Writing Extensible Code Using Event Dispatcher

John Kary really pulled out all the stops on this one. The presentation itself was right up there with some of the most memorable I have seen at OSCON and ZendCon over the years. His slides and images were engaging, he wove in an entertaining story ("The Boss"), used humor to keep it fresh, but not so much it lost focus.

As far as info mgt, when showing code sections evolve, he always made sure the same files were always positioned in the same area across slides (so you didn't have to hunt). When showing how events move though the architecture, he actually animated not only the path of the event, but how it evolves as it moved through the system. The examples were as bite-sized as can be considering the topic.

In terms of content, I didn't just walk away with some examples of using an EventDispatcher component, it actually got me thinking of event dispatchers in other systems, and their benefits.

Possibly the best takeaway for me though may have been unintended--seeing how easy it can be to take a chunk of procedural code and abstract it out into objects with precise purpose. I struggle with this type of re-factoring, but John not only made it easy, but provided a clear walk though of how and why he chose to break things up where he did.

Bravo John, and thanks for the great presentation!