I'm delivering three different talks this year:

• Introduction to Zend Framework. In this tutorial, I'll look at what ZF is, how to get and install it, some common utilities and patterns used throughout the project, and spend the bulk of the time on building, hands-on, a simple application.
• Architecting Ajax Applications with Zend Framework. Another tutorial session, this one will focus not so much on the client-side of an Ajax application, but how to architect the server-side to respond appropriately to Ajax (and other service) requests. We'll look at RPC services, REST, HTTP codes and headers, and how to weave them into a robust and simple backend for use with your dynamic, "Web 2.0" applications.
• Architecting Your Models. This regular track session is all about the M in MVC: models. Many MVC frameworks and approaches have you tie the data access directly to your models; in this session, I'll show you approaches and strategies for de-coupling data access from your models, why you might want to do so, and some cool things you can do once you have.

I'll also be involved in two panel sessions:

• Meet the Zend Team (Wednesday evening). This has been a popular session in past years; project leads from each of the product teams at Zend will be available in a panel to answer your questions. Some years have been rather... entertaining. :)
• Framework Shootout (Thursday, closing keynote). I'm especially excited about this session, in which we get myself, representing Zend Framework; Fabien Potencier, representing Symfony; David Zuilke, representing Agavi; Nate Abele, representing CakePHP; and Edward Finkler, representing CodeIgniter. Eli White will be moderating a Q&A style session in which you, the audience, get to ask us about our respective frameworks and where we compare (or don't!) in various functional areas. I did a similar panel to this at PHP Quebec this year, and it was a great time.

There will be a ton of sessions, with people presenting on a huge variety of subjects, from version control to RDMS systems, from JavaScript to Flash, from development to production. In addition, there will be a parallel UnCon, being run by Keith Casey, featuring even more topics and interesting ideas.

I look forward to seeing you at ZendCon this year!

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?

Continue the Discussion

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!