

I also started playing with Twitter a bit, and came up with a Zend_Service_Twitter proposal for interacting with the Twitter API via PHP.

And finally, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we finally launched the new Zend.com site, which was well-received in the blogosphere.

December

A goal I've had for some time has been to form a PHP user group in the Burlington area. A friend of mine pointed out to me sometime this fall that there's actually already a Google Group formed; he and the original founder started planning a meeting for early December. I spoke at this inaugural meeting, presenting Zend Framework's MVC layer yet again; a good time was had by all, and a lot of enthusiasm for future meetings was generated.

I finished up Zend_Layout and Zend_View Enhanced with the help of Ralph Schindler, and got a new proposal up for Zend_Form, just in time for my holidays to begin -- 11 days with family and with little to no internet connectivity during a trip to Atlanta, GA for one of only a handful of Christmases I've spent without snow.

Summary

This year was incredibly busy -- three cross-seas trips, one cross-continent trip, a move, and several trips along the Eastern Seaboard; three user group presentations, and eight presentations over the course of the year; one conference; one move; one PEAR release; one podcast; one webinar; one book; and countless hours of programming.

My goals for the coming year? I'm too tired to even think about it ;-).

• Best Practices of PHP Development. Sebastian, Mike, and I presented a full-day tutorial on PHP development best practices, focussing primarily on testing and testing strategies, but also covering coding standards, usage of SCM tools, and deployment. There were a ton of questions from the attendees, and Sebastian even whipped out some extra slides at the end showing new and little-known features of PHPUnit. Basically, reading the slides won't really indicate what we covered, but is more of a general outline. It was an honor and pleasure to work with Sebastian and Mike on this, and I hope we can do it again in the future some time.
• Zend Framework MVC Quick Start. This was basically the same session I did in my webinar a couple weeks ago, with a few corrections and a small demonstration. Cal put me on directly following Terry Chay, in the largest of the four session rooms -- the one where all the keynotes occurred -- talk about intimidating! Amazingly, the session was really well attended -- others I talked to estimate between 100 and 150 people showed up. The most amazing part, though, was that when I asked how many people knew what 'MVC' was, I don't think there was a single person who didn't raise their hand -- definitely a sign of how well accepted the pattern now is in PHP.
• AJAX-Enabling Your Zend Framework Controllers. I did this talk for the Unconference, mainly because its a topic I've been interested in and wanted to present. In it, I detailed how to ajax-enable an application through some easy tricks with Action and View Helpers and using JS to decorate your existing application. The reference app I used was a pastebin, and I've got code for both Dojo and Prototype flavors available:
  • Dojo pastebin
  • Prototype pastebin

The two highlight keynote speakers, for me, were definitely Joel Spolsky and Cory Doctorow. Neither spoke about PHP, but both spoke about topics that PHP developers should take to heart. Perhaps I'll elaborate on those in another post.

Another bonus for me was the number of old and new friends alike I got to see -- I had many good conversations with Paul M. Jones, Nate Abele, Ivo Jansch, and Ralph Schindler, and opportunities to finally meet fellow co-author Lig Turmelle, Ben Ramsey, Chris Shifflet (dude, we've been to four conferences together, and never yet met!), and many, many others. I was also overwhelmed by the number of Zend Framework users who sought me out either to ask me questions or simply thank me and the others on the team for the project; I'm deeply honored that I can work on a project that affects so many developers.

And now for some down time to recuperate...