Author: Matt Cockayne

As part of the attempt to develop my profile as a speaker, I’ve realised that I sometimes need to explain a few of my current talk abstracts a bit too much. This is mainly due to my lack of experience writing them and that the majority of my current talk ideas cover large topics that are not as technical as I would like.

My favourite so far is one title “Python explains why your project failed”. This is a tongue in cheek talk which aims to poke fun at the Developer, PM and of course the client!

The TL;DR

This talk has yet to be accepted by anyone… but will be eventually I hope. In the mean time I wanted to share some of the funny thoughts and comparisons I’ve had coming up with the content for the talk. I plan on doing this by writing a series of blog posts one for each topic or sketch that features in the talk.

The Abstract

Python is fantastic! If you haven’t seen it you really need to. Its simple, elegant, powerful and gives you an amazing perspective on what we do as Developers, it is also hilariously funny…. Yes Funny!!!!

Wait! You thought I was talking about Python the programming language didn’t you? I’m sorry to tell you but we are actually talking about the most awesome of British comedy acts… Monty Python.

Throughout this talk I will take you through the development life-cycle of a project and use the Comedy of Monty Python to illustrate both the Good and the Bad (mainly the bad) aspects of our industry. All the way from Client introduction, requirements gathers, spec writing, team selection, planning and scoping all the way through Development to Testing, Delivery and Support!

The Delivery

This is a little harder to explain as I’ve not given the talk (yet) and I don’t think I could ever match the delivery better than the Pythons themselves.

However I have been known to dress for the occasion, so it’s quite possible that you may find me standing on stage in a red cassock at some point.

I’ve also managed to convince @phpcodemonkey, who is as big a Python fan as myself, that this talk should really be performed as a 2 man show, rather than me monologuing at a room full of people.

The Sketches

Due to the prolific variety of skits and sketches that Pythons created I found it extremely hard to select the few needed to fill a single talk. I have however managed to select a few and will change them around from time to time to suit the audience. I’ve provided a short list of a few of my favourites Sketches and a couple of words describing what they explain:

• Spanish inquisition – Client Indecision
• Dead parrot sketch – Stubborn Project Managers
• Ministry of silly (array) walks – Tool Selection
• Brian’s Latin Lesson – Planning and Preparation
• We demand a shrubbery – Demanding the Impossible
• Black knight – Solution fixation / Code Blindness
• Camelot Song – Stakeholder Morale
• The People’s Front – Team Fragmentation
• The Silly Job Interview – Stakeholder Communications
• Four Yorkshireman – Rockstar Developers
• Argument clinic – Product Delivery
• Architects sketch – Taking Shortcuts and Cutting Corners

The Finale

These are just a few of the potential topics I will be looking to cover in the coming posts, but while your reading them I want you to remember to…

If your anything like me you have a large number of email aliases that you use with Gmail which is great. However I use Evolution as a mail client more often than not when using Gnome3 as a desktop.

It’s very easy to set up Evolution to create separate outbound email accounts that you can use for handling all of your aliases. It doesn’t yet support OAuth2 as an authentication mechanism for any account that is not set up using the built-in Gnome Online Accounts integration.

This is a real pain as Google have disabled the more common ‘plain’ and ‘login’ authentication mechanisms for use with an SMTP only account. Meaning that any time that you try to connect to smtp.gmail.com:587 with STARTTLS you will get some form of error message to the effect of “Bad Authentication”.

Hopefully I’ll find a workaround at some point in the near future or Evolution will add the facility to enable OAuth2 as an available authentication mechanism.

In the mean time there is a workaround if you visit https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps you can enable these less secure authentication mechanisms allowing you to once again connect and send email via email addresses using SMTP

Just before the Christmas period I was lucky enough to be able to give my “Are you a good Code Scout?” talk as a lightning talk for NomadPHP. Here is the video that was recorded from it.

The PHPNW conference team are releasing their videos for PHPNW15 and my Un-conference winning talk that helped to fill the hangover slot for track 3 on the Sunday has now been put online.

Watching it back I look a lot calmer that I felt which is good to know as I’ll be also giving this topic as a lightning talk this evening (17th Nov 2015) for Nomad PHP.

Never one to shy away from coming up with a metaphor for explaining something technical I found myself having to come up with one on the spot for PSR-7 and Middleware while at the recent PHPNW15 Conference.

Normally my brain will come up with something completely inappropriate but this time round I found I quite liked the imagery that came to mind.

If you would like to find out more of the specifics about PSR-7 you can take a look at http://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-7/ which will make a better job of explaining it than I could ever do.

Now on to the metaphor
Continue reading “A metaphor about PSR-7 and Middleware for non-developers” »

One of the most prominent things I’ve been asked about regarding my promoting being a Good Code Scout, is where can we get the badges?

Following on from a number of questions and subsequent tweets about it

I need your help. Please tweet @phpboyscout to ask him for stickers. #phpnw15

— Stuart Herbert (@stuherbert) October 4, 2015

Well… I’ve decided that (providing I can get permission from all the right people) I’ll start creating a range of Badges & Stickers for you to earn as a Good Code Scout.

So if your interested in having some stickers or badges let me know using the form below and if I get enough interest I will most definitely get some made up for you.

So I attended the PHPNW15 conference this weekend and what a weekend. I’ve been an attendee of the conference for a number of years and have always enjoyed it immensely. However this year turned out to be something special.

Following on from my first ever appearance as the PHP Boy Scout I decided to submit to the Unconference at PHPNW15.

It was a good talk, an extension of the previous lightening talk I’d given and felt really good to give. Unbeknownst to me however there was mischief afoot. Normally the Unconference talks are rated by the organisers and the one that they selected as the best gets to have a guaranteed slot in next years PHPNW conference. All of which I had genuinely either no idea about or had forgotten had happened in previous conferences,

As you may have guessed from the fact this post exists, I ended up winning that slot.

However…. it appeared that a Speaker had taken ill at the last minute and couldn’t make it at which point I was asked a mere 3 minutes before it was announce that I was also going to be given the hangover slot on track three for the Sunday sessions!!!!!

Suffice to say I had an interesting evening to say the least, in preparing my talk for “the big time”

Amazingly I felt really calm about everything, and even had a good chuckle about managing to find some props to help break the ice!

Everything is ready, I’ve practiced, knowing my talk was going to be a bit short… but that was ok considering the short notice, and I had plenty of anecdotes I could use as filler. I’m sat there waiting for the moment I have to put my head above the parapet and all of a sudden……..

nothing

My mind goes blank!

The long and the short is that I survived, and the feedback I have had has been amazing and I’ll be taking all of it on board to make sure that next time its even better!

The recordings should be available in the near future so when they are I will share a link so you can judge how it went for yourselves. In the mean time I’ve published the revised slide deck for you on slideshare.net/phpboyscout/are-you-a-good-scout-phpnw15-track-3

I’m hoping that I can now find some opportunities to practice for my slot at #phpnw16

Recently I’ve had a lot of people asking me what a PHP Scout is! I thought it would be a good opportunity to explain.

To understand what a PHP Scout is it helps to know a little of the background basics of Scouting in general. Knowing this helps to make it easier later on as well as we draw some direct parallels. If you would like to investigate more about the history of Scouting you can find a good starting point at http://scouts.org.uk/about-us/history/.

For now I’m going to give a tl;dr version;

Scouting started in 1908 as a movement for training young people to encourage them to develop physically, mentally and spiritually by Robert Baden-Powell. Over the next 100+ years it has evolved to encompass people of all ages, races, colours and creeds to get involved and try to be the best they can be.

The primary ethos of the movement today is to bring Everyday Adventure to young people and this is achieved through a comprehensive programme scheme that is designed to touch on all aspects of that young persons development. This is then rewarded in a variety of ways with the primary reward being the experience itself, the awarding of badges also strengthens then sense of achievement and desire to work towards the next goal.

All members of the Scouting movement are required to make and frequently renew a promise:

On my honour,
I promise that I will do my best
to do my duty to {insert deity/monarchy here},
to help other people
and to keep the Scout Law.

The key part here is I will do my best. Scouts are continually encouraged to improve themselves in everything they do.
Continue reading “What is a PHP Scout” »