The Suburban Chicago PHP & Web Development Meetup

Here are the slides from my presentation at this month’s meetup. If they don’t make a lot of sense, don’t worry. I’ll be updating them with narration in the next few days.

UPDATE: I added narration this evening. Sorry I sound so out of it. This is the sixth or seventh take.

I know this is a PHP Meetup, and not a JavaScript one, but this recent Google Tech Talk is too good to pass up. As web developers, we often find ourselves working with JavaScript, and we this guy has some great advice on getting the most our of the language.

You can find notes on the lecture at catonmat.net.

Hey, Chicago area PHP geeks! The annual php|tek conference is happening May 19-22, 2009 right in our own back yard, at the Sheraton Gateway Suite O’Hare.

Early bird pricing technically ended last night (I got in just under the wire), but their system is still charging the early bird rate, so you might still be able to get that discount. But, wait, it gets better! Members of our meetup can save an additional $100 on registration; put in “The West Suburban Chicago PHP Meetup” as your company, and click the button for the discounted rate for PHP/MySQL/Linux user group members.

All registration packages include a complimentary 1 year subscription (Print & PDF) to php|architect magazine, a $29.99 value.

Sessions on this year’s schedule that caught my eye include:

• AJAX Testing: Tools and Techniques
• Of Haystacks and Needles (integrating search into your site)
• Untestable Code
• ORM in the PHP World
• PHP 5.3 – Hot or Not?
• Design Patterns in PHP
• Seven Steps to Better OOP Code
• Everything You Need to Know About mod_rewrite
• Coping With Cyber Monday (scaling)

I hope to see you there!