Midwest PHP 2015
14 - 15 Mar 2015 at University of St Thomas

A very needed, if depressing, look at what women developers sometimes have to deal with. Glad that Beth and Eryn were willing to speak up about it, and the panel discussion with the audience went very well.

"Quality" is most definitely the first word that comes to mind for this talk. Yitz seemed very well prepared and was a pleasure to listen to. I really liked the discussion time at the end and really appreciated the perspective/responses.

Props to the speaker and the organizers for this keynote. I was really proud of the PHP community to see that. Well done!

I think the talk itself was right on the money, excellent use of videos (probably the best use I've seen).

I would like to see a demo showing a "before and after" on a webpage that has had its accessibility concerns addressed. Some code samples showing what was done could be helpful. (This all might be better suited for a different talk entirely.)

I have admittedly seen Eryn give this talk before, but was eager to see it again. I still managed to walk away with new ideas and a sense of empowerment to own all aspects of my software, including the interface.

Eryn is an excellent speaker. Her style/approach maintains everyone's attention - from humor to really solid examples. As always, her talk was for sure one of the best at the conference.

This was a great talk and overview of accessibility, which a lot of developers don't think about during development. This topic needs to be covered more at conferences, and Joe did a great job.

So very thankful this happened. All of the panelists were honest, open, and personal. It really exposed the uncomfortable reality that is in our industry's culture. My only complaint was the time constraint. I really, truly, hope to see something like this again, perhaps with a two hour time slot.

The format for questions worked quite well. It felt respectful and fair. I appreciated that when folks started speaking outside of the agreed format, we had a moderator to bring it back.

Well done, speakers - and thank you for coming up with the idea and being willing to do this.

Zack was a blast to listen to - and his speaking style easily keeps my attention. In this talk, he balanced making crazy complex content approachable (and even a bit fun) with pushing the attendees outside of their comfort zone to ensure all felt challenged. Well done.

This talk was interesting and was a good introduction of the issues around web accessibility but it didn't really attempt to solve any specific issues. I think the workshops that are put on by GAAD probably do a better job of this. This is definitely a topic that needs more attention in the development community. Joe did a great job for his first keynote and I would probably attend another talk he gave in the future.

Overall this talk was a pretty good intro to DevOps for developers. I feel like it provided a good starting point for people but didn't go into enough details (time prohibiting) for someone to walk away and be able to run a server. If nothing else it was a glimpse for people to at least understand the scope of what they will need to learn to effectively take on a DevOpps role. I personally found the tools mentioned in the talk to be the most useful part of the talk. Chris was a good presenter and I would attend his talks again.

I am glad to see a developer expressing the importance of front to back UX consideration. I see myself as more of a full stack developer so I can't relate directly to Eryn's purer back-end perspective but her presentation included a lot of information that is useful for anyone in the development community. UX is very important and I fully agree with her definition of "good software", "good software is software that people want to use and want to keep using". The slides where exactly as they should be in my opinion, short key points. It would be awesome if she could post them along with her notes that we can share the UX "Kool-aid" with our management. In both of the talks I went to that included Eryn she was a very compelling presenter and I would certainly attend her talks in the future.