Meeting Recap

[Bradley Holt]

During last night's PHP Users Group get-together at Madera's we
discussed a few group related topics. To briefly recap:

* We discussed having a separate announcement mailing list for people
who might be interested in meeting announcements but not the general
discussion list.
* We talked about doing a beginner PHP session and pondered how we
could make it interesting to more experienced PHP developers as well.
* Debugging techniques was proposed as meeting topic: how do most PHP
developers debug their code?
* Conventions in developing Zend Framework applications would be a
useful topic. Specifically, how should someone coming from Ruby on
Rails start using Zend Framework?

Any other group related topics I missed from last night?

Thanks,
Bradley

--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[Ron Moorby]

 Bradley,

I think it would be great to have PHP beginner sessions.  I've attended a couple of the PHP meeting group sessions but most of it is over my head.  If you could get the word out to local high schools and colleges and other potential sites for "recruits" I'd bet you'd find some people who were interested.  Of course, the beginner sessions would have to be mentored by volunteers from the more experienced group.  Ultimately, some of the beginners would "graduate" to the more experienced group.

What do you think?

Ron Moorby

[Bradley Holt]

Ron,

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Ron Moorby <ronm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Bradley,
>
> I think it would be great to have PHP beginner sessions.  I've attended a
> couple of the PHP meeting group sessions but most of it is over my head.  If
> you could get the word out to local high schools and colleges and other
> potential sites for "recruits" I'd bet you'd find some people who were
> interested.  Of course, the beginner sessions would have to be mentored by
> volunteers from the more experienced group.  Ultimately, some of the
> beginners would "graduate" to the more experienced group.
>
> What do you think?
>

Interesting idea. Actually, this could be a great way to solve the
"make it interesting to experienced PHP developers" problem. Rather
than just one person presenting on PHP basics and everyone else
listening, those who do have experience with PHP could act as mentors
giving one-on-one help when needed. Would coming to a meeting with the
intent of helping less experienced PHP developers be interesting to
people?

Thanks,
Bradley

> Ron Moorby
>
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Bradley Holt <bradle...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> During last night's PHP Users Group get-together at Madera's we
>> discussed a few group related topics. To briefly recap:
>>
>> * We discussed having a separate announcement mailing list for people
>> who might be interested in meeting announcements but not the general
>> discussion list.
>> * We talked about doing a beginner PHP session and pondered how we
>> could make it interesting to more experienced PHP developers as well.
>> * Debugging techniques was proposed as meeting topic: how do most PHP
>> developers debug their code?
>> * Conventions in developing Zend Framework applications would be a
>> useful topic. Specifically, how should someone coming from Ruby on
>> Rails start using Zend Framework?
>>
>> Any other group related topics I missed from last night?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Bradley
>>
>> --
>> http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>
>
> >
>

--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[Matthew Weier O'Phinney]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Bradley Holt <bradle...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Ron Moorby <ronm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think it would be great to have PHP beginner sessions. I've attended a
> > couple of the PHP meeting group sessions but most of it is over my head. If
> > you could get the word out to local high schools and colleges and other
> > potential sites for "recruits" I'd bet you'd find some people who were
> > interested. Of course, the beginner sessions would have to be mentored by
> > volunteers from the more experienced group. Ultimately, some of the
> > beginners would "graduate" to the more experienced group.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
>
> Interesting idea. Actually, this could be a great way to solve the
> "make it interesting to experienced PHP developers" problem. Rather
> than just one person presenting on PHP basics and everyone else
> listening, those who do have experience with PHP could act as mentors
> giving one-on-one help when needed. Would coming to a meeting with the
> intent of helping less experienced PHP developers be interesting to
> people?

Absolutely! I think we'd need some sort of format for it, however -- the
"presentation" format isn't particularly suited for multiple skill
levels. But perhaps we could have those interested post some topics they
would like to learn about ahead of time, and during the meeting we could
choose 2-3 and break into groups.

--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
mweiero...@gmail.com
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/

[Bradley Holt]

Matthew,

I like where this is going. What are some of the beginner-oriented
topics folks would be interested in?

> --
> Matthew Weier O'Phinney
> mweiero...@gmail.com
> http://weierophinney.net/matthew/
>
> >
>

--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[Lee]

This sounds like a good idea. The OSI group at my school just started
doing a mentoring system again, too. Not sure how it's working out,
though, since I still haven't had time to make it to a meeting yet...

If you're going to go to the extent of recruiting high school
students, a group that's really just "the basics" would be a good idea
(inclusive of how to use online resources effectively). Heck, despite
the fact I have some PHP experience (and I'm in my 4th year of
college...), that's probably where I'd go. For people who have a grasp
of PHP, it might be a good idea to have something on good coding
practices (and/or how to recognize good code if they look up a
solution to something online). Procedural PHP versus object oriented
PHP might be another good topic. Teaching some of this through
projects would probably also be helpful. I know one of my problems
when learning a language is how to apply the concepts to actual code.
Might also be nice to have something on using PHP and databases.

I suggest doing a pilot of this idea with just college students and
add high school students later, to iron out any issues that might
arise.

But why I'm really responding is to request that if there are
presentations/notes for this mentoring thing, for them to be posted
somewhere. As much as I'd like to participate, it's a bit much for me
to travel 3 hours each way (I'm a student at Clarkson, in Potsdam,
NY). Aside from my own interest in learning, I'm also interested in
how well the mentoring thing works overall. I'm a member of the
Clarkson chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, and k12 outreach
for electrical, computer, and software engineering pretty much doesn't
happen, and I've been interested in trying to figure out how to do
some sort of on-going k12 outreach for ECE.

-Lee

On Sep 25, 10:28 am, Bradley Holt <bradley.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Matthew,
>
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Matthew Weier O'Phinney
>
>
>

> <mweierophin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Bradley Holt <bradley.h...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > mweierophin...@gmail.com
> >http://weierophinney.net/matthew/
>
> --http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[Bradley Holt]

Thank you everyone for the feedback and ideas on a "beginner" PHP
Users Group meeting. Unless anyone has another idea, I think we should
try this out at next month's meeting and maybe expand from there
depending on what we learn from the experiment. I'd like to start
promoting this ASAP so we'll need to decide on a meeting location. Of
all the places we've meet, the Burlington Free Press would probably be
most conducive to this type of meeting (I'll see if we can get WiFi
this time). Unless anyone has another suggestion, I'll go ahead and
email them and see if they'd be willing to host again.

--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[Bradley Holt]

D'oh! I just remembered that I'll be away at ZendCon the 4th Thursday
of October which is our usual meeting date. Anyone want to take over
organizing next month's meeting (I'm happy to help still) or would you
rather change the meeting date?

--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[Bradley Holt]

It looks like the Burlington Free Press will be able to host the PHP
Users Group meeting the evening of Thursday, October 29th. Note that
this is the 5th Thursday of the month instead of the usual 4th
Thursday (I'll be out of town the 4th Thursday). Also, it appears that
we'll have WiFi available for the meeting. Unless anyone has an
objection to changing the meeting date, I'll go ahead and put up a
meeting announcement later today so we can start promoting this and
figuring out exactly what we're going to do. Maybe use Eventbrite
again for RSVPs, thoughts?

--
http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/

[r...@bigyellowtech.com]

Sounds good to me! Wifi will be a nice treat.

Maybe we should do a "boot camp" type of thing where there is one
project set as the goal for the class. We could have several
(depending on attendance) groups where each one solved the problem as
a group. At the end (or at the next meeting, depending on time) the
solutions could be compared and much learning (and razzing) will take
place.

Just a thought on one way to organize the meeting...

Rob

On Sep 29, 11:06 am, Bradley Holt <bradley.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It looks like the Burlington Free Press will be able to host the PHP
> Users Group meeting the evening of Thursday, October 29th. Note that
> this is the 5th Thursday of the month instead of the usual 4th
> Thursday (I'll be out of town the 4th Thursday). Also, it appears that
> we'll have WiFi available for the meeting. Unless anyone has an
> objection to changing the meeting date, I'll go ahead and put up a
> meeting announcement later today so we can start promoting this and
> figuring out exactly what we're going to do. Maybe use Eventbrite
> again for RSVPs, thoughts?
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Bradley Holt <bradley.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > D'oh! I just remembered that I'll be away at ZendCon the 4th Thursday
> > of October which is our usual meeting date. Anyone want to take over
> > organizing next month's meeting (I'm happy to help still) or would you
> > rather change the meeting date?
>

> > On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Bradley Holt <bradley.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Thank you everyone for the feedback and ideas on a "beginner" PHP
> >> Users Group meeting. Unless anyone has another idea, I think we should
> >> try this out at next month's meeting and maybe expand from there
> >> depending on what we learn from the experiment. I'd like to start
> >> promoting this ASAP so we'll need to decide on a meeting location. Of
> >> all the places we've meet, the Burlington Free Press would probably be
> >> most conducive to this type of meeting (I'll see if we can get WiFi
> >> this time). Unless anyone has another suggestion, I'll go ahead and
> >> email them and see if they'd be willing to host again.
>