Dallas MiniCon - a discussion

[Chris Cornutt]

So there's an idea that some of us have been batting around for a
while and I wanted to get the opinions of some of you out there and
see how well it might be accepted. We had the php|architect folks come
in a while back and do their CodeWorks conference - a two day event
packed with PHP-related goodness. There seemed to be a good amount of
interest in the conference, so it got the wheels turning.

What is your opinion on a single-day conference held here in Dallas,
probably on a Saturday?

The idea is pretty simple...it would be a single day event, probably
starting around 8-9am and ending around 5 or 6pm with several speakers
through out the day. Thinking small, I imagine a first round of this
would be a single track with three talks in the morning, time for
lunch, and three or four talks in the afternoon/evening. Depending on
if we could get any sponsorship or not (maybe our friends at
SoftLayer) the food and drinks could be provided along with space to
hold the event.

I want to hear our members' opinions though - would this be something
that might interest you? I'm not sure what the price point would be
for the event (I suppose that all depends on sponsors) but I can't
imagine it'd be much.

Other things to consider:
- would you like to see a theme to the day's talks?
- would you consider speaking yourself?
- other things not addressed in this message....

Thanks for any feedback you can give, I think this is an interesting
idea and could be good for not only the group but for the Dallas/Ft.
Worth PHP community as a whole.

thanks,
-chris

[bria...@gmail.com]

I would definitely be interested if the price could kept reasonable.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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[Keith Davis]

As I've said in the past, the group's schedule conflicts with mine and
therefore I have not been able to percolate in the monthly events.
However, I would definitely be interested in an event of this sort. I have 3
people on my staff that I would like to bring to this as well. So as long as
the cost is reasonable and the schedule doesn't conflict (cross my fingers,
I don't have many Saturday's free either), you can count 4 for my team.

- Not much for themes, but as long as there is a good variance. Of my 4, we
range from barely learning PHP to expert and so I need their to be something
of interest in that range (though, I understand that it will lean towards
advanced, I'm sure.)
- I'd have to give the thought of speaking some thought - I have some topics
that might be of interest, but the scope might be too limited for an event
like this
- Can we devote at least one of the sessions to systems (web server
management, DB management, maintenance and scalability of the
aforementioned, etc.)? Or if not that, possibly a MySQL development session
(performance, scalability)?

-----Original Message-----
From: dall...@googlegroups.com [mailto:dall...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of Chris Cornutt
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 8:52 AM
To: DallasPHP
Subject: [DallasPHP:276] Dallas MiniCon - a discussion

thanks,
-chris

--

[malvik majithia]

I was just drafting a similar response to Keith's. The idea is to
separate talks by role - developer, manager and administrator instead
of sticking to one theme.

I will also urge the 5 developers in my team to attend. Cost will be a factor.

--
Malvik Majithia
(C)  817-897-1267

[Malvik]

A cherry would be recorded sessions that are available online later.

I can volunteer some time to help out as well.

> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/dallasphp?hl=en.

[Keith Davis]

Haha, percolate....stupid spellcheck....participate. :)

[Steve Hess]

I understood what you meant because I'm in the same boat regarding
scheduling. Oddly I thought "percolate" was simply a creative way of
saying it!

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/dallasphp?hl=en.

[mackarmaimages]

I'm a newbie to PHP so I would be interested if it included "training
wheels" type of sessions-- and yes, of course, cost is factor for me
as well.

[Chris Koenig]

Cost should be manageable with proper sponsorship - we do these kinds
of events in the .NET community all the time and few of them have
costs. Most of those that do either have really fancy meeting
locations, or are flying in speakers and need to Pay for their T&E.

Perhaps we can talk to the folks that sponsor some of the local user
groups to see if they'd be interested in sponsoring this event?
Yahoo!, LevelTen, etc. might be open to sponsoring F&B for the day,
and if we could find a location that does not require us to pay to
meet there, we've got most everything covered. Not sure what you'd
want to do about prize raffles, but that would also cost money/require
sponsorship, but it often helps to have raffle prizes to draw
attendees :-)

Depending on the timing of the event, I might be able to find some
money through our district budgets to help offset some of the costs
and be one of the event sponsors.

I would definitely be open to speaking, but don't think there
necessarily has to be a theme, unless its something very general...


Cheers!
Chris


--- chris koenig
--- microsoft developer evangelist
--- chris....@microsoft.com | @chriskoenig

On Feb 15, 8:51 am, Chris Cornutt <eny...@phpdeveloper.org> wrote:

[Cory Dean]

I would also like to see "training wheels" type of sessions.

[Vic Cherubini]

I'd love something like this.

I'd be interested in presenting some things. I think a live workshop
where people bring in their bad code and we write unit tests for them
as a group so they can refactor their code would be awesome.

-Vic

[Steve]

Chris, got any spare Windows Phones.......;)

http://www.karaokeacrossamerica.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dall...@googlegroups.com [mailto:dall...@googlegroups.com] On

Cheers!
Chris

--

[Dustin Moorman]

I think the Mini-Con's a great idea. I'd be there, assuming the cost is reasonable.

Dustin

[Jake Smith]

What are some topics everyone would be interested in hearing about?

What about the more beginner topics (OOP, Regex, etc.)?

Jake Smith
[t] @jakefolio
[w] www.jakefolio.com

[Malvik]

MVC??

On Feb 16, 9:41 am, Jake Smith <jake.smit...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What are some topics everyone would be interested in hearing about?
>
> What about the more beginner topics (OOP, Regex, etc.)?
>
> Jake Smith
> [t] @jakefolio
> [w]www.jakefolio.com
>

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Dustin Moorman <dustin.moor...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I think the Mini-Con's a great idea. I'd be there, assuming the cost is
> > reasonable.
>
> > Dustin
>

> >> --- chris.koe...@microsoft.com | @chriskoenig

[Jessie Green]

Authentication and security.

[Steve]

I'm even more basic than that. how about basic commands, syntax etc.

http://www.karaokeacrossamerica.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dall...@googlegroups.com [mailto:dall...@googlegroups.com] On

Behalf Of Malvik
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 9:43 AM
To: DallasPHP

[Dustin Moorman]

I second MVC, and perhaps Caching?

[Nyle Davis]

All,

I'm always interested in these types of things, but with the twist of "standards" as so many new "wanna be" developers have no clue of the development standards, we who have been here for the last 25+ years have gone about to establish to make coding easy.

OMR

-- 
Nyle E. Davis
(214)-779-6918 Cell
davis...@gmail.com
davi...@mail.com