NYCPHP Meetup

[New York PHP]

January General Meeting:
Practical Experience with PHP
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 When: Tuesday, January 24th at 6:30pm sharp (4th Tuesday of every month)
Where: IBM  590 Madison Avenue, Room 1219 (12th Floor)
 RSVP: http://www.nyphp.org/rsvp.php

You must RSVP within 30 days of the meeting you attend!

We have a lot lined up for 2006, and we're pleased to present Randall Rode,
Information Technology Director, Yale University, on Practical Experience
with PHP, to kick the year off. Join us at our general monthly meeting to
learn how Randall has used New York PHP Training and self-education to
embrace PHP as we welcome him from Yale.

This is the perfect meeting for those starting with PHP or considering it's
use.

Randall Writes:
In 2004 I was introduced to the world of RSS, news feeds, Wikis and
blogging. It was immediately obvious to me that these technologies offered
exciting new possibilities for web site development. I started messing
around with blog software, creating my own on line blog and using it in my
teaching. In the fall of 2004 I saw a recommendation (on a blog of course)
about the WordPress software. After downloading and installing it, I was
really impressed with its capabilities, and saw its value not just for
blogging, but as a front-end content management system for a web site. I
started poking around inside the application and discovered that all this
magic was the result of PHP programming and a MySQL backend database. And
realized that I wanted to learn more about what this was all about.

I found the NYPHP.org site and luckily there was an upcoming PHP for
Designers class being offered. I signed up immediately. Once in class, in
one of those wonderful 'a-ha!' moments, I realized that not only was this
fun, but that I had some problem projects that would be perfect for a
PHP/MySQL application. Upon return to the office I started immediately
roughing out a test version of an on-line course evaluation system for our
school. I called it a 'proof of concept' but it was mostly there to prove to
myself that I could pull this off before promising it to our Dean. Well he
bought into the idea, and much to my delight I managed to pull it off. We
ran a pilot of the system this fall, and overall it was a great success.
There is still a lot of work to do to make it a robust enough application
for regular work. But we had 50 students evaluating 35 classes on line for
the pilot, and the response from them, their faculty, and our Dean was very
positive. The most enthusiastic was the administrative assistant, who's work
load in processing the evaluation responses went from a week with the old
paper-based system, to under an hour in this new on line system.

In this presentation I'll review my experiences on this project, and some
other PHP work I've done, learning resources I've found helpful, challenges
encountered, and other reflections on my experiences with PHP/SQL.

About Randall Rode
Randall Rode, Information Technology Director for the Yale University School
of Drama, brings 20 years of expertise in non-profit management to his
technical management and teaching at the school. First introduced to
computers in the mid 70's with programming in BASIC, Fortran, and game
development on a TI-99, I've always maintained a strong interest in, and a
willingness to mess around with, new technologies. I started developing web
sites in 1996, and have made web design a staple of my professional work and
teaching ever since, working with javascript, perl scrips, Flash, and other
technologies whenever possible. Database development is another technical
direction of mine, working extensively with Microsoft Access, and more
recently SQL server and MySQL. Please visit my web site at
http://rodeworks.com for more information, and the occasional ramblings in
my blog.


Thanks to IBM for providing a great presentation space with seating for
plenty.

As a service to our community, New York PHP meetings are always free and
open to the public.

Come prepared with a business card to enter book raffles.

 When: Tuesday, January 24th at 6:30pm sharp (4th Tuesday of every month)
Where: IBM  590 Madison Avenue, Room 1219 (12th Floor)
 RSVP: http://www.nyphp.org/rsvp.php

You must RSVP within 30 days of the meeting you attend!


New York PHP Training Schedule for 2006
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The training schedule for the first half of 2006 has been set, with both
Designer and Programmer tracks available.

Plus, a new Combo package is available for those wanting 4 days of premier
PHP training.

Early-bird specials are available.

Learn more and sign-up:

http://www.nyphp.com/training/indepth.php


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New York PHP Community
http://www.nyphp.org