LornaJane

Well, its a misleading title because the day is only half over but the Dutch PHP Conference 2008 is well and truly underway! Today I've been in the Zend Framework tutorial given by Matthew Weir O'Phinney, which is a full-day session. Its been excellent - with some concepts, some examples, and now a real working application to take a look around and learn from. I've had to work with ZF a little bit lately and I wish I'd been able to have this tutorial before I did that!

I've been able to catch up with a lot of people since arriving late last night and making the mistake of not going to bed until late because I wasn't tired (still on UK time) and then having to get up early today! Tonight we have an Ibuildings employees event which will be great, I'm excited to put faces to names for all my colleagues - the downside of the telecommute is that I mostly know people on Skype or IRC and not in real life. Later on there is a pre-conference social as well (from 8pm) - which is why my day is only half done :)

Looking forward to tomorrow, when there will be a phpwomen stand upstairs outside the main hall, we'll be giving out shirts (they're white this year) so if you want one then come and get it! Tomorrow at 2pm I'm giving my talk "PHP Deployment with Subversion" which looks like it will be well attended. Oh and its Worldwide Knit In Public Day as well so I'll be attempting to fit that in as well!

I don't spend a lot of time hanging around with geeks in the real world. I spend a lot of time hanging around with them in virtual spaces and some of the people I have met there are my closest friends. Offline meets are ... quite different. Lots of geeks are quite shy, for starters. Some are quite egotistical, like the guy I met last year at the pre-conference social for phplondon and was horrified to hear that I create PHP using vim instead of a "proper IDE" and said how happy I was that I had made the effort to reach out to the conference and that he was sure I would learn a lot - the implication being that anyone who writes code with a keyboard is clearly a n00b. I'm hoping to avoid a repeat of that experience. I know I don't look like a PHP developer but the friends I meet online can't see that and I kind of forget ... until an offline meet.

Perhaps experiences like these put me off doing the real-life thing but I am honestly so excited about PHPLondon tonight and tomorrow that I can't imagine staying away. I'll be promoting phpwomen at the main conference and I'm really excited about that too - look out for flocks of girls in bright purple t-shirts!

(OK, maybe not flocks...)

A quick announcement: I'm speaking at the Dutch PHP Conference this year, my talk is entitled "PHP Deployment with Subversion". The conference is in Amsterdam, you can find out more on its website http://phpconference.nl, and it takes place on June 14th. It'll be my first big speaking engagement, and I'm also really looking forward to meeting a lot of Dutch friends there.

Whenever I attend a conference or other geeky gathering (GeekUp for example) I'm often asked for my card ... but I don't have one. I don't have work business cards, because only sales people need those, and I don't have personal ones because I don't freelance (or not usually). I finally cracked though and ordered cards from moo.com as recommended by many many people. Here they are:



On the other side I put the angel motif made for me by Gretchen from www.girlscantwhat.com, which I love and use as my online persona in a lot of places. She didn't quite fit and I didn't want to shrink her so instead she peeps out at you:



So if you see me around, and you'd like my card, try asking me again if I have one :)

On Feburary 29th the PHP London 2008 conference will take place in London. Things have been very busy for the guys organising, there have been a few tweaks to the schedule but its looking like things are coming together nicely. I'm all set and have booked tickets and a hotel already - for Thursday *and* Friday nights so I can go both the pre-conference and post-conference socials, which is essential. If you haven't booked your tickets yet, or you have to get your employer to do it, I suggest that's something you might want to sort out fairly soon as I imagine it'll be oversubscribed - in fact if everyone who has told me they are thinking of going does try to book tickets, I think they'll sell out!!

At this event I will be busy with phpwomen, wearing my t-shirt and generally making a noise and raising the profile of the group. If you are attending the conference then you are morally obliged to pop over to us and say hello, we like to meet new people. If you are extra nice to us we may give you a t-shirt! There will be women from the UK and also elsewhere in Europe and it'll be great to meet those I haven't met yet and also see some old friends from other conferences. An excellent way to spend Leap Year Day in my opinion :)

After the fun I had last year at PHPLondon, I'm happy to announce that I'll be there this year as well. The talks are pretty much finalised, the schedule is online and all that's left is for everyone to get tickets and I'll see you there!