Disclaimer: This is my fourth year at ZendCon.  Although I spoke last year, this year I took a more active role in being the front man for the Unconference.  Special thanks to DevZone Editor and Zend Community Manager Cal Evans for his willingness in accepting my application for the job. ;)

Day Zero of ZendCon has always been Tutorials.  You bring your laptop, camp out for three hours, and see what you can learn.

Well, it's about that time of the year... the fall conference season is underway.  We have ZendCon/ZendUnCon (more about that on Monday), but for DC Locals, we have something even more fun:

BarCampDC2

BarCampDC is the event that brought much of the DC Tech Scene together last year.  All the pieces and people were around but we weren't connected... this brought many of them - or people from the various groups - together in one place.  It led to a number of major projects kicking off, some ideas dying and even bigger things being dreamt of.

So here's the only problem.  We're still trying to settle on a date, but we have it narrowed down to three:  27 September, 04 October, or 18 October... and the final date will depend wholly on the venue.

Nothing contained in this post should be considered legal advice.  If you wish to understand copyright, licensing, and all its implications, please read the sources yourself.  This is a summary of my situation and analysis.

A few weeks ago, I got what might be considered a nasty message in reference to this site.  In order to not put words in the author's mouth, here it is verbatim: 

When the highly esteemed Zend'er Cal Evans was in DC earlier this week, a number of local DCPHP'ers met up with him for drinks.

One of the hottest topics we discussed was conferences. He - and much of the PHP Community on Twitter - are currently at php|tek in Chicago. Then we have the 2008 DCPHP Conference in less than two weeks. Then we have ZendCon 2008 in September.

And the question always comes up...

Why should I go to these conferences?

Well, they're fun.

But don't tell you boss that.

If you're not in the US college/university system, for clarification purposes, a "senior" is someone who is in their fourth and final year while a "junior" is someone in their third year. Got it? Let's go...

On 02 May, I had the opportunity to return to my alma mater - Rose-Hulman - and speak to a class on Software QA. It was a great opportunity and discussion spurred by (hopefully funny) war stories and major screwups that I was more than happy to share.

The most interesting aspect that I saw was the injection of strong Project Management techniques into the curriculum. I don't just mean "here's a deadline... go!". I mean real specification writing, task estimates, milestones, code reviews, deliverables, QA, and overall management. In fact, they get a bit creative in how they do it and even study things such as team psychology and touch on Meyers Brigg. Whoa.

But then they tie it back to the core curriculum...

This past week, an interesting article hit my radar from Wired magazine, titled simply "Top 5 Reasons It Sucks to Be an Engineering Student". As a former engineering student myself*, I thought I'd share some perspective on this one...

First, yes, most of the textbooks are awful. Some of them are beyond awful.. some of the worst ones are written by your own profs.

I remember getting chewed out by my Department Head and having to apologize to another Department Head when I publicly criticized the choice in a text book change and would not allow usage of the old book. Yes, because apparently thermo tables changed somewhere in the last year... oh wait, it was that Department Head's book. ;) That said, the single best "book" I had was a 90 page super cliff-notes guide to circuit analysis written by another prof. I still keep that one on hand.

If you got to this article via Twitter or happen to be connected to me via twitter, hear me out hitting "send".

Good question... I asked myself that for quite a bit of last year. Twitter seemed like what blogging was in the early days. A running inner monologue detailing the silliest thoughts, concerns, and non-sequitors... trivial, stupid stuff that no one would listen to. I teased/openly mocked a couple colleagues on it, specifically David All and Aaron Brazell. ;)

Well, I was right.

...but still horribly wrong.