LornaJane
Resources
A post on PHPMaster.com (unrelated to the book but also belonging to SitePoint) about my favourite estimation technique: Planning Poker. The idea is that you ask a group of developers to take estimates on small tasks, and compare their answers. If they are in agreement, it's likely to be a good estimate - but if not, further specification is needed.
Article: http://phpmaster.com/planning-poker/
A 20-minute podcast with my good friend Elizabeth Naramore of Engine Yard and my co-authors on PHP Master Matt and Davey. We talk code, the book, and our own journeys to where we are today.
Podcast: http://www.engineyard.com/podcast/s01e51-lorna-mitchell-davey-shafik-matthew-turland
Despite the alarmist headline, this is an article about how I adapt my ubuntu installation to be used without a mouse, because I don't (can't) use one. It got me some interesting feedback and some great links to tools I hadn't heard of before!
Article: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/developers-guide-rsi-prevention
I get asked sometimes to speak to students studying relevant courses at university. These are the slides I used for a talk at Leeds Met, who are very local to me and whom I interact with quite a bit. There weren't many students there but those that were I hope took something from it.
I went to Poland for the first time to deliver this professional/team development talk as one of their invited speakers. I had a truly wonderful time there, and I think the talk went quite well as well!
Blog post: http://www.lornajane.net/posts/2011/phpcon-poland-conference-report
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Short talk for the unconference about the joind.in project, where to get involved, what we've got planned, and generally a great opportunity for me to talk interrupted on one of my favourite topics for 15 minutes!
I loved giving this tutorial at the first ever PHP North West Tutorial day session; the smaller groups mean it's easy to run around and assist people in getting their code going and trying things out, and I got so many good questions about web services and what to do in particular situations - thanks to everyone who was there!
Keynote at the PyConUK conference in Coventry. I felt a little out of place as I'm a PHP programmer and know very little python, but this community were really welcoming and respectful - thank you :)
Presentation written for Agile on the Beach in Falmouth, showcasing many of the auxiliary tools to use around your PHP stack (LAMP: Linux Apache MySQL PHP). This was a new topic and a new crowd for me but I got some great questions and really enjoyed the session.
The video is available on vimeo, slides are below:
I pitched this article to the netmag guys after overhearing a couple of developers at DIBI saying that PHP was only for the web and not for the CLI. I like and use the PHP command line tools often, so I wanted to share some tips.
http://www.netmagazine.com/tutorials/how-use-php-command-line
An article version of my "open source your career" talk - speaking the unspoken truth that when you give time to open source, you reap the rewards in your own professional growth and development. I was delighted to write for Josetteorama, and to share these ideas in another format.
http://www.josetteorama.com/uncategorized/open-source-your-career/
I'm the guest on this week's Sitepoint podcast, I get to talk about my new book, PHP in general, open source, conferences, and awards - all in all it's a half-hour of fun and chatter!
Podcast (with full transcript): http://www.sitepoint.com/podcast-129-taking-php-to-the-next-level-with-lorna-mitchell/
This is a re-post of the article I wrote earlier in the year (which was called "The State of PHP" the first time around, I hasten to add. They published this on their site as Debunking PHP's Bad Reputation
As part of the regular column I share with a bunch of other user group people, this month I'm published again, this time telling the story of how the wider community have nudged me into building a much better API for Joind.In that I would have come up with on my own. It's subscription content, but well worth a read see this month's full contents here
Having spoken at the last two years of oggcamp, I was absolutely delighted to get an invitation for their scheduled track and speak on their main stage this year. This is the event where I learn things I never knew I needed to know, and this year was no exception!
(no slides, because I speak without them)
For this year's lightning talks night I presented a fast brain-dump on everything I now know about being freelance - a year after making the leap.
Super-excited to be published again in netmag, they didn't hold back from the geeky topics when they agreed to let me write about the datastructures we have available in PHP. This article covers a bit about SPL and some information (plus real examples of course) about some of the structures PHP gives us in the SPL library. You can order back issues of this magazine - it's issue 217
Did someone say "technical conference" and "north east" in the same sentence? I am delighted to be speaking at this 2-track designer/developer conference at the Sage in Newcastle in June.
Video: http://vimeo.com/27770106
Excited to be bringing a favourite talk to a favourite conference! I've spoken at php|tek for the last couple of years and loved the experience every time. This talk is about team coaching and how to raise your game, and the game of people around you, with some effort and a little investment.
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I've given this talk before, but I've learned so much since then that I suspect a full rewrite may be in order! Talking about the human side of APIs, no code, no data formats, just good clean direction on how to create an API that is robust, secure, delightful to use and painless to maintain. This session could be retitled "10 thing I wish other people had known about designing a web service before I was forced to use what they made" :)
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Three years after giving my first ever conference talk at DPC08, I am finally back there to speak again! Best of all, it's a technical talk on a topic I am both excited about and actively working with - exciting!
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This is a full-day tutorial slot to cover the entire syllabus of the Zend Certification Exam ... which has so much content it clearly takes a week just to run through it all. Nevertheless, I impart as much knowledge and as many tips as humanly possible in the time provided - fun or exhausting, you choose!
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This half-day tutorial is a "play along" session: the code is available to grab beforehand and you can dip into it as we go along if you wish. I'll be covering how to consume and also publish services, with a lot of detailed PHP code examples, diving in to data formats, service types, HTTP theory and also having fun building a service in this hands-on session. This is my first time delivering a tutorial in my own right and I'm quite excited!
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Editorial for .net magazine about PHP, its urban myths, and why things are not quite so bad. My first time seeing myself in widely-available print and it was a blast to write!
It's been a whole year since I last made it along to see the PHPWM crowd, and once again they are providing me with a suitably scarily well-qualified technical audience for a talk I'll give at a conference later in the summer. I love OAuth and I'm super-excited about giving this talk, with its real-world examples and proper HTTP geekiness!
http://www.slideshare.net/lornajane/implementing-oauth-with-php
Part of the "back to basics" series at PHPNW, I'll be talking about OOP theory, starting at the very beginning. I think too often programmers start picking up and using OOP and sometimes they miss out on some of the concepts (and some great tricks!) along the way. Hoping to bring something new for everyone during the course of this session.
After having a ball presenting at the first DayCamp4Developers, I'm very happy to be invited to join the party the second time around! I'll be giving a talk entitled "Could You Telecommute?", talking about how telecommuting may not work for everyone, and some strategies for helping yourself make it work.
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Delighted that this relatively new user group is running along strongly and has also managed to organise me to visit them and speak! I love getting to the user groups and am delighted to get to this one in particular for the first time.
php|architect have kicked off a new column for the new year, and I was lucky enough to get to write the first installment! This will be a regular slot with news and views from community leaders around the world, talking about what's happening near them and why community is important.
Subscription content, but it's worth a look http://phparch.com - you want January 2011
This was a shock as I had put the suggestion into the online system for the unconference some months earlier and it hadn't got many votes. It didn't get loads at the unconf either, but it just got enough to make it into the schedule and everyone immediately demanded it be scheduled first so they could get some tips for their own talks!! So yes, a not-very-slick talk about how to be slick when talking. And with no slides, since I hate them and wasn't expecting to be giving this talk anyway - I did have a lot of people say they picked up some new tips and felt more confident about speaking after they saw the session so I'm really pleased about that!
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I put this talk together as a suggestion for the unconference and it was accepted! The event itself was excellent, I thought it would be good and was still surprised by the quality of the sessions and in particular the quality of the crowd in attendance. This talk basically gives a tour of the (mostly github) tools we use for joind.in, our opne source project, and how those fit together, why we chose them, and why they work for us.
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This conference is in it's 2nd year and I'm very excited to be giving a keynote with Ivo Jansch! The talk is a light-hearted look at some serious tips for developers wanting to improve their skills.
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I am often asked how I recommend people structure their repositories, and the answer is usually "it depends"! This article looks at the major variables and gives some rules of thumb on how to structure your repository regardless of your development style or whether you're using a centralised or distributed system.
Article: http://thinkvitamin.com/code/repository-structures-strategies/
I forget sometimes that not everyone spends their entire lives at the command prompt, but in this post I've taken a little moment to share the commands I use the most, with some examples. Look out for man, grep, diff, less, wget and curl all wrapped up in an easily digestible manner :)
Article: http://thinkvitamin.com/code/6-linux-commands-to-make-life-easier
I've been lucky enough to have been invited to write for PHP Advent three years running now. It is run and written for by some of the leading lights in the industry and I'm always squeaky excited to get the invite.
Code for Today - PHP Advent 2010
One Step At A Time - PHP Advent 2009
Which Web Service? - PHP Advent 2008
This was an unexpected gem of an event - I got only a few days' notice of the speaking and slot, and I didn't know anyone. What I didn't expect was how instantly I felt like I belonged in a room full of very assorted female engineers (my degree is in Electronic Engineering, these women actually think like I do!). I loved bringing a little of my professional experience to these women, for them to use for their many and varied ends :)
I was delighted to be included with some community leaders (and good friends) in this excellent post from Mashable. They approached 10 "Masters" from the PHP Community and asked each of them what their advice would be to people just beginning with PHP - and the results are great.
Articles:
Delighted to be included in this virtual conference organised by my good friend Cal Evans! I haven't done a virtual conference before but this promises to be a great oportunity and I'm excited about being able to share my thoughts with a new crowd. The aim of the event is to give soft skills for developers, so I'm hopeful that the professional development talk fits in well.
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While it's true that I don't exactly love git, I do use it extensively and lead an increasingly active open source project that uses it. Like everything else it is just a tool and everything is fairly easy when you know how. So this article is the cheat sheet I wish I'd had when I made the transition myself.
Article: http://thinkvitamin.com/code/starting-with-git-cheat-sheet/
I'll be speaking at PHPNW in November, about SPL (Standard PHP Library). There are some great features in there, most of which I don't make enough use of, so hoping to share some ideas with the crowd and maybe get a few back in return!
I was invited to give a guest lecture for the local students. I've employed some of their predecessors as graduates and this talk is basically a list of things I wish students knew before they came to work for me! (Hint: start with source control)
Video: http://video-2.leedsmet.ac.uk/Asx/?mswmext=.asx&id=3293%7C4r%7CSBdyPGeW
I love services and have built a few identity systems in my time, so I've been watching the advent of OAuth with interest, and loving what I see. So many people see oauth as overcomplicated; it isn't, but it does have multiple steps which can make it seem a bit long-winded! Hopefully this makes it a bit clearer, with sections for users and developers.
Article: http://thinkvitamin.com/code/introduction-to-oauth/
I was pinged by Paul Bradshaw to give some insight into running virtual communities from my experience as a community leader in open source.
There's a fledgling user group in my local town and they asked me to speak at this month's event. I was pleased to do so and even more pleased when they specifically asked for something on web services - this talk is a favourite of mine!
(same slides used for FrOSCon)
My very first keynote talk, a new talk, and my home conference. I've been thinking more and more about how teams can work together to improve, using as much internal (i.e. free!) resource as possible plus some external input - this talk is those ideas put together and presented to an audience that I know from experience are great fun to speak for.
Video: http://blip.tv/file/4452742 (courtesty of PHPNW and sponsors)
Live Blog: http://www.phparch.com/2010/10/09/live-from-phpnw-“teach-a-man-to-fish”-keynote/ (thanks to php|architect for blogging this!)
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A quick, factual overview of the current state of play in the world of source control, the different approaches available and factors that might influence a decision between them. This includes subversion and some of the major players in the distributed arena<
My first trip to FrOSCon and this talk will be in their main track. I've updated it since delivering it at TEK-X in May, and have incorporated stories from many other people as well as my own.
Blog: http://www.lornajane.net/posts/2010/Working-with-Web-Services-Froscon-2010
Video: http://ftp.stw-bonn.de/froscon/2010/hs12/theora/hs12_-_2010-08-21_10:00_-_en_-_open_source_your_career_-_lorna_jane_mitchell.ogv or http://ftp.stw-bonn.de/froscon/2010/hs12/h264/hs12_-_2010-08-21_10:00_-_en_-_open_source_your_career_-_lorna_jane_mitchell.mp4
This is one of my favourite talks, written for PHP Barcelona last year, about how to consume web services from PHP. It covers data formats, different ways of handling HTTP, the different service formats we're likely to encounter and also gives some tips on troubleshooting ... all in the space of an hour!
Blog: http://www.lornajane.net/posts/2010/Working-with-Web-Services-Froscon-2010
I was delighted to be invited to by Think Vitamin to become a regular staff writer for the site. We started out with a series of articles about Object Oriented PHP, beginning with the basics and working through to some quite advanced concepts. The intention is for there to be five posts in all.
Getting Started with OOP and PHP5
Getting Started with OOP and PHP5: Part 2
9 Magic Methods for PHP
Exception Handling in PHP 5
OOP in PHP: Finishing Touches
Listen to the regular DPCRadio podcasts, which are recordings from the Dutch PHP conference, introduced by me.
This site is the Ibuildings developer portal site. I've written for it since its launch (the contributors are mostly Ibuildings employees), in fact its very first article was mine. Since then I have become its Editor-in-Chief and edit the tutorials more often than write them. The site is a great source of good quality content however!
Getting Started with Memcached
New Memcached Extension for PHP
Using PHP Code Sniffer
Web Services for PHP Developers
Not a talk but a video of a panel I sat on about community and user groups. Fabulous session with some serious PHP User Group talent in the room (both on the stage and off it!), some great discussion. If I seem quiet, it's because I had just given another talk and I was still slightly drained from that (if you've ever seen or heard "open source your career", you'll know why!).
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Video: http://blog.calevans.com/2010/08/06/php-community-and-user-groups/
This is a half-day tutorial session, presented with Matthew Weier O'Phinney (Project Lead at Zend Framework), covering the best tools, practices, and approaches for working with PHP today. I'm super-excited about this because I love to present with Matthew and because I look forward to sharing my working experiences on the various topics.
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Blog: TEK-X: Conference Report
I've been looking a lot at distributed and centralised version control solutions lately, I love subversion but I also really want the some of the features that the distributed solutions offer. This talk looks at what the main solutions can provide and some of the factors which will influence the decision of which would work well in a given setting.
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Blog: TEK-X: Conference Report
This marks a new departure in speaking style for me - a purely opinion piece. I notice that my career is growing and growing on the basis of the people I meet and skills I learn in the community activities I do. I think more people could do the same and I'll share what I've learned - that "giving" to the community can actually result in more gain for the giver! No slides because I hate them and spoke without them.
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Blog: TEK-X: Conference Report
This is the prorotype of a talk I'll give at php|tek later in the same month, looking at the career rises of community characters and how as individuals we can receive as well as give.
This was an early version of the source control talk I later gave at TEK-X in May, its an overview of the current VCS landscape and how to choose the right one for your setting. See the tek entry for the slides.
This talk is the sister of my "Working with Web Services" talk - this one deals with the server end of the relationship and covers more architectural topics around designing a good service, how to deliver a useful product to the consumers of the service, and how to create a service that will be stable and maintainable to keep up with the evolving needs of the application. This was my first time speaking at London after 3 years of attending - and it was a great experience.
Audio: http://phpconference.co.uk/uploads/talks/2010/BestPracticesInWebServiceDesign_LornaMitchell.mp3
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The Supermondays group is a regular meetup of various technical people in the North East of England, and I'll be speaking at their PHP feature night about using PHP with web services - something I do a lot! This is a new crowd for me and also interesting to bring PHP technology ideas to a crowd that is technical without being PHP-specific.
Blog: Supermondays Recap
Video: http://www.supermondays.org/2010/02/23/php-web-services-and-android-development/
This is the same talk as the one later in the month at PHPUK, very happy that I'm able to give it to the PHPNW group as well (they're also a very qualified audience for spotting mistakes in talks and asking the obvious questions!). No slides, look at the PHPUK version for those.
Delighted to be bringing this talk to the first-ever PHP Benelux conference. I got some great feedback from the last time I gave the talk and hoping it will be better again for this European audience. Also loving being able to catch up with the many friends I have in that part of the world!
Blog: PHPBenelux Recap
This talk is a complete overview of the theory, tools and some tips for dealing with consuming web services of all kinds. It covers service types, data types, and different ways of working with these from PHP, with examples. I had many more attendees in this session than I expected, and it was a fun talk to give.
Blog: PHP Barcelona 2009 Round Up
This is the same talk as the next one at Barcelona - this local Linux User Group graciously agreed to allow me to rehearse my PHP conference talk at them. They were a great crowd and asked some really good questions.
I'm one of the organisers for this conference, this was the second time we ran the event. The conference is tied to the local user group which I also help to organise, so speaking for this audience was kind of special as is "home turf" for me - and they are a great crowd! The talk is a nice tour of software development best practices, tied in to the thoughts of leading software writing Joel Spolsky, and updated to take account of aspects which apply specifically to web application development.
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Blog: PHPNW09: In Conclusion
Video: http://blip.tv/file/get/Phpcodemonkey-PHPNW09Track1Talk1LornaMitchellPassingTheJoelTestIn837.mov
I was delighted to be invited as the local speaker for this FOWA event - Carsonified are known for their great conferences and this one was no exception. It was a different crowd to my usual PHP geeks audience, but they were great all the same.
Blog: Architecting Web Services FOWA Tour
This was a great talk to be giving, I'm a command-line geek and I enjoyed sharing my tips with the audience. I was worried it would be quite a dry talk - just a list of commands to run - but it was fun to do :)
Blog: php|tek 2009: Quick Round-Up
This talk was the brain-child of my copresenter, Stefan Koopmanschap. We talked about the community and different ways to get involved with it, and evangelised about everyone contributing to the whole ecosystem - this talk went over so well we had to deliver it again in a spare slot which came up the next day! There are no slides, we didn't use any (our slides became our script instead, we had slides until a few days before the talk)
This was a half-day tutorial I delivered jointly with Matthew Weier O'Phinney. My first attempt at a tutorial and I really enjoyed the experience. We covered using and administering SVN and also talked about a bunch of tools. I gave some live demos of a couple of tricky bits of SVN usage - resolving conflicts and merging branches.
Blog: php|tek 2009: Tutorial Day
I was going to the Ibuildings office in Utrecht to prepare another talk with a colleague, and the dutch PHP user group took the opportunity to ask me to speak to them while I was there. I have a lot of friends in the dutch PHP community, and a talk to polish for php|tek, so I jumped at the chance! No slides, I didn't upload them until after I'd given this talk at php|tek.
Blog: Speaking at phpGG
I got a talk of the same title accepted to php|tek 2009 and used this session to figure out if I can talk and type at the same time, since I was warned by everyone that this was a Bad Idea and I figured if I can do it in lighting talk format, I can do it anywhere! It turns out I can do both and that it really isn't very interesting to watch. Later versions of this talk had no typing, just pre-prepared output shots. No slides, because they were just a title and then I overlaid the terminal window.
Blog: Speaking at GeekUpLeeds
This was the first Girl Geek Dinner event we held in Leeds and I gave a short talk basically encouraging the women to put themselves forward. I memorably also stood on the gaffa tape holding down all the various leads and ended up stuck to the floor for most of the talk! The slides are a bit thin because much of the talk didn't really need them, read the blog post though.
Blog: Professional Development for Girl Geeks
This was my first conference speaking gig, and I've got mixed feelings about it. I was
There is also a video of the demo I did with the Nabaztag - see http://www.flickr.com/photos/lornajane/2592602734/
Blog: DPC Talk Review
This was the rehearsal for delivering exactly the same talk a week later at DPC in Amsterdam. I was horribly nervous and have memories of a very hot night and wishing people would stop asking me questions! No slides for this one as I published them after the DPC talk.
Blog: Visit to PHP London
Jag Gill started up a Geekup in Sheffield and invited me to speak at the first edition - since I was preparing for speaking at DPC, this worked out well for me! This was lightning talk format as well although Geekup Sheffield has since moved to less strict talk formats.
Lightning talk format version of a talk usually given by Ivo Jansch, this was purely to give me some speaking experience. 20:20 style is quite hard to do well!
Blog: Geekup Talk
This was my first ever speaking attempt. Luckily someone videoed it and I got a lot better after this! The blog post doesn't have the speaking tag, because I didn't know I needed one, and the presentation is uploaded to my blog and not to slideshare, again I guess because I didn't know that was what one did.
Slides: svn_saves_lives.ppt
Blog: BarCampLeeds: Recap
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