php|tek in Chicago was fun as always. It is the best PHP conference I have ever been to, which makes sense, given that it is focused solely on PHP and surrounding technologies. The best thing about the conference is the community feeling in general. You get a real sense that everyone there really cares about PHP and is heavily invested in it, which is good for moving the whole language and ecosystem forward.

I myself gave two talks – one about Stackbox CMS, a new CMS project I have been working on, and one about Apppcelerator Titanium Mobile since I have been working with it a lot lately. The presentations are embedded below.

Cross-Platform Mobile Development with Titanium

Stackbox CMS: Next-Generation Content Management

Object Oriented Apologetics

In defense of object-oriented programming – How and why you should use object oriented programming for your next project.This talk is for PHP programmers who are just learning about object oriented code, who cling to old excuses(“object oriented code is slower”), or who are otherwise unconvinced of its usefulness. Concrete real-world examples of commonscenarios and challenges that programmers face will be presented, and how taking an object oriented approach is better than a proceduralone in most cases. Copious code examples in both object oriented and procedural approaches will be provided throughout, and thedifferences and benefits of the object oriented approach will be explained.

Download Object Oriented Apologetics on SlideShare

If you were in the talk, please rate it on Joind.in

The CodeWorks Experience

All in all, the CodeWorks roadshow Dallas stop was much smaller than I expected. There were about 20 people in the talk I gave. I suppose it was both a good a bad thing. On one hand, I had a lot of fun connecting with the other speakers and attendees on a more personal level than I would have had the opportunity to do otherwise. I met a lot of new people in the PHP community that I will probably stay connected with on some level, even if it is just Twitter and IRC. We had a lot of fun the night before the presentation day eating together and hanging out.

On the other hand, I know that as a business, the relatively low attendance levels coupled with the high travel expenses could mean that something like this can’t happen again, which is a shame. This was one of the best efforts I have seen in a while to really lower the price of the conference for attendees by bringing the speakers directly to their cities or at least ones that are close by. Going to ZendCon, for instance, could easily cost up to $2,500 for the whole trip with airfare, hotel stays, and food, if not more.

The bottom line here is that CodeWorks was a good conference that offered a great value for your money. I had a great time meeting and connecting with new people and finally meeting people in real life that I had been communicating with for years. I learned some new things and finally got the kick in the pants I needed to jump into Test Driven Development, thanks to Jason Sweat’s TDD tutorial and hand-holding.

Now I’m just looking forward to php|tek in May 2010.

I will be presenting my talk on Building a Data Mapper with PHP5 and the Standard PHP Library, followed by a discussion on ORMs and whatever else comes up. The presentation will cover all the thought processes, goals, theories, and actual code that goes into building an ORM (or really any other larger project that requires more advance planning). The project that was the basis of this presentation is phpDataMapper – an open-source PHP5 data mapper ORM layer that I started in the fall of 2008. It now powers the model layer of InvoiceMore, a live web application I launched in March 2009.

This is a presentation I have given before at Tulsa TechFest.

Watch the video of this presentation online

Procedural to Object-Oriented: The Benefits of Using Object-Oriented PHP

The first presentation of mine was about object-oriented PHP programming, focusing on the many benefits it offers over a more procedural style of programming that seems to be very common in the PHP community.

Building a Data Mapper with PHP5 and the Standard PHP Library

And my second “surprise” presentation was on my PHP DataMapper project, and the steps and thought processes I went through while building it. I say “surprise” here because another presenter had dropped out due to a scheduling conflict, and I found out I was going to be doing a second presentation in his time slot the day before the conference. Surprise!

Procedural to Object-Oriented: The Benefits of Using Object-Oriented PHP

Learn the power of object-oriented programming in PHP5 and the many benefits it offers over the more traditional PHP procedural programming style.  This session will include a light introduction to object-oriented concepts and will provide real-world concrete examples of the benefits it can offer you and the PHP projects you work on.

I will be speaking on October 9th at 2:30pm, and the presentation will last for roughly 75 minutes (60 minutes to speak, and 15 minutes for Q&A).  That’s a good chunk of time to fill, but there’s a lot on this topic that will need to be covered.  If you’re thinking about getting into object-oriented PHP programing or would like to learn more about it, please attend.  I will try my best to make sure there is at least something that everyone can learn.

You can also view my page on the conference website to read a short biography and get more information on the event.  Hope to see at least a few friendly faces there!

P.S. – I plan on posting my presentation slides on this website after the event just in case anyone missed anything important or was unable to attend.

UPDATE: The conference is over, and I have posted the powerpoint slides in another post for those that are interested in the presentations I made.