Both of these talks are new for me, so it has been quite a lot of fun putting things together. I hope you will come out and join me and others of the PHP Community at Tek. If you haven’t registered for it yet, there is still time. So get out there!

And if you know someone who is one of the unsung members of the PHP Community, be sure to nominate them for an interview at http://voicesoftheelephpant.com/nominate-a-voice/

I will be giving a tutorial on the basics of optimizing MySQL along with a session on character sets. I, in particular, look forward to the tutorial since it covers areas that I find fascinating – query and server optimization.

On a personal note, neither I or my husband have ever been to Amsterdam before. So since we have never yet had the opportunity to play tourist there, my husband plans to join me on the trip for the conference. We hope to play tourist while there and at least see the Van Gogh museum. Though hopefully we will get to see much more then just that.

This year it will be Saturday, April 2, 2011 from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm at:

Wall St. Cantina
19 N Orange Ave
Orlando, FL 32801

Not sure if I will present yet.. But thinking about it.

I will be presenting on what for me is a constant struggle – to balance your home and work life when you telecommute. I must admit that I and my family fight with this every day.

If you want learn more about telecommuting, what is involved, what tools are needed and how to talk to your boss about setting up a telecommuting program, I hope you will consider joining us!

Day 1:
- Documents, documents, documents by Matthew Weier O’Phinney. I particularly enjoyed that this was focused on the software architectural design and was system agnostic for the document database.
- Technical Debt by Elizabeth Naramore. Her no nonsense discussion and interaction with the audience kept this discussion interesting and engaging. The ideas and concepts discussed were something that every developer and manager should understand.
- Demystifying PostgreSQL by Asher Snyder. I have been wanting to look at PostgreSQL for years, I just never seem to have the time to do it. This was a nice intro to the system and its capabilities which I have to admit, are pretty dang cool.

Day 2:
- EXPLAIN – yeah it was my own talk, but hey – I was there!
- Pragmatic Guide to Git by Travis Swicegood Travis is a gifted speaker that manages to draw you in with his enthusiasm. His clear logical walk through of the basics of Git covers all the commands that a beginner will need.
- Infobright DB by Jeff Kibler This was a talk that I originally went to mostly out of curiosity. Once they started I found myself highly interested (data warehousing and mining is an interest of mine) not just for what they did – but how they did it.
- Welcome to the Dark Side: We have Brownies by Josh Holmes. The talk was informative, engaging, and just all around fun. Turns out Microsoft isn’t so bad after all… I mean – they had brownies even

Day 3:
Umm – slept late and then just practiced my last talk… Since it was on the last set of talks on the last day..

Missed a number of keynotes – did some volunteer work manning the PHP Community booth, but really enjoyed the “Dries” and “ROI” ones.

The various parties/after-parties (official and otherwise) were awesome with more then a few hangovers showing up the next day.

And as a minor side note – I also really enjoyed the Running MySQL at Scale tech talk at Facebook while I was there. Learned quite a bit and also got to see Domas again. I missed his brand of craziness.

I have to admit that I am very rusty with my PHP, which is why I wanted to sit in on the ZCE Bootcamp. I figured if anything the bootcamp would at least remind me of all that I have forgotten – and it did… it was scary how much I have forgotten. Christian did a fantastic job, keeping what could have been bland, boring information interesting and engaging. He has some real brain ticklers in his deck that more then showed me how much I have lost. If you are thinking of going for your ZCE – I can not recommend his tutorials enough.

Afterwards I eventually made it to the Speakers dinner and again had a great time talking to old and new friends. Had some fantastic talks through the night from the technical to the personal (Michelangelo, I promise I will keep thinking about what you said).

Unfortunately the timezone changes caught up with me so went up to bed at about 9PM (midnight my time). I always forget how much the time differences can take out of you.

My family has a history with breast cancer so while I do not say much about it, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. In my case, it was a male member of the family that was diagnosed a few years ago. He unfortunately found out about it too late and passed away within 6 months of the diagnosis. So men, though this is primarily discussed in association with women, you also need to take care.

Since the percentage of men getting breast cancer is so low and my grandmother had ovarian cancer as well (there is a link between the two), my mother was tested for the BRCA1 and 2 genes and thankfully was cleared. Admittedly this does not mean I can not get breast cancer, but does rule out the genetic factor – mostly. Because of my family history, I am still checked every 6 months and get an annual mammogram even though I am younger then is normally recommended (40).

Breast Cancer effects us all.

Some links:
American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp
National Cancer Institute – Breast Cancer: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/breast
Relay for Life: http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month: http://www.nbcam.org/
Susan G Komen Foundation: http://ww5.komen.org/
Save the ta-tas: http://www.savethetatas.com/index.php/mission/
Genetic testing for Breast and Ovarian Cancer risk: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/Genetic-Testing-for-Breast-and-Ovarian-Cancer-Risk

So to try and improve myself on all those “soft skills” that I either don’t have or never thought I needed, I will be attending the Day Camp for Developers online conference.

It is a technology agnostic, inexpensive (only $35), one day (Saturday, November 6th), online event. Check it out!

I look forward to seeing everyone there!