Category Archives: Meeting

March 2010: Developer Toolbox Expo

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When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Monday 15th March 2010.Meeting Map

Where?

Room 18, Level 3
Building 8, RMIT
368 Swanston St

What?

Developer Tools by Russell Searle

The beauty contest never ends over which developer tools are hot or not. There’s never an undisputed champion, and there’s always a cat-fight in the dressing room afterwards. So just for the hell of it, let’s send a few new and not-so-new tools down the catwalk.

Artisteer 2. So maybe you can build CMS or custom web sites, but your design skills suck (like mine)? Not a problem. In a couple of hours or less, Artisteer 2 pumps out top-class, optimised, custom templates for Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, DotNetNuke, hand-written sites and more.

phpDesigner 7. Happy with Eclipse PDT for PHP development? Get a load of phpDesigner, built by Danish wunderkind Michael Pham. It’s light, fast and has everything a PHP geek could ask for, including breakfast in bed (providing you don’t mind coding for breakfast).

… and more. Some other left-of-centre tools that you may not be familiar with: StyleMaster, KompoZer and more.

Russell Searle is a 30-year IT lifer. For the last 15 years he has been an independent consultant working across a wide range of industries, roles and platforms. He has worked with PHP for seven years, and is now focussed on open source web apps, ERP, SOA etc.

Sponsors

Tool vendors Extensoft and MP Software are generously sponsoring this session. They have donated free licences for Artisteer 2 and phpDesigner 7 to be given away on the night.

Don’t miss out! See these excellent tools in action and maybe you will take one of them home!

Discussion

Now this would be the dressing room cat-fight after the pageant. A friendly round-table on the subject of tools, the agenda for 2010, or any other topic that fires the group up.

Then?

We head to the Oxford Scholar Hotel‎ at about 9pm for drinks and socialising.

November 2009: The Yii Framework & From the Desktop to the Web and Back Again

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When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Monday 16th November 2009.Meeting Map

Where?

Room 18, Level 3
Building 8, RMIT
368 Swanston St

What?

The Yii Framework by Damien Buttler

Yii is a framework build on PHP5 to build websites quickly. In this talk I will demonstrate how to start a new project with Yii and how Yii implements MVC. I think those new to the framework will appreciate the ease of working with Yii.

Damien Buttler is a web developer who’s been working with PHP for six years. Interested in all things open source including PHP and Linux. He has been working as a PHP developer at Sputnik Agency for the last 2.5 years, mainly building sites from scratch and using Joomla!.

From the Desktop to the Web and Back Again by Ben Balbo

In the beginning, there was no web. People would run programs on their computers, and they would save things on to disks. Then came the network and file servers, followed by application servers and “Intranets”. After that came software as a service. Our data is moving further from the desktop, but are the applications coming back?

Join Ben in this brief historical tour and watch him delve in to current methods for distributing data while localising applications, to produce the desktop applications for the web we see today.

Ben Balbo was born in Germany, grew up in the UK, lives in Melbourne, and brews his own beer. A software developer and open source community liaison by day, Ben is the Vice-President of the Linux Users of Victoria, Treasurer of the Open Source Developers’ Club and convener of the Melbourne PHP Users Group and BarCampMelbourne. He frequently speaks at Australian and international conferences and events on a broad range of topics. He also drinks a lot of coffee.

Then?

We head to the Oxford Scholar Hotel‎ at about 9pm for drinks and socialising.

October 2009: Building Web Applications with Zend Framework & Framework Roundtable

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When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Monday 19th October 2009.Meeting Map

Where?

Room 18, Level 3
Building 8, RMIT
368 Swanston St

What?

Building Web Applications with Zend Framework by Phil Brown

Zend Framework provides PHP developers with a high quality set of tools and flexible MVC framework. In this presentation I’ll go over these concepts in detail as well as some of the newer “rapid application development” features.

Phil Brown is a web application developer with over 7 years experience in OOP PHP. He is currently consulting at Deakin University in Geelong for IMA Management and Technology, developing identity management systems using PHP, Zend Framework and Oracle. Phil is also a loving husband, doting father of two beautiful daughters, sometime musician and mediocre surfer.

A round table on selecting a framework chaired by Graeme Bryan

This time we are discussing how to think about selecting a framework. Come to this session with your ideas of how you have selected technologies in the past. Will you use the same selection methods in the future? How will you assess the frameworks being demonstrated? And how about others that have selected technologies at your work. Did you agree or not? Why? We will not be making a selection at this session, but we will discuss good ways to assess technology. Topics discussed could be applied to other technologies as well.

Think about….

  • technical aspects (strengths and weaknesses)
  • requirements of the project
  • people involved in the project, development team, decision makers, users/operators
  • economics, budget and time constraints
  • irrational thinking problems of all the minds involved in the project (politics, emotions, ego, history)
  • be brave (read “critical of your own thinking”)
  • research methods
  • good PHP coding techniques
  • disadvantages of frameworks
  • when not to use a framework

The discussion will be lead using slides as a prompt.

I am a PHP developer working at Architecture Media in Port Melbourne. Selector.com and interiordesignawards.com.au are our latest releases but please view our entire portfolio at architecturemedia.com. I love music. I have a guitar and will travel. As well as regular development I enjoy thinking about technology’s affects on society and the psychology of using technology (including usability). I enjoy trying to predict the future by critically thinking about how people do things (including developers) and how they could improve by leveraging technology. I enjoy the publishing industry because it is at a turning point which requires massive adaptation as the industry is severely affected by changes in technology. I hope to be more engaged in helping the traditional publishing industry forge a new business model in the online environment. For further information please contact me using grae [AT] avinago [DOT] com or ring my mobile on 0425 724 169.

Then?

We head to the Oxford Scholar Hotel‎ at about 9pm for drinks and socialising.

September 2009: Rapid Web Development with Drupal & Using Subversion

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When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Monday 21st September 2009.Meeting Map

Where?

Room 18, Level 3
Building 8, RMIT
368 Swanston St

What?

Rapid Web Development with Drupal by Shaun Moss

  • Drupal use cases and the 3 aspects of Drupal development
  • Pros and cons of Drupal
  • Drupal concepts
  • Drupal modules – types, most popular, installation, configuration
  • Drupal theming
  • Nodes, content management, content types, CCK
  • Regions, menus, blocks and views
  • Users, roles, permissions
  • Drupal module development, hooks
  • Drupal community

This will be very much an introduction to Drupal, as we will not have enough time to go deep into the details.  Drupal is a large and complex ecosystem and takes years to learn.  However, this presentation will expose you to the most important things needed to understand what Drupal is all about and how to get started.

Shaun Moss has been programming since childhood, commercially since age 16.  Initially working with Turbo Pascal and then C++, amongst other things, he discovered ASP about 10 years ago and decided to focus on web apps.  Shaun switched to PHP/MySQL in 2001, then started using Drupal about 1 year ago.  His education is in computer science, maths and engineering, and he has worked in other roles including salesperson, manager, teacher and draftsperson.  His main interests are humanitarianism, environment and space, and his goal is to use web-based software and social networking to change the world.

Source Control Management by Ben Balbo

Working on projects in teams raises issue with regards to file management. Multiple developers working on the same set of files can often result in data loss and requires manual merging of changes. Even when developers use their own development environments to avoid data loss, identifying the current version of a file and keeping the development environments up-to-date is an arduous process.

Source Control Management (SCM) provides a mechanism for teams to work on the same files without clobbering each others’ changes and track the file versions. An added advantage is the storage of previous versions of files and the ability to view or revert to these old versions.

Ben will give an introduction to Subversion, a popular SCM tool, and demonstrate its use in a number of scenarios. The presentation will include:

  • Creating Subversion repositories
  • Basic Subversion use
  • Conflict resolution
  • Branching and Tagging
  • Change back-porting

Ben Balbo is a Melbourne-based PHP developer by day and a gardener, systems engineer and financial director by night. He has been known to talk in public, both locally and internationally, on open source and development related topics, which comes as part of the package of being an organiser for both the Melbourne PHP Users Group and BarCampMelbourne and on the committee of the Open Source Developers’ Club and Linux Users of Victoria. Although he wouldn’t admit this, his participation at this level is secretly only in order to go to restaurants or pubs after the meetings. Ben enjoys beer, coffee and Italian food.

Then?

We head to the Oxford Scholar Hotel‎ at about 9pm for drinks and socialising.

August 2009: Baking with CakePHP and Beginners Series Planning Session

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When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Monday 17th August 2009.Meeting Map

Where?

Room 18, Level 3
Building 8, RMIT
368 Swanston St

What?

Baking with CakePHP: a Practical Overview by Valberg Lárusson

What is CakePHP and how does it work? In this talk Valberg Lárusson of Cypress Web Solutions will introduce CakePHP, run through the mandatory, prebaked 15 minute blog to illustrate its use and go though some of the more involved innards of the framework.

Valberg is a web developer:

  • with a background in marketing and management,
  • with 10 years of PHP experience,
  • from Iceland, and
  • with recent clients like Jetstar, M&C Saatchi and ANZ

Beginners Series Planning Session by Ben Balbo

Ben was going to give is first in a series of talks aimed at beginners, but forgot to advertise the event. To give him time to get the word out far and wide, he has decided to run a planning session instead. He’ll probably start with a brief overview of what he intended to present in order to start a discussion about what’s useful, what isn’t, how easy/tricky should it be, and so on. Of course the actual sequence of events will be dictated by the laws of chaos and hilarity will no doubt ensue.

Ben Balbo is a Melbourne-based PHP developer by day and a gardener, systems engineer and financial director by night. He has been known to talk in public, both locally and internationally, on open source and development related topics, which comes as part of the package of being an organiser for both the Melbourne PHP Users Group and BarCampMelbourne and on the committee of the Open Source Developers’ Club. Although he wouldn’t admit this, his participation at this level is secretly only in order to go to restaurants or pubs after the meetings. Ben enjoys beer, coffee and Italian food.

Then?

We head to some establishment at about 9pm for drinks and socialising. Last month’s venue was a little noisy, but the bar staff assured us this was a one off – they’d not seen it like that on a Monday before. So we’ll probably try that first and move on if we can’t hear ourselves think.

July 2009: Why the Publishing Industry Can’t Digitize & Saving Time, Effort and Sanity with Symfony

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When?

6.30pm for a 7pm start, Monday 20th July 2009.Meeting Map

Where?

Room 18, Level 3
Building 8, RMIT
368 Swanston St

What?

Publishing Industry Blues – Why We Can’t Digitize Our Industry by Graeme Bryan

Being a publishing consumer can be as depressing as being a publisher. I take a look at the industry starting as a consumer. How does reading online work? Then I do a take of the inside. What decisions are being made and why? I look at the business model and cringe. What are the designers doing? The power brokers in the industry appear to be insane to me. They need to stop what they are doing and spend a few years singing the blues about what was. Then come back and move on. Move on to punk rock maybe. That is unless a few young publishers come along and simply take over.

Basic over view…

  • Reading print and reading online
  • Mass media – Micro media – Citizen Journalism
  • Generational change and other strange behaviour
  • Forcing print design online
  • Business model – What business model?
  • Advertising online. Putting all money on one site?
  • Control of channel and content. Where has the power gone?

Using symfony to save time, effort and sanity by Joshua May

As a developer, you’re in demand to produce quality results on limited time and budget. And as the vulnerabilities grow (XSS, CSRF, SQL injection), you’re always on the back foot about how to deliver high quality results. Then you need to maintain and refactor the software, which is made difficult if your initial build was rushed and poorly implemented.

I’ll show you through symfony, and go far beyond standard CRUD operations and show you some under-the-cover code to hopefully not only highlight to you how easy symfony helps you make this, but also encourage new and portable development practices that can assist you in other frameworks and languages.

Then?

We head to some establishment at about 9pm for drinks and socialising. Given this is the first time at the new RMIT venue, the actual location will probably be decided on the night.

January 2009 : Meeting Cancelled

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Unfortunately we’re going to have to postpone this month’s meeting as Nick Hodge has a last minute family commitment and has had to postpone.

We were planning on running an open discussion after Nick’s talk but there’s probably little point in meeting up just for a discussion.

To make it a little trickier, Ben C has had an accident (nothing life threatening!) and cannot make the meeting. Aaron won’t be in Melbourne and Christian might not be able to make it either.

This means that not only is our only presenter not available, but the highly unlikely situation of having no-one with access to the Hitwise building around has become somewhat likely.

February’s meeting is on, though, and will be an OSDClub meeting. For those of you who haven’t heard of these, the Open Source Developers Club organise talks every other month and are hosted alternately by phpMelb and the Melbourne Perl Mongers.

The two talks lines up for February’s meeting are:

* Twitter and the Social Web – Alec Clews
* OpenID: A hands on tutorial and demo – Ben Balbo

We’ll send out another announcement with more information nearer the time.

In other news, the next BarCamp Melbourne is due to be announced in a few days. You heard it here first – it’s likely to be held on the 7th/8th or 14th/15th March 2009. To keep up-to-date on developments, subscribe to their low traffic twitter or identica feeds (@barcampmelb).

That’s all for this month’s meeting announcement. If you want to talk about these or any other related topics, head over to the main mailing list. You can join by sending a blank email to main-join@phpmelb.org.

December 2008 : Social

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The next meeting in on the 11th of December. As every year, this is a social event. This year, we’re meeting up at the Belgian Beer Cafe from 7pm – it’s diagonally opposite the Hitwise building at the corner of St Kilda Road and Moubray St.