October 28th, 2009 | 
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Zend Server CE is an awesome product. We had installed it just after it’s release but hadn’t really delved into all it’s features until today. We were just using it as a quick web server, but we weren’t doing any development in the environment. But that is about to change. We decided to re-work some architecture to enable development on our local computers (24″ iMacs with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard FTW). With that decision, it meant we had to setup a solid, testable environment locally, so we decided to really put Zend Server CE to the test. That action should have been much easier than it ended up being…
Basically, Zend Server CE and Snow Leopard don’t really play well together. Out of the box, Zend Server CE’s management console does not work at all. We actually found this out a few weeks ago when we were passively using Zend Server CE. It has to do with the watchdog service in OS X. Hopefully this will be solved in the next version of Zend Server CE. Here is a work-around to get past the issue.
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Zendcon is over, so like every year I like to look back at what worked and what I think could be improved for next year. This year was a very different experience for me because Garrison didn’t get to go, so I was on my own. I think it made me reach out more and talk to more people who I wouldn’t normally talk with. I made it a point to sit down at a few tables where I knew no one and talk to people. It was cool getting to know other folks in the community, not just the “famous” ones 
I also tweeted a lot during the conference (#2!) which helped connect me with a host of new followers. I found myself following the twitter page more than hanging out in the IRC chat room this time. That is just a great source of information at a conference like this. Everything from networking to finding what was for dinner was coordinated through twitter. Good times.
Anyway, on to my review:
The last day of ZendCon 2009 is always bittersweet. ZendCon is very intense for the few days you are here, and while it is awesome and the people are awesome and the learning is awesome, you are so exhausted that you are almost glad it’s over. So here is what I did on day 3.
Right Where You Belong: The PHP Community – Chris Cornutt
I met Chris the day before when I was talking to him about joind.in. His talk was really good for people who are interested in becoming part of the PHP Community (or really any community). He talked about how to contribute to the community as a whole, even if you are not a strong programmer (documentation FTW). This topic is really relevant to me as I enjoy being part of the PHP Community a lot. I find us PHPers are much different than most tech groups. You don’t often find PHPers who have that holier-than-thou attitude, which I think is because many of us who have been doing PHP for a long time have grown up and matured with the language. There is not a single person in the PHP community who can claim that they always wrote excellent code, so you don’t typically get people who have an overly high opinion of themselves. There are exceptions to the rule, but I find PHPers to be some of the best people in the business. Many of them “get it” and I appreciate that. Chris’s talk was all about getting involved and I thought he did a great job with it.
Day 2 of Zendcon is always the longest. There are lots of sessions and plenty of awesome information to be had. Here is my rundown of day 2.
Keynote – Standing Out In The Crowd – Kirrily Robert
Kirrily’s keynote was about the importance of diversity and transparency in open source projects. She talked a lot about the lack of women in Open Source projects (only 1.5% of OS participants are women) and some of the struggles that her and her fellow female programmers go through. The point of her session was diversity, transparency and acceptance. And while she did accomplish making her point, she also ruffled some feathers as with a few generalizations of her own. This hit a nerve with quite a few in the room and you could tell from the tweets coming out of it. That is all I am really going to say about it since this is not the place, but let’s just say it was controversial and it got people talking…maybe that was the point all along.
As is our yearly tradition, I will be doing a recap of all the sessions I go to at ZendCon 2009. This is the fourth year Outreach Technology has been represented at ZendCon, and I have high expectations of the conference. It is usually a great source of “What’s new” in the PHP community, and the people are great. ZendCon gives you access to the greatest minds in the PHP community which is totally awesome.
So here is my recap of day 1 at ZendCon 2009.
Keynote – Andi Gutmans, CEO of Zend
Andy gave a good Keynote again this year. I always think of his keynote as a “State of the PHP Community” address. He introduced Zend Server 5 which has an awesome “Black Box” feature that goes in depth to the PHP stack when an error occurs on your site. I assume this feature will make it to the CE version of Zend Server as I can see the feature being very helpful in dev environments as well as production ones. Andy also announced that Zend Studio was getting upgraded to version 7.1. I really hope some of the nuances of 7.0 have been worked out, especially the code completion. A lot of these issues are supposedly addressed in the 7.1 upgrade (I plan to install it a little later today so we will see). Other than product announcements, there were a few guest speakers who are using Zend in enterprise environments. The most shocking thing I saw was the long list of companies using Zend Framework (American Idol?). It just shows you that the PHP world is a force to be reckoned with and we have grown up significantly over the past few years.
I will be attending ZendCon09 this year on behalf of Outreach Technology. Usually, Garrison and I both get to go, but because of budget issues only one of us can go this year. This year’s conference is shaping up to be a great one. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Framework Showdown on the last day of the conference. And as always, the people are great.
I will be blogging every day about the sessions I go to and the people I meet. You can look back through the blog and see our posts from previous years.
If you are coming to ZendCon this year, be sure to find me and say hello! And if I only know you from the internet, make sure you tell me who you are and how I know you.
In case you fine folks missed it, you have got to check out NC State’s new twitter site, http://twitter.ncsu.edu. It is a joint project between our group and Web Communications that was launched on September 8th, and we now have over 60 organizations tweeting on campus and you can find them all here.
While everyone working on the project thought it was really cool, I think we were all pleasantly surprised by the awesome reaction that we have gotten from other folks in the Higher Education community. The day after we launched the site, the twitterverse was buzzing about the site. Here are just a few tweets that I found particularly encouraging.
We have a new system for filing issues for our applications. We have migrated all of our projects to use Redmine, a very cool ruby-based project management/issue tracking/wiki/swiss army knife tool that will help us better serve the folks that use our services.
With this migration, we say goodbye to our old trusty system, Lifecycle. Lifecycle was a good project, but one that we just didn’t need anymore, so we have moved on to bigger and better things. To check out our projects, file issues, or download our code, visit our new site at http://ot.ncsu.edu/code/.
We have migrated our website over to a new domain, http://ot.ncsu.edu. All of the old URLs to http://webapps.ncsu.edu should still work, but you should update your bookmarks to the new site.
The purpose of the migration was to move our team over to servers that are part of the web hosting initiative that we have been working on for a few months. The web hosting initiative allows us to manage our own web space, databases, scripting languages, etc. all through CPanel! This is a great project that has lots of potential down the road.
Also, we have changed our theme over to be more like our parent organization, OIT.
Ever wondered where you can find the most up-to-date goings on at NC State? Well, we’ve got your answer! NC State on Twitter (http://twitter.ncsu.edu) lists the tweets from all of the official campus Twitter accounts. Everything from the library to WKNC to the Wolfpack Club. Even your very own Outreach Technology! NC State on Twitter allows you to find out what’s happening at NC State right now.
Visit twitter.ncsu.edu now and start following NC State!
If you’re in charge of a campus organization that has a Twitter account and isn’t listed on the “Campus is Tweeting” page, make sure you email web_feedback@ncsu.edu to get your organization listed.