In my first year of co-organizing the Chicago PHP User Group, I have learned a lot and met many wonderful people. Combining insights from the community with some of my own, I wanted to pass on some of the things I’ve learned about building and maintaining a thriving technical community. Whether you’re an organizer or attendee, I hope this gives you some insight into what goes on behind the scenes of running a user group.

Recently there was a big announcement that with WordPress 5.2, that they would be updating the minimum required version of PHP to 5.6. That’s a huge deal, but as can be expected, a vocal minority of the PHP community immediately erupted in anger

So as someone who runs conferences for the community (And does so full-time, so does need to make a buck or two), I wanted to address a recent discussion that came up on twitter. A gentleman who was running a design conference in Dallas (for only $200 ticket price), was ranting about speakers, and how […]

I’ve spent a while now working on my seven deadly sins series of articles, and so it’s been a while since we’ve stepped back to look at PHP itself. Where are we as a language, and as a community?

A little over a year ago my team lead looked at my first few months as a Developer Evangelist and decided that since I was already doing work for and with underrepresented developers, we should try making that one of the communities I officially serve.

A little over a year ago my team lead looked at my first few months as a Developer Evangelist and decided that since I was already doing work for and with underrepresented developers, we should try making that one of the communities I officially serve.

I had a rough day at work on Friday. I want to share with the PHP community what made it rough, what I have learned about being in a male-dominated industry, and how I have worked with my coworkers to minimize the rough days.

The final days of 2018 are looming on us, and I wanted to take a look back on some of the things, good and bad, that happened in and around the PHP community this year.

In this issue: Xdebug, Freelancing, Parsing text, MySQL Generated Columns, Gitflow, PhpStorm, and more.

The PHP community makes a big deal about user groups, and for a good reason. Meeting up with local peers and creating a network of people can be beneficial. Many user groups will have a talk most months which makes a nice talking point and a good opportunity to learn something new. The many PHP […]