Archives For bostonphp

Last year was a fairly active one for me in terms of public speaking. I spoke at four events, each quite different than the next, and I really worked hard on becoming a better public speaker. (Those two activities–public speaking and working on becoming a better public speaker–don’t always go hand-in-hand, sadly.) Over the course of the year, I learned quite a bit, both about myself and about public speaking in general. In this newsletter, I thought I’d share some thoughts and resources along those lines.

As always, questions, comments, and all feedback are much appreciated. And thanks for your interest in what I have to say and do!

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When I compose a newsletter, I look at my well of possible materials–questions, links, blog posts, etc., and try to come up with a theme, if at all possible. When looking at these this time around, the ones that seemed most worth sharing immediately all focus on, well, me. For example, there’s the presentation I gave to Boston PHP: you can view the slides and the raw video of it. Or there are some articles that I’ve published online that you might like. And there’s the status on “The Yii Book”.

So this newsletter is far more me-centric than most, but hopefully it’ll be of use to you still. Because, presumably, you subscribed to this newsletter in the first place because you were interested in what I’m doing, thinking, interested in, and so forth.

Also, if you do have something you’d like me to write about, address, or answer in future newsletters, now is a good time to send that in, as my well of topics is getting shallow. I think my next newsletter is going to be on goals, if you have any thoughts or questions along those lines (e.g., technologies to learn, ways to learn, etc.). I’ve also got an upcoming newsletter planned on public speaking.

And, as always, thanks for your interest in what I have to say and do!

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In conjunction with my “How to Become a Web Developer” presentation, given to the Boston PHP user group on December 12, 2012, I’ve composed this page of Web developer resources. Such lists can quickly become overwhelming, and therefore less useful, so in compiling it, I’ve tried to stick to resources that meet at least one of the following criteria:

– Are de facto standard resources
– Contain information not found elsewhere or not explained as well elsewhere
– Present a unique perspective

So while the Web is happily overrun with useful resources, those listed here are ones I considerable most notable. If you have your own recommendations, please post those as comments!

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Ernie and Matt over at Boston PHP have already managed to post the unedited video from my “How to Become a Web Developer” presentation given on December 12, 2012. You can find it on Vimeo. I’ve not looked at it myself yet (and am not planning on it), but Matt said that my part begins at about the 3 minute mark. In a couple of weeks, perhaps after the holidays, the edited video will be posted, which will be a combination of the video and the slides together. My sincerest thanks to Matt and everyone at Boston PHP for hosting me, and to Ernie for handling the video.

Also, I had promised (in the presentation) and do promise (in the video) a page of resources to go with the material. I’m working on that now, but it’s a bit more work than I expected, so let’s plan on that going live on my Web site on Wednesday, December 19th. Thanks!

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I’ve posted my slides from my “How to Become a Web Developer” presentation at SpeakerDeck. This presentation was created for the Boston PHP user group, and presented on December 12, 2012.

The presentation WAS recorded, and I’ll post a link to that once I know what it is. There’s also a page of related resources that I need to create, which I hope to do over the weekend.

My thanks to everyone for coming out, and to those others of you interested in this.