Pacific Northwest PHP (PNWPHP) Conference
10 - 12 Sep 2015 at Impact Hub Seattle

Dave gave a great talk on MySQL specific things, and I definitely picked up a few nuggets that I'll keep in mind as I build queries going forward, but while the problem put forward was "why are databases so $(#*%$%ing difficult", I didn't feel like we got much of an answer to that. Quick touches on some higher level things. Maybe needs to be a bit broken up to fill the 50m time slot with focus on more things (the mysql visual explainer could probably fill a talk on its own.)

Frank was put in the unenviable position of having to pull a talk out of his nether regions, and I think with that in mind, he did a fine job.

I hate vi(m). I mash the keyboard to get out of it so I can get into nano instead. While big on theory and light on execution, the notes I took in this session enabled me to actually use vim on a machine yesterday to accomplish something I've never even done in nano, so for me that makes it worth it.

With some spit and polish (and more real world vim stuff), this will be a great talk for the vi-shy.

Top shelf talk from a top shelf guy. An amazing talk that is as applicable to any industry as it is ours. The importance of having a good community, a good mentor, and being a good mentor are laid out crystal clear using words from the Talmud. If you can see Yitz talk, see Yitz talk. You won't be disappointed.

Unfortunately, I missed the initial piece of this talk due to long runtime in another session, but what I did hear was amazing. Ed's willingness to be as frank and open about his own issues was incredible, and his passion for the well being of all of us in the community is evident. A great talk on a not so great subject.

Jeff's talk was (while weighted super heavily to the AWS side of things, for obvious reasons) incredibly informative. I learned about some great AWS tools I didn't even know were available, and got a refresher on a few more I've been meaning to check out. You can tell he's passionate about what he does and believes in the offerings they have.

I'm not going to say I have worked with PHP for 15 years, but I did write some PHP 15 years ago, so I have that going for me. To hear Sara talk about the genesis of PHP as we know it today, and the growing pains it went through to get here (along with the pains it faces today), was absolutely amazing. A great educational talk without a lot of technical knowledge dumping.

Chris is passionate about tests. You can tell. if you can't tell, he'll tell you. He makes sure he knows. Despite being a bit higher level vs where my knowledge lives, I still got a number of positives out of the talk, as he knows how to work a room, and keep yout entertained. I had gone in expecting a bit more basic of a talk on testing, as I'm still pretty unfamiliar with it, but I have some great starting points on educating myself. As Chris said, if you're not testing because you don't know how, or it's too confusing, you have no excuse.

A great deal of content overlap from the Clean App Development workshop, but the core concepts remain valuable and it included some great examples of refactoring in a real world situation (well, as real world as "video stores" are. I think I saw pictures of those in a dictionary once.) Well worth your time for a good quick overview of what Refactoring is and why it's important.

Josh is a great speaker, and I think the reason I didn't get as much out of this talk as I would have liked is just a relative knowledge level. If you need to be at a 6 to wrap your head around BeHat and PHPSpec, I'm at a 3 or a 4, and I felt lost throughout most of his talk. I do have a bunch of notes for self directed learning, though, and it's great to have starting points.