Ben Ramsey

As I write this post, I’m sitting at about 38,000 ft on a Boeing 757-200, flying high above the now tropical storm Ike. My destination is Santa Clara, CA and the Zend PHP Conference and Expo.

This year, I’m giving a talk at the main conference, as well as moderating a discussion at the ZendCon Unconference, coinciding with the main conference. While it’s a shame that Zend does not open up the Uncon – perhaps even for a small fee – to the general public (you must be a registered ZendCon attendee to attend the Uncon), it is good that they’re opening up the space for anyone attending the conference to share ideas through presentation and discussion in an open forum. The Uncon is the community space and the place to be if you want to engage the PHP Community while at ZendCon.

The “round-table” discussion I’m moderating at the Uncon is titled – with tongue firmly planted in cheek – “PHP Developers’ Groups: Cat Herding 101.” User group leaders and volunteers will likely agree with me that organizing meetings often feels like herding cats. This discussion is primarily for user group leaders and volunteers, but it’s not exclusive. It’s open to everyone who would like to listen, learn, and participate in discussion about planning for user group meetings and events, and how to reach out and communicate with your user group members and the local developer community in your area. If you’ve ever had an interest in starting a user group, by all means, please be sure to attend! The user group discussion will take place on Wednesday, September 17th at 5:15pm in the Uncon space.

At the conference proper, I’ll be giving my “Distribution and Publication With Atom Web Services” presentation. This is the second time I will have given this talk, and it has been greatly improved since I gave it at DC PHP earlier this year. The previous incarnation of this talk was geared more towards developers, but this time, I think the presentation will be of interest to both programmers and managers alike, since I not only describe in technical detail how Atom works, but I also give high-level information explaining how Atom Web Services may be beneficial to your business or organization. I make the case for why Atom is important for any application that distributes or publishes content.

As for the remainder of the day today, I’ll be hanging out in sunny California, possibly taking a day trip into San Francisco to walk around and sight-see.

Hope to see you at the conference!