LornaJane

I was recently interviewed by Cassandra Clark from Sun about PHPWomen - they've put the interview live now and you can find it at http://blogs.sun.com/SDNChannel/entry/introduction_to_phpwomen_org

I'm currently in California, at ZendCon. I'm having way too much fun to blog but there is a writeup on the phpwomen site of my experiences so far. I've met some great people, and its long days but I'm learning a lot! I've (been) volunteered for an uncon session later on today, at 5:15 I'll be speaking alongside Matthew Weier O'Phinney on "Subversion Tips and Tricks" - if you're here at ZendCon then drop in and say hi.

For everything else, see the zendcon photos on flickr! http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/zendcon08

So, at the Dutch PHP Conference, they were making a video and they interviewed me. The video is at http://www.bachelor-ict.nl/dpc and it is also featured in this article on DevZone which is exciting! The video is mostly about the PHPWomen organisation, rather than my talk but it does have some footage of me speaking and of the conference itself.

There's an article competition running over at phpwomen.org where thre are two Zend Studio for Eclipse licenses to give away to the best short articles submitted in the Best Practices forum before the end of July. See the announcement for more details.

On Friday was this year's PHP Conference in London and I must say it was a roaring success. The whole conference had completely gone up a gear from last year (the only other time I've attended) with a larger venue, choice of tracks, more attendees and better food.

I was there representing phpwomen.org with a stand and some t-shirts to give away as well as some information about the group. We took 30 t-shirts and they were all completely gone by lunchtime, which was a great response. Even after that the stand was buzzing all day with people dropping by to ask about the group and how to get involved/get more t-shirts/help us gain more recognition. I was surprised and pleased by the response of attendees, both male and female, I met so many interesting people that I can't begin to list them here but it was great to chat to you all! Its great to be able to raise awareness at events like these and the phplondon committee were wonderfully supportive of us throughout the organisation phase and during the day itself.

My new employers, Ibuildings were sponsoring the event so I was also able to spend some time with my colleagues and meet some new ones. I also briefly rebranded to the distinctive red ibuildings shirts at one point, to look like part of the team while we took some photos. It was great to see the guys doing the Zend Platform demos and to be able to hang around with them - including the guys from the Netherlands who were there. Ivo Jansch (CTO over there) gave a talk which I enjoyed and was well received all round. I didn't realise until then that I actually work in the tallest team ever! I'm one of the smallest - at 5'11" this is pretty unusual :)

Since I was doing so many other things on the day I didn't get to a lot of the talks but what I did see was well-prepared and the audience were great, with some really interesting questions being asked in all the sessions I attended. There were two tracks, in rooms just across the corridor from one another, and the rooms were well-managed and ran smoothly throughout the day. The conference also provided a "recharge room" with juice for people and devices alike. The venue was great and was big enough for everyone without any crowding or bottlenecks.

All in all I'd like to congratulate the organisers on a great event - can't wait for next year :)

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...)