After a couple year hiatus, I thought it’d be nice to start speaking again — the disconnect of basically stopping speaking at open source conferences when I started working at two companies producing some of the world’s largest open-source products ([WordPress][] and [Wikipedia][]) was becoming too much.

I decided to apply this year. Luckily, [Northeast PHP Conference][nephp] forgot to check the The Great Offensive PHP Speaker Blacklist™, and accepted my talk!

The talk will be: [Ten Evil Things: Features Engineering at Wikipedia][10 evil things]. Now with 30% less swear words, but don’t worry, it’ll still be fun. 😀

When registering, belatedly, I noticed they had an interesting preferences page, I thought I’d share my answers with you

[WordPress]: http://wordpress.org “WordPress: Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS”
[Wikipedia]: http://en.wikipedia.org “Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia”
[nephp]: http://www.northeastphp.org “Northeast PHP Conference 2013”
[10 evil things]: http://www.northeastphp.org/talks/view/156/Ten-Evil-Things-Features-Engineering-at-Wikipedia “Ten Evil Things: Features Engineering at Wikipedia—Northeast PHP Conference”

# Terry Chay

## Food preference

Your ticket includes breakfast & lunch. If you have any special dietary needs, please specify them so we can try to accommodate you. Contact us if you need more information.

> I eat anything [Actually I don’t eat shrimp. There’s a story there.]

## T-Shirt Size

Everyone will get a cool Northeast PHP Shirt. What size would you like?

> Small [I plan on giving it to someone cute. Did you know PHP conference shirts work better than beads at Mardi Gras?]

## Where are you from?

This will help us get to know you better. Examples (Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, etc)

> San Francisco, CA [Sounds further away that Pittsburgh, PA]

## Did you attend last year?

> No [been off the conference circuit for years, see above]

## How did you get into this profession? (optional)

I am always amazed at what people tell me when I ask this question. Give us a good story. [1] How you got into this profession [2] Where it has taken you [3] What you plan to do next. I know the field is tiny. Please keep it short so we can read them all. We will feature answers on our website.

> [1] I was maintaining the course website and my research group’s website since 1995. Around 1999, the boom happened, and I started consulting in Silicon Valley. I was asked to do this full time in 2000, when I left [graduate school](http://physics.illinois.edu).
>
> [2] I’m the Director of Features Engineering at [the Wikimedia Foundation](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home), the maintainers of [Wikipedia][] and her [sister projects](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects) in over 270 languages. Even though Wikipedia’s reach is huge, our organization size is small (less than 150). This makes me administrative overhead of a small number of engineers, even though I have the most number of direct reports at the Foundation.
>
> [3] Ask me after we fix [the editor retention problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_engagement), then we’ll talk. 🙂

## What word best describes you? (optional)

We will put your answer on your badge. Leave it blank if your not feeling like fun. A prize for the best one.

> [Terrorist](http://terrychay.com/article/thats-terryist-to-you-sir.shtml)

## Fun fact or talent (optional)

Tell us a fun fact or hidden talent that even your colleagues wouldn’t know. Something fun and unique that you don’t mind sharing for a winning a prize. One or two sentences please.

> In 1989, I went to see [Bill Gates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates) speak at my [college](http://www.caltech.edu). Cutting through the parking lot with my friend, I talked about how he had so much money that it was unbound from reality. When I reached Beckman Auditorium, I was blinded by a news camera light, when a newsreporter stepped out and asked the man walking right in front of us, “Mr. Gates, what do you think about the ____ virus?” (some PC virus going around at the time.
>
> So I **literally** was caught talking about Bill Gates behind his back.
>
> Ask me about my [Steve Jobs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_jobs) and [David Filo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Filo) stories. 😉

## Are you looking for anyone?

We hope to connect people.

> Yes – [I have a job opportunity](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us) for the right person.