MidwestPHP 2014
14 - 16 Mar 2014 at University of St Thomas

(Okay, so it totally was my memory failing me; there was indeed lively Q&A discussion. (I'd have just edited my previous comment to say this but my edit-window was up by the time I fact-checked.))

PRO:

- Really solid overview of tech lead role
--- ranging from technical to organizational to psychological
- Very valuable for me as a freelance dev/strategist/consultant looking to grow my business by hiring and managing additional devs. Gave me a strong vision / example for me, and has increased the likelihood that I will successfully hire and manage devs other than me. :-)
-- slides were pretty (go Clockwork!)

Highlights:
-- "advocate to devs for users, to mgmt for devs, to client for project."
-- "give devs a whiteboard marker and let them discover on their own that they're never gonna make the deadlines"
-- "be positive to everyone. the stress-buck stops at you; don't stress clients/mgmt with scary details, don't poison devs with complaining"

RFI:

-- Sometimes you would repeat yourself as filler.
-- Seemed a bit nervous / adrenaline-d; I imagine this will fade with additional speaking.
-- Is it just my failed memory or did Q&A not really happy much?

CONCLUSION:

I would give this a 6 (epicness) and 4 (rooms for improvement) at the same time; I will average them to 5. Thanks for helping all along in our journeys!

Simple, lively, delivered critical best practices from somebody working with cutting edge as well as stable/legacy frontend solutions.

Granted a toolbox of options at addressing the ever-present issue of mobile-responsible layout.

Fabulous talk, demystified web security. I literally started by thinking:

"OMG I HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT WEB SECURITY AND IT IS TERRIFYING",

and I ended up thinking:

"THERE'S SOME SCARY TRICKS OUT THERE BUT I ALSO SEE THAT SIMPLE STEPS CAN, IF CONSISTENTLY APPLIED, DEFEAT THE BULK OF THEM"

"AND IF I NEED, I CAN GET THEM FROM HIS POWERPOINT!"

So good. Thank you very much.

PRO:

- Mind blowing to see how grown up objects are hydrated and persisted.
- Doctrine is cool and you helped make it (right?) and it's really cool to hear from the real team about it.
- This is somewhat more a compliment to Doctrine than to the speech, but the speech articulated it well: It's cool to see how Doctrine decouples the various tasks it performs to assure modularity and interoperability.
- I can tell that there are a lot of layers to doctrine, but I was still able to walk away with a clarity around the two main functions (ObjectDataManagement and ObjectRelationshipManagement, I think)


CON:

- I showed up late and missed the beginning and was some confused. NOT YOUR FAULT.

PRO:

- Really good topic. Much needed.
- Totally covered things I didn't anticipate. Things that are sitting in my brain ... ("NOT an MVC framework... a Request/Response framework")
- Loved the quotes. So clutch.
- You are charismatic, dynamic, humorous, dashing (Not hitting on you. married. to a woman.) A good speaker with great leadership potential.

RFI:

- You are right, it's a 2 hour talk.
--- I think I maybe needed a live code example of how all the requests and exceptions and responses worked through all those layers.

(P.S. I thought of you when I was working out to the Inu Yasha soundtrack! Thought you'd perhaps be proud, or perhaps disappointed if Inu Yasha is below your level of connoiseurship or something.)

PRO:

- So valuable. This taught me not only the basics of good modern PHP web app design, but also the way to incrementally arrive there while honoring the wisdom contained in existing code.

- Humor, levity, speaking skills were high.

CON:

- Ubiquitous uses of "he" and "guys" to describe generic / all programmers reinforces the maleness of programming, damages the accessibility of programming to women.
--- 3+ women programmers I heard from through the conference about their thoughts on your language, and she was of the perspective that indeed ubiquitous male norms are a barrier to women entering the field as devs. "It was an awesome talk, except everyone in it was a dude."

Based on your generous giving to others in the way of both your presentation and your earnest and enthusiastic individual conversation, isn't something you want.

However, I trust you've considered this, so I don't pretend to be so wise as to override your conclusions, but rather just wanted to present an additional perspective.

CONCLUSION:

Most importantly, I need to thank you for the value your talk added to my professional career. (This is of greater weight than my aforementioned concern)

Good, generalist, spiritual guidance.

Occasionally slightly platitudinous... perhaps a bit more in the way of story?

Thanks,

PRO:

- You really opened the door to one of the most important developments in PHP.
- Loved the informal Q&A afterwards. Both business and technical aspects.
- Good preaching re: dev-master.
- This was really critical for my growth as a php dev. Thank you!

RFI:

- Really can't think of much... I wish there was a cross-language version of Composer :-)
- Could have perhaps been more lively, showed pretty pictures, something shiny / snazzy like that.

Great inspiration toward scrappiness and opportunism! Fun and lively.

Thanks!