Why I speak

Submitted by Larry on 7 November 2015 - 4:51pm

A few weeks ago I gave a keynote presentation at PNW PHP in Seattle. It was the second time I'd given that particular talk, Eating ElePHPants, a quasi-history and lessons-learned of the process of rebuilding Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

Overall reception was good, and afterward I was appraoched by a woman who was trying to push for better development practices and refactoring a legacy code base at her company. We've exchanged a few emails since, as she goes about trying to subvert her company's development process for its own good to introduce testing, refactoring legacy code, decoupling, and other concepts that many of us on the conference circuit take for granted.

In the course of that email conversation, she had this to say:

When I first started with this entire effort about 2 months ago, I thought I will never succeed, and I thought I had set myself up to failure - until I heard you speak about your experience. Your talk was highly inspiring and got me excited to invest more time into what I was doing and I believed in myself for the reasons I chose this effort.

And later...

All the tech talks helped me realize that I can get somewhere, made it seem within reach, but you and Adam Culp [who also gave a session on refactoring] left me inspired.

Visiting other islands this fall

In case you hadn't heard yet, Drupal 8 RC 1 is out. And there has been much rejoicing! I'm going to save my own lengthy celebration-and-thank-you post for the 8.0.0 release, so for now I will just point everyone at Campbell Vertesi's post and say "what he said!".

But it's also a good time to consider the impact that Drupal 8 has had on the PHP community. The "off the island" movement has grown large, and people outside of Drupal are echoing the same message. In fact, not one but two conferences this fall are actively trying to build bridges between PHP sub-communities: ZendCon and php[world].

Larry 8 October 2015 - 2:49pm

Just how insular is the PHP community?

Submitted by Larry on 24 August 2015 - 3:21pm

Periodically, there is a complaint that PHP conferences are just "the same old faces". That the PHP community is insular and is just a good ol' boys club, elitist, and so forth.

It's not the first community I've been part of that has had such accusations made against it, so rather than engage in such debates I figured, let's do what any good scientist would do: Look at the data!

Update 2015-08-25: The Joind.in folks have given me permission to release the source code. See link inline. I also updated the report to include a break down by continent.

The next era of PHP

Submitted by Larry on 30 May 2015 - 5:57pm

2015 is turning into a watershed year for PHP. Many projects either have or will release new major versions, including Zend Framework, Symfony, Laravel, Guzzle, Drupal, Slim, and many others. And of course there's PHP 7 itself, coming this fall.

I'll talk more on those later, but for the moment I want to focus on one other major new development this year: PSR-7.

Building Bridges: 2015 Edition

Submitted by Larry on 31 December 2014 - 3:11pm

As most who have met me know, building collaborative communities is a minor passion of mine. 2 years ago, I called on the Drupal community to Get off the Island and connect with other communities.

That call was part of a larger movement within the PHP community to interact more, connect more, and collaborate more than ever before. The PHP Renaissance has been driven in no small part by that greater collaboration between many different PHP communities.

To close out 2014, I spoke with Jeff "JAM" McGuire of Acquia Podcast fame about Drupal and community building, and what it means to be the "Drupal Community" when so much of Drupal isn't Drupal.

And as a final capstone, I made a challenge to the entire PHP community: Don't just talk to each other, build with each other. Get out of your comfort zone and learn something new, from someone else.

Happy New Year, PHP. Let's Build Something Good together.

2014: A Year of Travel

Submitted by Larry on 31 December 2014 - 1:58pm

As 2014 draws to a close, I look back at the year and realize... holy crap I traveled a lot! I hadn't actually done a fully tally yet, but here's the full rundown:

Sunshine PHP - Miami, FL - February
Drupal South - Wellington, New Zealand - February
Florida Drupal Camp - Orlando, FL - March
MidCamp - Chicago, IL - March
Museums and the Web - Baltimore, MD - April
Lonestar PHP - Dallas, TX - April
Drupal Association Webinar - Online - May
php[tek] - Chicago, IL - May
DrupalCon Austin - Austin, TX - June
Refactor::Chicago (User group) - Chicago, IL - May
Nomad PHP (User group) - Online - June
Crafting Code Tour - Minneapolis, MN; Milwaukee, WI; Cincinnati, OH - July
Design 4 Drupal - Boston, MA -July
Twin Cities Drupal Camp - Minneapolis, MN - August
Madison PHP - Madison, WI - September
DrupalCon Amsterdam - Amsterdam, The Netherlands - September
Symfony Live - New York, NY - October
Higher Ed Web - Portland, OR - October
BADCamp - San Francisco, CA - November
php[world] - Washington, DC - November

In all, I flew 64,082 miles (103,130 kilometers for the metric fans in the audience), presented 29 times, with 13 distinct presentations at 20 conferences and user groups across 3 continents, and spent 82 days on the road (not counting non-conference travel). You know what that means?

It means I created about 10 metric tonnes of carbon pollution.

On Drupal's Leadership

Submitted by Larry on 25 October 2014 - 9:20pm

My DrupalCon Amsterdam Core Conversation on Managing Complexity has generated quite a bit of follow-up discussion. That's good; it's a conversation we as a community really need to be having.

There are a few points, though, that I feel bear clarification and further explanation as I fear the point of the talk has gotten lost in the details.

Before continuing, if you haven't yet I urge you to watch the session video as well as the background resources linked from the session page. This is not a new conversation; it's the latest chapter in a very long-running discussion that is larger than the Drupal project, and it behooves us all to be aware of the history and context around it.

An open letter to conference organizers

Submitted by Larry on 19 July 2014 - 6:51pm

Let's be honest, I spend a lot of time at conferences. Over the past 2 years or so I've averaged more than one speaking engagement at a conference per month, including a half-dozen keynotes. I've also helped organize several conferences, mostly DrupalCamps and DrupalCons. I'd estimate conferences make up more than a third of my professional activity. (Incidentally, if someone can tell me how the hell that happened I'd love to hear it; I'm still confused by it.)

As a result I've gotten to see a wide variety of conference setups, plans, crazy ideas, and crazy wonderful ideas. There are many wonderful things that conference organizers do, or do differently, and of course plenty of things that they screw up.

I want to take this opportunity to share some of that experience with the organizers of various conferences together, rather than in one-off feedback forms that only one conference will see. To be clear, while I definitely think there are areas that many conferences could improve I don't want anyone to take this letter as a slam on conference organizers. These are people who put in way more time than you think, often without being paid to do so, out of a love for the community, for learning and sharing, and for you. Whatever else you may think about a conference or this list, the next time you're at a conference take a moment to find one of the organizers and give them a huge hug and/or firm handshake (as is their preference) and say thank you for all the work that they do.

The Crafting Code Tour

Submitted by Larry on 30 April 2014 - 7:37pm

Over the last few years, one of my foci has been bringing together the PHP community and taking the time to celebrate the PHP Renaissance. That effort has taken me all around the world, from Paris to Toronto to New York to Costa Rica to New Zealand. And this summer it's taking me to the Midwestern US as part of the Crafting Code Tour.