On Saturday 29th January I held my Mastering Namespaces in PHP presentation at the PHPBenelux Conference. The second edition of this awesome conference has put the conference on the European map as a classic must-go-to. The ratings are through the roof!

See what attendees are saying:

• “already the best conference of the year”
• “Great conference! The best i had in years.”
• “5 THUMBS UP!!”
• “Top class speakers, which make a good schedule”

I must say I am really happy I was part of making all those people have a wonderful day by giving the Mastering Namespaces in PHP Presentation which was – although for some people lacking some colour in the black and white slides – regarded very good:

• “Spot on. All aspects of namespaces were covered, and explained well. Included with examples & references”
• “The subject was well covered, and Nick clearly knew what he was talking about.”
• “Good presentation about namespaces! Good explanation about how it works, some pitfalls and best practices. I liked it a lot!”
• “Clear introduction into Namespacing in PHP with the good and bad clearly outlined. Very informative and thorough.”

To all the people who attended and took the time to rate my presentation at joind.in a big thanks,

See you next time
Nick Belhomme

Hello my dearest reader,

You have probably heard about a PHP framework called Zend Framework. If you haven’t, you break my heart.
It is the coolest thing on the block. Already it has been around for a couple of years and has proven its value in almost all enterprise applications World Wide. Some use it as a component library, others use the full stack MVC implementation. If you still not know what I am talking about you have probably booked a one way ticket to the moon and lost all connectivity (despite your smartphone).

What is more is that Zend Framework will be releasing a 2.0 version in the first half of next year (2011). That means within a few months. You will need some guidance because the changes are huge! A complete new MVC implementation, autoloading and plugin broker system, namespaces, Exception handling, backward compatibility breaks and so on. Well, that guidance will be available with a book that will be published shortly after the version 2.0 release.

I proudly present to you the “Zend Framework 2.0 Cookbook”

You will be able to pick it up at all major bookstores near you and of course on Amazon.

The book is being written by me in close relationship with some high key Zend Framework profiles. Every one of us contributes and takes a very close look at the 2.0 framework which should make it THE reference for the 2.0 branch.

Because it is a cookbook it is more targeted to the developer who wants to know how to get something done quickly instead of building an entire application before actually understanding it. You can use it to start
building a ZF application but the target is the developer who already has some knowledge with version 1 and wants to know how to do it in zf2. It tries to fill the gaps in the official documentation and thus works closely
together with that resource. Providing a quick reference and plenty of example codes should help the beginning zf developer as well as the more advanced.

If you want to keep updated on the release of this book, follow me on Twitter, Facebook or this blog.
Soon I will start to publish short tips from the book, already helping you to better understand Zend Framework 2.0

Have fun with Zend Framework 2.0, its release is closer than you think,
Nick Belhomme

Hi ladies and gents,
I am happy to announce I will be speaking at PHPBenelux Conference 2011.
That means you will learn something about namespaces in PHP. If you never worked with them before or aren’t feeling very confident using them, attend this presentation. Namespaces are a crucial tool that should be found in every PHP developers toolkit (don’t be a dinosaur and in a couple of years a fossil).

If namespaces is not enough for you to attend this awesome conference, maybe the other speakers do the trick. Amongst several others are Rob Allen the main author of Zend Framework in Action and a contributor to the Zend Framework. He is also a member of the Zend Framework Education Advisory Board and will be giving a talk that will introduce Zend Framework 2 and look why it has been created and what’s different compared to ZF1.
Derick Rethans most famous for creating Xdebug, a tool every PHP developer uses on a daily basis (you practice Stepping and do unit tests right?). He is also the author of several books and will bring his geolocation know-how to the scene.
Elizabeth Naramore co-author of several PHP books and community development manager at Geeknet which includes sites such as SourceForge, Slashdot, Geek.com, ThinkGeek. She will jump start the conference as a keynote speaker.

Still not convinced? Check the many high profile speakers who will be attending.

You should register your seat now, and look forward to ride a highway of information, plunge into networking (the social bowling event will help with that!! Whaaat there is a bowling alley? Yes there is!) and generally have a blast of fun!

See you at the PHPBenelux conference – January 28 & 29, 2011, Antwerp, Belgium

yours truly,
Nick Belhomme

update 2010-11-22: The Schedule is available

Yesterday I received the news I was the lucky winner of the book “You want to do what with PHP” by Kevin Schroeder.
Kevin works for Zend Technologies as a Technology Evangelist and
is also the co-author of The IBM i Programmer’s Guide to PHP.

The book “You want to do what with PHP” has what I would call one hell of a cool cover. I do not know what it is with technical books, but the tendency
is to put very old drawings of woman, animals, artifacts, constructions (mostly bridges) and so on on the cover. I do not know why they do that. Maybe it are metaphors, if so I only understand the construction one. An antique sketch of a woman is less clear, maybe it says beware the programming language you will read about is soooo static and old it will crumble your mind. HAH, as if! PHP is dynamic and packed with fun cool things, so why not make the cover dynamic as well? Well this book cover portraits just that. Judge for yourself.

If you want to know what this mind stretching book is about check Kevin’s blog:
http://www.eschrade.com/page/want-what-with-4c6d63c8

The book was on my Amazon’s wish list when I saw a tweet come by…

People who know me, know I am active in the PHP Community and that means I was able to see a tweet come by from kpschrade aka Kevin telling everybody who follows him or #php to visit a blog post he wrote: the big give-away. He announced he was going to give 9 free copies to the community. Three for people who are fan of his book on facebook, 3 for people who would retweet the blog post and 1 copy to each of the 3 lucky PHP user groups world wide. That made me have 3 possible venues where I could win a copy. Potentially through my local user group PHPBenelux (if they would win), facebook and twitter.
It was Facebook that did the trick. Now I am looking forward to receive it after which I will write a full review on this blog.

You can also win a copy as Kevin only recently started the big giveaway so hurry up:

1. tweet the blogpost http://www.eschrade.com/page/read-first-then-tweet-free-book-4cdc3972
2. become a fan on facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/You-want-to-do-WHAT-with-PHP/162209530457356
3. if you are not yet a member of a user group shame on you, wash the shame away and go join one (http://www.zend.com/en/community/local-php-groups)! The reasons why are neatly summed in
   the blog post by Anna http://annafilina.com/blog/developer-community-where-to-start-part-1/.

Thanks Kevin for the book,
Warm winter greetings from Belgium,
Nick Belhomme