I can’t find the conference speaker badges so this will have to do. The fact that it feeds my ego doesn’t hurt either!

Paul wrote something nice about me. In fact, it’s so very nice, that I can (almost) forgive him for listing me sixth. 😉

Reading his description reminds me how grateful I am every time someone reads my articles. Writing is a craft that I’m not very good at and have to work at constantly. I hope my logorrhea has, in a small way, created a little context for you and perhaps inspired some of you to blog more.

Because when I’m not trolling the internets for my name, I’m reading your blog… and growing.

Mad talks

Paul also mentioned my that I’m a conference speaker.

In light of this, I better mention that in a couple weeks in Chicago at PHP|tek, I’ll be bookending the opening keynote of Andrei, my (a)cross-street rival, with the closing keynote. I have no idea what I’ll be talking about so this should be interesting!

After that, I’ll be racing to Berlin to catch up with Andrei, in order to give two completely different talks at the International PHP Conference. I’m noticed that Thies Artzen will be there—I’ll finally get to see if the rumors of him mellowing out are true.

Maybe Keith Casey will let me dry run my Berlin talks at the PHP|tek Unconference (I hope so). Even if not, I should probably participate in the Pecha Kucha—my speaking skills have deteriorated noticeably.

What killed the whom

Finally I noticed that in an interview, Andi Gutmans, the “nd” in Zend mentioned my company:

The Java disruption by PHP is well under way. PHP is everywhere, and Zend’s solutions are being used in business-critical deployments by companies such as Tagged, Fiat, BNP Paribas, and Fox Interactive Media, to name a few. The strategic adoption of Zend in larger accounts, often in favor of Java, is related to our strong return on investment and shorter time to market.

(I guess this means I’ll finally have to figure out the difference between him and Zeev, the “Ze” in Zend.)

One thing the writer, a Java developer, doesn’t notice is that a significant fraction of Tagged is Java. This wasn’t the case when I joined the company, but it was an architectural system I made because there are some things PHP isn’t good at.

If I had to guess, when Andi is saying “Java disruption,” I think he really means “Java/J2EE” disruption. It’s a minor distinction…and one of which I’ve been attacked for when I say “Ruby” and really mean “Rails.”