Jan 15 2009
Orlando PHP Meets at Stardust
Jan 6, 2009
There was some lively discussion at Stardust this Tuesday, where the Orlando PHP group had its monthly meeting. The table was opened up for discussion about where the group wanted to head in the future, at which several ideas surfaced and were discussed.
David Rogers suggested doing Pecha Kucha style presentations during group meetings. Pecha Kucha is a technique by which a speaker creates 20 slides, each which will be shown for 20 seconds during the presentation. Some suggestions for future presentations include talks on how PHP can be used in conjunction with other applications written in languages such as Ajax or Flex. Derek Gallo suggested that a presentation could be done on a comparison of different frameworks (like Zend) to show the similarities and differences and to provide information on which platforms would be best used for certain purposes.
Bensan George suggested that the group take on a community project that could be contributed to by both novice and seasoned PHP programmers. The project could be used to benefit a non-profit or not-for-profit organization and provide opportunities for interaction and collaboration within the development community. One outlet that was discussed was to use the orlandophp.org as a platform for group projects, and Eric Marden expressed his opinion that the creation of the site could produce open-source material that could be used in the wider community.
The evening’s main presentation was “PHP Basics”, created by Chris Chubb. (David Rogers covered the presentation, as Chris was unable to be present.) The talk covered Anatomy of a Web Request, PHP Syntax, Comments on Code, Variables, Language Constructs, Data Types, Data Type Conversions, Variable Scope, Constants, and Operator Precedence.
Orlando PHP normally meets on the first Thursday of every month. (This month was an exception due to the holiday.) Next month, Erik Marden will be doing a Pecha Kucha style presentation on “Anatomy of a WordPress Site”.