Thijs Feryn

@ThijsFeryn

Talks (By Name)

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(17.Sep.2011)

Mastering namespaces in PHP

Very good talk. Nick is well-known for his in-depth knowledge and that clearly showed. Very well structured and I liked the fact that coloring was used, that made things easy to follow. Note: please skip the read coloring, it's impossible to read.

(17.Sep.2011)

Community works!

Second time I see this talk and it has evolved a lot. Good job, keep it up, but try to focus a little bit more on the story and the structure.

(12.Mar.2011)

Fifty tips, tricks and tools in one talk

Great tips & tricks ! I loved the relaxedness of the delivery and most of the tips were really useful to me. Very time neutral indeed.

(12.Mar.2011)

Solr Search Engine: Beyond The Basics

Ian never disappoints and manages to maintain his "professor status". Good talks, learned a lot although I have to admit that some of the stuff was a bit too advanced for me. Still ... I know to keep an eye out for some specific settings. Excellent delivery and brilliant slides

(12.Mar.2011)

Kill Bottlenecks with Gearman, Memcached & Sphinx

5-star talk! Paul know his stuff and the way to deliver it: funny, motivational and always to the point. Loved the "red book of stories". I have nothing to add to that ...

(26.Feb.2010)

Would you like docs with that?

Good reminder on the fact we SHOULD document our projects. Also good to see that non-conventional ways (commit messages, issue tracker, ...) of documenting have an impact as well.

(26.Feb.2010)

Hidden features - from core to PECL

I liked the fact that the talk covered advanced topics, but I would have liked more structure in the talk. Unfortunately a little bit chaotic. I do appreciate the level of expertise the speaker brings and I hope to see more in depth talks by him.

(26.Feb.2010)

Regex-fu

Excellent stuff. Learned a lot about advanced pattern matching. Loved the candy by the way!

(27.Feb.2010)

PHP code audits

Decent talk, but all about register_globals. The speaker could have covered more aspects in his talk.

(10.Mar.2011)

Making PHP see

I share the opinion of the others: entertaining talk, learned some things I didn't know you could do in PHP. The bad thing about the talks (and this is a good thing as well) is the chaotic delivery. I had good fun watching it, but it needs a bit more practice I guess. I understand this is a brand new extension, so once it's out there and known, the presentations will probably be more fluent. Nevertheless: it's worth a 4-star rating.

(10.Mar.2011)

Building your first application with MongoDB

Very interesting topic, very knowledgeable speaker, but unfortunately a mediocre talk. I expected to see much more practical stuff whereas I only got some basic info on what MongoDB can do. I guess the speaker had some practical stuff prepared, but due to the slow tempo there wasn't enough time to deal with it. The content was pretty good, but there was a general lack of flow and enthousiasm in this talk. If these issues could be tackled, I would be most happy to see this talk again and learn a lot about how to work with MongoDB. Although the delivery wasn't that good, the talks is still worth a 3-star rating because the speaker obviously knows his stuff.

(11.Jun.2010)

Premature Optimization Mistakes

An excellent talk about effective optimization rather than obvious optimization. Do watch out with the title because I was expecting actual bad practices rather than good ones although the outcome was more useful than expected. I loved the enthousiasm, but that apparently/unfortunately led to timing issues.

(11.Jun.2010)

Database version control without pain

Good stuff ! Nice to see that there are tools out there that can handle SQL delta data. Decent slides, nice overview & summary. Very accessible talk.

(12.Jun.2010)

HiPHoP for PHP

I've seen Scott's HipHop for PHP talk evolve quite significantly since the FOSDEM in Belgium. It started with an explanation of the concept, but now it's quite practical (which I like). I like the ambition of the project and I love the "pirate style" attitude Scott brings to the people. I learned a lot about the evolution of the project and I enjoyed watching Scott talk about it.

(12.Jun.2010)

Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior

Second time I see this talk and I still absolutely love it. Is it about PHP? No ! Is it important for people involved with PHP? Yes ! I like the very relaxed, confident, but humble style Chris brings to the stage. The slides look good , but even cooler: they allow crowd interaction and there even some videos involved. My favorite talk so far because it also deals with people rather than just technology.

(12.Jun.2010)

Stress-free deployment

Pretty sweet talk! Rob's expertise combined with his humor are the key factors for the success of this talk. But more importantly: I learned something, something useful actually.

(09.Mar.2011)

99 Problems, But the Search Ain't One

I really liked this talk. Perhaps one of the best talks today. Andrei completely convinced me of the power this searching tool has. The fact that it's an advanced talks is cool, but I would have appreciated a "document based searching 101" to get me up to speed. When I get home, alternative searching technologies such as ElasticSearch (& Solr) is definitely something I'll dig into.

(09.Mar.2011)

Building servers with Node.js

Node.js is pretty cool. The best thing Travis did was warning us that it's not a "one size fits all" solution. It did go kinda fast for me, but I think I got the essentials. Good job!

(13.Jun.2010)

APC & Memcache the High Performance Duo

Nice to have some information about a contributor instead of the regular user point of view. Learned some nice behind the scenes stuff.

(13.Jun.2010)

In Search Of... Integrating Site Search

I heard a lot of good things about this talk, but never had the chance to see it. Ian has the reputation of being a professor and proved to make good on that reputation. Very technical, lots of algorithms, but quite easy to understand. Mission accomplished!

(13.Jun.2010)

Plant Pyrus in your system - A guide to a plugin system

I like Helgi as a speaker and PHP expert and I love the idea behind Pyrus. The talk managed to draw my attention towards Pyrus, but unfortunately did not satisfy my curiosity. I had the feeling this talk was not really well prepared and it actually didn't have enough practical information to convince me. A demo or some code would have been nice. If Helgi plans another talk about this topic containing more practical info, I'll definitely check him out again (and possibly give it a 4 or 5 star rating).

(09.Mar.2011)

Advanced OO patterns

Please don't submit feedback anonymously. It's OK to have negative feedback, but it's sad to hide behind an anonymous facade.

(09.Mar.2011)

Caching on the Edge

I loved the in depth way Fabien dealt with HTTP caching. Although I wanted a bit more ESI/reverse proxy content. I also expected to see the Symfony 2 implementation in action. Anyway ... good talk, I will try reading the HTTP spec at a certain point in time.

(10.Oct.2010)

Teach a Man to Fish: Coaching Development Teams

I could very much relate to the topic as I am dealing with people management as well. Good talk, keep it up !

(10.Oct.2010)

Zend Framework 2.0 is coming!

I love listening to Rob and the way he adds slight irony to his style. It's clear where we're heading with ZF2 and clear what is still unknown. I look forward to using it and perhaps doing some bug hunting on it.

(10.Oct.2010)

Debugging - Rules and Tools

Ian has the reputation of being a true professor and I enjoy the authority he brings. Interesting talk, very relevant to me. I notice we use similar tools to debug our client's applications.

(10.Oct.2010)

Designing HTTP Services and RESTful Interfaces

Awesome talk, clinically precise (very German), very funny (very un-German) and interesting material. I appreciate David's determination and uncompromising attitude.

(10.Oct.2010)

Practical HipHop

Guerilla style talk, lots of heckling and very entertaining. Scott knows his stuff and was a little bit better prepaired than the previous time I saw this talk.

(10.Oct.2010)

Framework shootout

Funny and entertaining, but I expected a little more. Lots of jokes were kinda prepared. I did appreciate the honesty and openmindeness of the panel.

(10.Oct.2010)

Using Zend_Tool

Although this was Kat's very first conference talk, you couldn't actually tell: she obviously knows here stuff and can present it in a clear and understandable way. I wanna see more of that.

(10.Oct.2010)

Turbocharge Your PHP With Nginx

Awesome slides, good content, but sometimes a little bit difficult to understand. Errazudin should talk a little louder and should put a little bit more effort in pronounciation. That being said, I got convinced to give Nginx a try.

(10.Oct.2010)

Community works!

The Gospel according to Michelangelo, nuff said !

(09.Mar.2011)

Xdebug

Good talk, too bad about the screen. Although it seemed quite chaotic at times, I still learned a lot of things and value this talk.

(09.Mar.2011)

Advanced OO patterns

Excellent talk! Well presented, very structured and I learned a lot. I believe his story and that's what counts.

(23.Feb.2011)

Puntavista case

I like the way Toon presents his talks: calm but confident. Although 30 minutes was a bit short, he still managed to deliver a great talk that made me think about implementing Drupal in an enterprise environment.

(23.Feb.2011)

Case study: linking IngramMicro to Magento

Koen is a nice and honest guy: he immediately admitted that he was nervous and that gave him some credit in my book. Koen wil need to gain some experience talking in public, but in essence has what it takes: he has the vocal volume, he makes the occasional joke and (most importantly) has something interesting to say. I'd say: keep practicing, I'm very curious how he will evolve as a speaker and a PHP professional.

(23.Feb.2011)

PHP in the dark

Jeroen's long awaited conference talk. Unfortunately I increased the pressure on him by hyping it. At the start Jeroen was insanely nervous, but later on noticed that he was doing a great job. Let's be honest: the content was awesome, this is the in depth technical stuff I love to see at conferences. I have a compatible talk, so I was really curious to see this one. My advice: stay cool and calm, Jeroen, you are an expert and the more you bring this talk, the more you will realize this yourself. This is conference material (that's why we selected it for PHPBNL11) and needs to be submitted in as much CFP's as possible. GOOD JOB !

(27.Feb.2011)

Opening Keynote

I didn't find the topic that special and it was just one point that was proven. The lack of ambition in the talk was compensated by the style that Marco brings. He's an experienced speaker who knows what he's doing. Even a less interesting topic is presented beautifully. The examples about his investor and his mom were brilliant, though ! Although I only give this talk a 3-star rating, I still look very much forward to future talks Marco will present.

(27.Feb.2011)

ZeroMQ is the Answer

Best talk of the day! I refused to inform myself about the topic because I wanted Ian to do his thing and educate me on the topic. He that an awesome job. Not only did I learn what ZeroMQ does, it was brought with the relaxed, confident and yet academic style that typifies Ian. I will definitely look into ZeroMQ for future projects.

(27.Feb.2011)

The InnoDB Storage Engine for MySQL

I wanted a technical talk, I got one! Morgen convinced me to see his talk and I wasn't disappointed. I learned so much, but the timing was limited. Dear conference organizers: please invite Morgan for a 3 to 6 hour workshop about advanced MySQL. Thank you !

(27.Feb.2011)

Optimising a Zend Framework Application

And once again, I learned a lot from this talk. Rob does not disappoint, that's why I always attend his talks. Interesting to see that you can gain performance by just removing pieces of code in the ZF codebase. I will try that out. Most notable quote: only perform these optimizations if you can MEASURE the performance gain. If it doesn't have a great impact, don't bother. Thanks for the valuable lesson, Rob.

(05.May.2011)

Client-side Javascript Unit Testing

Lovely talk! The content and the buildup was great and it's cool to see that xunit is finding it's way to Javascript. I also loved the automated testing on various browers. Now that you presented it for the first time, you can focus on delivery. Just be relaxed and try to generate some crowd interaction and you'll be just fine. Conference material !

(05.May.2011)

Unit Testing with Zend Framework

Good talks, learned some interesting stuff. Only downside: you were rushing through it. Needed to catch my breath after your talk. Slow it down and you'll have yourself a perfect talk.

(19.May.2011)

Think like an ant, distribute the workload

Good talk, that's why it deserves a 4-star rating. But I would also prefer a more hands-on approach. The story telling was pretty cool, but I kept wondering when the actual "action" would come.

(19.May.2011)

Caching on the edge

Although this workshop was really short (2 hours early) I was actually impressed with the content. I've seen this workshop before, but in a regular presentation format. The thing that I liked most was the hands-on approach with the Silex microframework and the debug mode. But next time you could fit it into a 3 hour session instead of a 6 hour one.

(20.May.2011)

Making the new everyday things

I knew Aral would be awesome ... he was awesome. Nothing to add. Anything less than 5 star rating is an outrage.

(20.May.2011)

Searching with Solr - Why, When and How

Paul knows what he's talking about, but needs to put a little more effort in the delivery part. I'd love to see more: - Enthusiasm - User interaction - Setup & configuration - Code examples - In depth stuff But still, the foundation of the talk is good and therefor deserves a 3 star rating. I'll definitely check this talk out again to see how it evolved.

(21.May.2011)

First Class APIs

I liked this keynote and the message came across. But as other people mentioned: some stuff was just a little bit repetitive. And I would like Helgi to focus a bit more on the delivery and enthusiasm. I would like to see this keynote talk again in an improved state. Helgi has was it takes and a first run of a talk is always a bit trial & error. Nevertheless good stuff, I learned a thing or two.

(21.May.2011)

Implementing OAuth

I love Lorna's energy and passion. She seems pretty knowledgeable about the topic and managed to show me how to deal with OAuth. Unfortunately I'm still confused about the topic, but that's not really Lorna's fault.

(21.May.2011)

Character Sets Suck

Entertaining, good speakers. Unfortunately Ligaya didn't say that much. Ray is a very good speaker and I love the slight arrogance with which he presents. It's cool to see people who have lots of experience talk about this very tricky subject.

(24.May.2011)

Large-Scale Data Processing with Hadoop and PHP

Kick ass presentation. It certainly evolved in time: at PHPUK it was still in "draft status". At PHPDay it was pretty decent and now it was great. Now I want to see some spin off talks that deal with some Hadoop specific use cases. There is so much you can do with it, but it's hard to pack it all into a 45 minute talk. Good job !

(06.Oct.2011)

Powering Your Website with Realtime Data

Good talk, in-depth and combined with some nice examples. Good move to record the demo to avoid Murphy. A word of advice regarding the delivery: try to tell a story, don't read the text from your presenter screen notes. I know the nerves are killer, but it's clear that you have what it takes. For Zendcon just throw away all preparation and focus on the story you want to tell. You'll do a great job, I'm sure of it.

(06.Oct.2011)

Puppet for dummies

Good talk, Joshua. You seem to be quite confident in front of an audience. The content was quite good too, but try to make the demo a bit shorter. Good luck at Zendcon, you'll do a great job.

(08.Oct.2011)

How to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

Awesome presentation! Knowing you don't often keynote makes it even more impressive. I love the natural way you present and I was inspired by this talk. I learned that you don't have to be a genious to accomplish great things. Fact is that I'm not a genious, so it gave me hope. Best keynote I've seen in some time !

(10.Oct.2011)

Scaling your Development Team

Excellent talk ! I like the slightly chaotic presentation style Scott has. Of course it's fascinating to see how a company like Facebook does things. Throwing around crazy numbers always adds to the fascination. I learned a thing or two about the flow and management behind large development teams that ensure quality regardless of the number of developers on a single code base.

(10.Oct.2011)

Git for Subversion users

I need to see this talk again. Shame that it was cut short ! Interesting and consistent all the way.

(30.Oct.2011)

PHP in the Cloud

Nice keynote, Joe! Good to see that you didn't go all commercial on this one. I appreciate it that you used my definition of Cloud in your talk. I did hope to see a bit more of neutral advice for the regular PHP developer. You just mentioned Azure+ & Orchestra, but there are much more companies out there that offer Cloud solutions for PHP developers. I'm happy it was quite entertaining and you did mention what the buzzwords were all about (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS). Great job, I'm curious how this one will evolve and I look forward to seeing it again. I must also mention that you remained strong in the face of adversity: the echo problems with the microphone and the annoying background music ... most speakers would panic or get angry.

(30.Oct.2011)

DevOps for PHP

I have my own definition of DevOps and I'm happy to see yours differs a bit. A learned a lot about the tools that can be used. I hope you will include more about the gap between developer and sysadmin mindsets in the future. Nevertheless ... you seem to be a very knowledgeable person and a good representative op the DevOps idea.

(30.Oct.2011)

Think like an ant, distribute the workload

Happy to see this talk again. Although the crowd was ultra silent (maybe because of the language barrier), I had a great time and learned a thing or two. Would like to see this one in a hands on version. Maybe you should do this one with a partner/assistant to make sure people get as much practical info as possible.

(30.Oct.2011)

PHP in 2011

Although I respect Rasmus and I enjoyed most parts of the talk, I didn't always agree with some of the things that were mentioned. I learned some nice tricks/tips, but they didn't always fit into the story or "the bigger picture". I had the impression that Rasmus was somewhat biased, which of course is his right. All in all I enjoyed it and I'm happy to see a talk by the guy who started it all. I would definitely want to see this talk again and check if my criticism would still be valid.

(30.Oct.2011)

Scaling PHP Applications with Redis

I'll keep it brief: http://memegenerator.net/instance/11031211 Good talk, good speaker, very clear and somewhat inspiring. Best talk of the conference in my book.

(30.Oct.2011)

Event and Signal Driven Programming Techniques

I agree with some of the other people: this talk has great potential, but needs some polishing. There's no doubt that Elizabeth is an excellent speaker and she obviously masters the material. But it felt kind of random to me. I appreciate the fact that you refer to "computer science essentials", but I'd love to seem more practical examples of the ideas Elizabeth has. Will definitely check this talk out again and see how it has evolved.

(31.Oct.2011)

Large-Scale Data Processing with Hadoop and PHP

Despite the tech issues, I'm still a fan of this talk. I think I've seen it twice already, so I knew what to expect. My advice: invest a bit less time in mentioning why other major companies use it and use the time to give more basic information about installation, configuration and features. I'd appreciate a "slower" start that allows me to get up to speed. Conclusion: less why, more how.

(31.Oct.2011)

Powering Your Website with Realtime Data

Tuff conditions: first time you speak at a conference, not a native speaker and the biggest room of all. I'd see you did pretty well. There's no doubt that you know a lot about the material, but you need some more experience speaking. Although it was clear that you were seriously nervous, you did a much better job than last time when you practiced it at our user group meeting. I'm forced to give it a 3-star rating, part of it is the fault of the organisation, who should have put you in one of the smaller rooms. I'm sure you'll be a successful speaker in the future, but you need more speaking opportunities and a bit more practice in terms of delivery. But despite the nerves, you did a pretty good job. A lot of people with limited speaking experience wouldn't be able to cope.

(31.Jan.2012)

PHAR, the PHP .exe format

Only saw 50% of the talk because I had some conference duties, but I enjoyed that 50% Obviously Helgi knows what he's talking about, he's PHP royalty and the content I find really interesting. I'm planning to use this info and the slides to package some of my apps in PHAR files. I've seen a lot of talks by Helgi in the past, this "deep dive" style talk fits him better. Why 4-stars and not 5-stars? Well ... although Helgi's presentation skills are good, he can still grow as a speaker in terms of delivery.

(31.Jan.2012)

VIM + *nix Toolchain == PHP IDE

Best talk I've seen at PHPBenelux, although that doesn't really count for me because I only saw 3 or 4 talks. Matthew is a top speaker, no doubt about that. Matthew is a VIM expert, no doubt about that either. But what really convinced me is the sheer enthousiasm that was dripping off Matthew's delivery. He must have really enjoyed himself. Just like Lineke, I would advise you to type just a bit slower.

(31.Jan.2012)

PHP and mongoDB

Nice intro to MongoDB. I'm a beginner myself, so I enjoyed it. And because Derick is the master of the old school in the PHP scene, he has tons of experience. I want to see more of this and I'm happy that Derick is doing talks on new subjects.

(31.Jan.2012)

Taking it to the next level

I like David, especially his charisma which stands out. Nice overview of the evolution of PHP. I also loved the humor, David could be a stand-up comedian, but without actually losing credibility as a developer. How this talk can be improved: a bit more coherence in the different items of the presentation. And a bit more of a philosofical message would be nice, because that's what separates a regular talk from a keynote. Good job, want to see this one evolve and definitely want to see this talk again.

(14.Apr.2012)

F as in Failure

Brilliant motivational talks by a very experienced speaker. I always enjoy watching Josh in action because its more than just the talk, it about the all-round performance. Good job, keep it up !

(14.Apr.2012)

Estimation, or "How To Dig Your Own Grave"

5 out of 5, no doubt. I had plenty opportunities to see this talk, but I always missed out. I'm happy to have seen it now, because I learned some very valuable lessons regarding the topic of estimation. I'll definitely talk some of the vital points back to the office and apply it in practice.

(14.Apr.2012)

The Emperor's New Clothes

Kev is a great speaker and he's very funny and engaging, but this talk had more in it. Using funny pictures is always a good trick, but don't overuse them. The same thing applies to bashing and offensive language. Again: it's a good strategy, but don't overuse it. I also felt the pace of the talk was a bit off. But in essence there is lots of potential in this talk, but it needs to be less chaotic. I would also advise 75% off the intro. Nevertheless, I want to see this talk again in an optimized form.

(14.Apr.2012)

How The Web Evolves With Hypermedia

Smart and funny keynote that makes total sense in this day and age. One piece of constructive criticism: work more on the flow and look more relaxed. I know you are relaxed, but you need to show you're cool with it. In essence: good talk, not a typical keynote.

(18.Apr.2012)

Develop & Deploy Using Hybrid Cloud Strategies

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately I submitted a bunch of talks and the organizers selected those. It's a pity that there's so much overlap, but that was the way the talks were designed. Sorry for that ...

(31.May.2012)

Social meetup

Free drinks, snacks and good vibes. What more do you need?

(31.May.2012)

Scalability issues: cure first, prevent later

Great feedback guys, I'll keep it into account for next week. THX !

(09.Jun.2012)

Cooking up a Virtual Development Environment

Great workshop, I like Alistair's presentation style for workshops like this. The fact that it was hands on and not a 3 hour presentationf is really a plus. I would have prefered a bit more focus an chef.

(09.Jun.2012)

ElasticSearch [R]evolution: Welcome

Andrei knows his stuff and knows how to do technical in-depth talks. Enjoyable because of his relaxed style and the solid content.

(09.Jun.2012)

Cranking Nginx up to 11

I like Nginx and I like Helgi. So combining both is a good thing. Great to get an intro to Nginx by a guy that know his stuff. Also very interesting knowing that Helgi implements large and complex Nginx setups on a day to day basis. Looking forward to another Nginx talk by him that covers the more advanced/exotic topics. Truly a 5-star talk. Congrats, Helgi !

(09.Jun.2012)

PHAR, the PHP .exe format

I saw 50% of this talk at PHPBNL12. But now I saw the entire talk and was impressed with the possibilities. The way Helgi responded to the questions asked by the audience, proves he's a pro. Makes me want to experiment with Phar myself.

(09.Jun.2012)

A Knapsack of Geotools: More than Just Google Maps

Blown a way by the mathematical/theoretical intro. It proves Geolocation is way more complicated than people think. Great overview of what tools are around. Would like to see more practical info next time, perhaps some code examples. Nevertheless a 5-star talk.

(09.Jun.2012)

Mobile is huge in Japan

Joe is a tech enterpreneur and it's nice to hear from people who are where the action happens. I liked the numbers Joe displayed in his presentation, it's somewhat confronting and a real eyeopener. I do believe mobile still has lots of potential ahead and I believe the numbers, but I don't think it will entirely replace web or desktop apps. There's still a difference between interacting with the internet from a mobile device (when you're away from your workstation) and actually doing productive work at the desk. Good stuff, I want to see more presentations by Joe. Although a bit more stories would have been welcome. Sometimes there were a bit too much numbers.

(01.Oct.2012)

How to remove PHP calls and scale your site like crazy!

Great talk. Seen it before and it's improving, going in the right direction. The only thing I would advise is to add a bit more content.

(01.Oct.2012)

The Real Value of Open Source: ROI and beyond

This is a good talk and Jam can really tell a story. That's what I'm looking for in a good presentation: story telling. It was also very engaging and comprehensible. But ... the talk focusses a bit too much on Drupal. This is no surprise because you're usually doing talks within the Drupal community. I think you can still keep your Drupal hat on and say that you're in the Drupal Community, see things from that perspective, but your examples have to be more diverse (= less Drupal). A bit more focus on PHP is a good thing, but if you're talking about open source, you should also talk more about other non-PHP technologies: Perl, Ruby, C, C++, hell ... why not even .NET. But as said: good stuff, a foundation to build upon and I definitely want to see this talk when it hits another iteration. Thanks!

(07.Oct.2012)

Community works for business too!

I liked this talk. I've seen similar talks by Michelangelo in the past and it's cool to see that his talks have improved. Loved the parts where he features his sons, very cool, very credible. One piece of advice: put a bit more vibe, more flow in it at given times and make the talk go a bit faster. Mike is so passionate about the community, but sometimes gets a bit emotional on these things and this makes him a bit more quiet. Great talk, but try to keep the pace in it. Mike is our Benelux community leader!

(10.Oct.2012)

Developer Experience, API Design and craft skills

Ade is such an amazing speaker that manages to get the attention of the crowd, that manages to entertain and get his points across while doing that. Ade is a very well-rounded speaker and I'd love to see more of his talks.

(10.Oct.2012)

React: Event-Driven PHP

For me personally, this was en eye opener. Igor has built up quite some reputation and the stuff he does is somewhat avantgarde. The talk is a perfect example of that. For me, this was the best talk on the schedule. But I noticed people would like some more real world examples. I agree, so please work on that soon, there are conference organizers "watching" ;-)

(10.Oct.2012)

Twig doesn't make templating your enemy

First time I've seen Hugo live. Impressed by his knowledge. I know Twig and I use it, but thanks to Hugo's talk I now know how this all works internally. And I learned some nice tricks too. What I would like to see in the future: more real world examples (I know, this sounds so cliché). Maybe you could feature some common cases where templating is required and you could compare classic PHP with Twig (and Smarty). That would certainly prove the power of Twig. Good job, Hugo!

(02.Feb.2013)

How Google Builds Web Services

Ian is still one of my favourite speakers. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable about the topics he presents, his presentation style is awesome. Engaging, funny, to the point. I learned a thing or 2 about Google API's and it was well delivered. That's mission accomplished in my book.

(02.Feb.2013)

Using Beanstalkd to spread the work of your PHP application

Great talks and lots of potential for future talks. Interesting topic that was nicely summarized. A lot of pro's & con's and enough practical examples. I look at this from a speaker's point of view and I like what I see. Given the fact that this is Andrew's first real international talk, this was a job well done. A couple of pointers for future presentations: - Focus a bit more on the visual aspect of your slides - Don't fill you slides up with text and bullet points, try to represent 1 idea per slide - Don't play with your bottle of water so much I also liked the humor and the confidence. I see a real future for Andrew in the conference scene. Please submit to #phpbnl14 ;-)

(02.Feb.2013)

Nginx and PHP, match made in heaven

Helgi is an experienced speaker and is very knowledgeable about Nginx. I had a good time and learned a lot of interesting tricks. I've seen a couple of Helgi's Nginx talks and I can definitely say the talk has improved. Good job!

(25.Feb.2013)

Opening Keynote - You Are A Designer

Aral is a good presenter and adds lots of drama to his talks. I like this very much. The "real life" examples add to that. It's cool to see that these examples come from every day life. I have seen Aral present a couple of times and some of the ideas are recycled from other talks. This is not necessarily bad, but removes a bit of the magic. But hey who cares: something that was good the first time I saw it, can be just as good the second time. Now that I've seen this talk a couple of times, I am very curious to see something brand new from this great speaker/performer.

(25.Feb.2013)

Event Stream Processing

Ian is one of my favourite conference speakers: he is *VERY* technical and knows his stuff. The delivery is always top notch. This talk was no different. Looking forward to see Ian present again.

(25.Feb.2013)

From the Ground Up - Coding, Deploying and Scaling with AWS

This is not the first time I've seen Rowan speak. Every talk has something special to it and again this proved to be the case. The first time I see a talk that consists entirely of screenshots. Very gutsy and risky, but delivered oh so well. Good job!

(25.Feb.2013)

Help, I'm Running Out of Memory!

First time I saw Julien in action. It was in depth and liked it a lot. This talk went beyond the basic level and showed the crowd how memory management is done in PHP and on the operating system. I learned a couple of things, so mission accomplished. There was only one thing missing: a sort of conclusion and an answer to the question how we can actually optimize our memory consumption in PHP. A couple of pointers there would make a perfect ending to a great talk.

(25.Feb.2013)

The Hypermedia API

Good talk, although Ben seemed a bit nervous. Nice overview of hypermedia and why/how we should all use it correctly. Hopefully there will be a part 2 of this talk that covers even more stuff. It's impossible to tell the entire story in a 50 minute slot. Good job, Ben!

(25.Feb.2013)

Scaling with HipHop

Great talk, although it was done quite quickly. I experimented with HipHop a couple of years ago, right after the release. The problems I encountered there seem to be tackled. The extremely slow compilation process seems to be fixed, so I'll definitely give it another go. Sara knows her stuff and give us the past, present and future of the project. Good one Sara!

(25.Feb.2013)

Expert Troubleshooting: Resolving MySQL Problems quickly

I'm surprised people think there was a sales pitch in this talk. The fact is that Percona built a lot of tools, hence the name dropping. And I guess the majority of these tools are open source. It's like calling a Zend Framework talk a sales pitch because the constantly refer to the term "Zend" and some of the Zend Framework speakers actually work for Zend. Kenny is a true expert and knows his stuff. The reason why most people give a low score to this talk is because it was quite chaotic. The pace was too fast and there was just so much stuff in this talk. I'm sure that once I see the video, I will extract all the info I need. Besides the chaotic delivery and the exhausting pace, this talk is still worth a 4-star rating because the quality of the content was very good.

(25.Feb.2013)

You Can't Optimise What You Can't Measure

Good talks by an experienced and knowlegdeable speaker. I could have appreciated a bit more examples and technical content, although the real life business examples were quite useful.

(19.Mar.2013)

Building Better Developers

Great keynote. The mannequin wasn't that disturbing, it worked well. Very entertaining and inspirational. And yes, the word "mannequin" is derived from the Dutch term "manneken": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mannequin Good job!

(19.Mar.2013)

Silex Anatomy

Excellent talk, but *OH SO* confusing. I would like to give a 3.5 score, but it's to good to be a 3, so a 4 is definitely apropriate. Although the content of the talk was good, the buildup wasn't that transparent and it took me until the end of the talk to actually get the picture. What I liked: how Silex is composed and how Yolo can be considered an improved version of Silex in terms of complexity. What I didn't really like: instead of showing Silex code and explain why these decision was made, you opted to do it the other way around and started from scratch. One could say that this talk is not about Silex, but that would be a bit too harsh. I imagine that a couple of people had other expectations. Luckily the talk was good. Maybe this talk deserves a better title. Other than that, it was great.

(19.Mar.2013)

Measuring and Logging Everything in Real Time

Rock solid talk. This talk introduces a whole lot of logging & monitoring strategies. I learned a lot of things and some of the ideas I will definitely use in my own projects.

(02.Apr.2013)

Introduction To ElasticSearch

I really liked this presentation. It was more a mindset changer than an in-depth tech talk. Nevertheless I learned some really nice tricks. I also liked the visual aspect of the talk: I can appreciate a speaker invests in a nice slide deck. One thing bothered me a tiny bit: Jurriaan wanted to continue in Dutch, eventhough a couple of non-Dutch speakers were in the audience. He did switch and did a good job. But those things should come naturally to a guy like Jurriaan. What's next? I would love to see Jurriaan do a hardcore technical talk about the API and the DSL. He triggered our attention and now we want to learn more ;-) Great job Jurriaan!

(02.Apr.2013)

Vagrant

A kick ass moment: Martin deciding to do a Vagrant talk and only taking 15 minutes to prepare. Speaking of an "in promptu" appearance. He did it in style, with class and without hesitation. It's a pitty that the real-life demo was kind of slow. But this was a excellent talk nonetheless.

(17.May.2013)

Composer for Busy Developers

Excellent talk. I think this is actually the first time I see Raphael speak and I'm quite impressed with the content as well as the delivery. The talk is easy to understand and follow because it's well structured. In the beginning of the talk we know what we're going to see. The slide design is also very good and I like Raphael's humor. I learned a lot and Raphael covers the most important things starting at the beginner level and going to a more advanced level throughout the talk. Conference organizers: select this talk, invite Raphael!

(17.May.2013)

Practicing Failure

Harper is an incredible speaker who obviously has tons of experience with projects at scale. I love hearing talks that mix code & infrastructure. Hope to see more talk by Harper in the (near) future.

(17.May.2013)

PHP 5.5: The New Bits

Good talk, experienced speaker, got a bit confused with generators though ...

(10.Jun.2013)

Introduction to Lisp

Minds were blown. Definitely a 5-star talk. But in a v2 of this talk, I would like to see more parallels with PHP. More practical examples would help too. What I remembered from this talk is that LISP can do a lot for you with a limited set of language constructs. It also seems to be great for map/reduce and processing complex data in general. Good job, but looking forward to a v2 with some minor improvements.

(10.Jun.2013)

High Performance Websites with Scalable Workers

Good talk! He certainly convinced his audience the importance of workers. I was a bit disappointed that Gearman was removed from this talk. Was hoping to learn more about the different tools out there. I would love to see a v2 version of this talk that includes comparisons of differnet products, tools & technologies that facilitate the worker process. Nevertheless a great presentation by a knowledgeable speaker.

(10.Jun.2013)

Modern HTTP Architecture

Interesting concepts, kick-ass speaker, but I expected a bit more. It was a bit disappointing that the only message was "use SOA". But that was the only disappointment, because Travis did tell a compelling story that I will definitely remember.

(10.Jun.2013)

Growth Hacking for Humans

Eamon managed to get rid of the hangover quite quickly. I was afraid he would fall asleep the first minute or so. But that's just a trick he pulled, because the rest of the talk was awesome. I know Eamon, I know his story and yet it managed to inspire me so much. I'm not usually so corny, but damn, what happened there? Magic ... Thanks Eamon, you convinced me to do stuff I also wanted to do, but never had the guts to do.

(10.Feb.2014)

Vagrant, Puppet and Chef FTW

@Chad: Puppet or Chef are definitely tools that can be used to provision production servers. These same provisioning scripts can be re-used to make sure your vagrant boxes represent a copy of your production environment. The "vagrant ssh" is by far the preferred way to interact with the machines. Please have a look at the slides for more information: https://speakerdeck.com/thijsferyn/vagrant-puppet-and-chef-number-ftw-sunshinephp-2014

(13.Feb.2014)

Continuous Integration in PHP

I really liked this workshop: I always wanted to implemente Jenkins and now I had the opportunity. I also like Keith as a speaker because he is knowledeable and entertaining. In the beginning I didn't really know what to expect and I got bored looking at slides about PHP metrics. But it was all part of a larger plan that unfolded the last hour of the workshop. The last hour of the workshop was used to show us that installing and configuring Jenkins can be painful and it was. But in the end everything worked out and we had a bunch of nice plugins all working together, producing the output we expected. Although I was somewhat anxious to get into the actual process of configuring Jenkins, Keith made sure the necessary theoretical information was provided before we dove into the nitty gritty. Next time around I would hope to see a bit less about metrics and I'd hope that Keith focusses more on packaging and deploying.

(13.Feb.2014)

Happy Hour

One shouldn't complain about free drinks, but I agree with the others: the staff wasn't that friendly. Still: free drinks are nice.

(13.Feb.2014)

Journey to the Enterprise

Although enterprise seems to be a boring subject, I was happy to see this keynote. Mark has enough experience to talk about enterprise and he also works at a company that actually serves enterprises. So for the first time ever, someone was able to explain me what the so called enterprise actually is and now I have the tools to quantify if a company is actually an enterprise. Although some aspects of the talk weren't surprising, there were still some basic aspects of enterprise I didn't know of. I'd say it's a job well done! It didn't blow me away (hence the 4-star rating), but it was still a very good talk.

(13.Feb.2014)

Get Started, Move Fast and Break Things with Symfony2

I'm going to give this the 4-star rating it deserves although I didn't get to see what I wanted. That's mainly my own fault. I was expecting to see a Symphony 101 talks, but got a RAD talk. Ryan is a very good speaker, the content was interesting and well deliverd, but again: I expected to see something completely different. And again: that's my own fault, not Ryan's

(13.Feb.2014)

PHP

I really liked the first part of the talk: it clearly illustrates the direction of the language and the upcoming 5.6 release. That was pretty awesome and definitely a job well done. But the second part seemed a bit random and incoherent. This is not the first time I see Rasmus speak and I've seen it happen a bunch of times: the talk has a really good start, but then becomes a bit more chaotic. So to summarize the 2nd part: it diverts from the central theme which is a pitty. Rasmus is a good speaker and an icon in the PHP community, he knows what he's doing and has some really interesting stuff to say. I only wished that the level of the talk remained consistent which wasn't case to me. Maybe it's just me ... everyone else is giving the talk a 5-star rating.

(13.Feb.2014)

MySQL HA, Recovery and Load Balancing

Good stuff! I work at a hosting company and deal with this stuff on an almost daily basis. I still managed to learn a couple of neat tricks.

(13.Feb.2014)

Profiling PHP with XHProf

Finally I got to see an XHProf talk. I was really looking forward to it and in the end I got what I wanted. Although this talk wasn't really in-depth (which I hoped it would be), I'm actually quite satisfied with the things I learned. Very nice to see XHGUI being featured and the fact that it has a MongoDB backend. Another trick I really appreciated was the "disable CPU & memory" trick to improve performance. Unfortunately I cannot find the right syntax for it in the slides. Maybe this should be emphasized more in the slides? @Jonathan: can you explain me how I should arrange the constants in xhprof_enable() to make sure CPU & memory aren't mesured?

(13.Feb.2014)

Open Source, PHP, and PIE

One of the best talks of the conference. Larry has some interesting opinions and is involved in a project (Drupal) that is currently in need of help and that is implementing the ideas that Larry is spreading. I also like Larry's presentation style: it's very dynamic, entertaining and engaging which I like. I've just become a Larry Garfield fan and I'll definitely check out some of his future talks.

(13.Feb.2014)

Using Github for more than code

Great to see that GitHub is eating its own dogfood. Proves that the tools they build are really good. I also love the speaking skills that Elizabeth brings to the table: very engaging, without being too "in your face". I love the humor in the talk and the fact that Elizabeth consistently behaves like a caring older sister. Loved it!

(13.Feb.2014)

APIs: Dead Reckoning

I agree with some of the criticism: it wasn't a typical keynote and it was actually an Apigility pitch. But then again: Matthew clearily indicated this at the beginning of the talk, so no suprises there. I liked this talk, but I've seen the Apigility talk at ZendConEU, so in terms of content there were no surprises there either. The only thing I would change is the title: I would mention Apigility so that people know in advance what they're going to see. But still a very good talk delivered by a good speaker.

(13.Feb.2014)

Redis Everywhere

5 stars: this guy knows what he's talking about. I learned a couple of really cool tricks. I also like Ricard's confidence and presentation style. Next time around I would like to see more hands-on examples of typical Redis configurations. For example about Sentinel.

(13.Feb.2014)

Going Pro

Cal is an entertainer and that is something I really like. As a fellow speaker I believe that you should entertain your audience first and then educate them. Cal did this brilliantly. Although there wasn't much tech involved in the talk, it inspired me and that's what it's all about. I've seen Cal speak a couple of times (at PHPBenelux, at DPC and now at SunshinPHP) and it always puts a smile on my face. You could say that it's the same talk all and over again, but who cares about that: the message is solid and why should you change a successful formula. As a speaker, I'll definitely try to use some of Cal's tricks when preparing future talks.

(13.Feb.2014)

PHP in the Cloud

I understand that the co-speaker was sick and that this impacts the talk. But as a speaker you should compensate for that. The talk was too short and that was a bit of a shame. There are some many stories to tell about Amazon AWS. I wish you would share more of your experiences. This was a bit too "AWS 101" for me. My advice: work on it, turn it into a full AWS talk, spend more time on some of the cool features and convince developers that you can do some really awesome automation with it.

(13.Feb.2014)

Code Obfuscation, PHP Shells & More

5-stars, no doubt about that. Mattias really knows his stuff and showed us the dangerous world we live in. As a fellow webhoster, I agree with everything he had to say and I hope that developers realize that there's a lot of ugly tings happening out there. This is definitely conference material and I would advise Mattias to submit this to other conference. I would vouche for this talk!

(05.Jun.2014)

Meeting introduction

Tom & Jachim zijn een olijk duo die op een leuke manier ons verwelkomen. Altijd een vleugje humor, altijd gezellig.

(05.Jun.2014)

C++ <3 PHP

Ik vind PHP extension talks altijd interessant en deze bleek ook erg interessant te zijn. Enkele puntjes van kritiek: - PHP is niet in C++ geschreven, maar in klassieke C - Visual Studio is enkel nuttig als je PHP extensies schrijft voor Windows. Je kan ook gerust in Notepad of vim werken. De gcc compiler op Linux en de bijhorende GNU tools om PHP te compileren (build-essential & php5-dev) zijn ook erg goed Voor de rest vond ik het een aangename talk die een duidelijk beeld schetst van de complexiteit die het maken van PHP extensions met zich meebrengt. Ik vermoed dat de zenuwen Thomas wat parten speelden. Mijn advies: blijf je focussen op dit onderwerp en zoek de details nog wat verder uit. Probeer het ook op Linux aan de praat te krijgen aangezien de meeste mensen PHP op Linux/Mac draaien. Ik zou deze talk graag nog eens opnieuw zien in een iets meer mature vorm. Ik geef deze talk een welverdiende 3,5/5.

(10.Jun.2014)

Your code are my tests!

WOOPS! Forgot to login. I've seen Michelangelo present A LOT. Mostly on Zend Framework, community & testing. Some of them I really liked, some of them I liked less. But this talk is by far the best talk I've seen by him. Not only is the topic relevant in this day and age, but Michelangelo clearily proved that he knows what he's talking about. Thanks to testing heroes like Michelangelo (and Chris Hartjes & Sebastian Bergmann) I've started writing unit tests myself. And eversince, the quality of my projects has increased. I liked the angle of this talk: turning someone else's ugly code into something testable. Good job!

(08.Oct.2014)

Meeting introduction

Het format van "het olijke duo" blijft werken. Alleen zoals Ike zegt opletten dat je niet teveel "murmelt" ;-)

(08.Oct.2014)

Laravel: PHP da gin zeer doet

Ik heb op relatief korte termijn 3 Laravel talk gezien en deze was ongetwijfeld de beste. Inhoudelijk super goed gestructureerd, relevante topics, goede codevoorbeelden en een duidelijke flow. Let wel op je presentatiestijl! Spreek duidelijker, richt je meer tot het publiek en vermijd dat je stemvolume zakt naar het einde van je zinnen toe. Probeer ook iets enthousiaster voor de dag te komen. Als je op deze puntjes let, dan ben ik er zeker van dat je een toppresentatie vasthebt die hier lokaal als de referentie zal gelden op vlak van Laravel.

(08.Oct.2014)

Isolating and hosting multiple PHP apps with docker

Ik ben fan van Docker en ik ben fan van Ike als spreker. Je hebt altijd een interessante visie die afwijkt van de traditionele en typische insteek die je vaak in talks terugvindt. Het idee is super: "hoe kan je met containers flexibel PHP apps hosten?". En aan het resultaat heb ik ook veel gehad. Maar ik heb enkel van deze talk kunnen genieten omdat ik al introtalks over Docker gezien heb. Voor de mensen die Docker niet echt kennen, zal dit een verwarrende presentatie geweest zijn. Ik had soms het gevoel dat je ons meenam in een verhaal dat zelfs in jouw gedachten nog niet 100% vastligt. Ik begrijp dat er verschillende pistes zijn die je kan volgen, maar ik zou aanraden om de volgende keer één piste te kiezen, de elementen die je wil presenteren duidelijk kaderen en binnen dat kader te blijven. Dit neemt niet weg dat je een goede spreker bent, met veel expertise op systeemvlak en dat weet ik altijd te appreciëren. Ik kijk al uit naar een volgende talk van je.

(17.Nov.2014)

From zero to Silex

I went to see this talk for 2 reasons: 1. Watch Larry 2. See if he can teach me something new about Silex The Larry Garfield show was great and that was the main reason for being there. In terms of Silex knowledge: I didn't learn that much because I have already worked with Silex. But Larry did manage to show me a couple of cool tricks in terms of code organization and abstraction layers. 5 star performance, as always.

(17.Nov.2014)

Idealism embodied: Philosophy, Code, Empowerment

Walked in a bit too late and noticed that the Jam show had already commenced. Gotta say: Jam is one of the best speakers I know. That alone is worth a 5-star rating. In terms of content: I felt Jam was a bit preaching to the choir. We have all heard this story before and I believe this talk will have a higher impact at non-tech events. However: the message is good and the idealism that Jam presents is admirable. Would love to see this talk again, but not because the message will inspire me, but because Jam is just that good.

(17.Nov.2014)

Drupal 8: A Story of Growing Up and Getting Off the Island

I go to Drupalcons, so obviously I've heard about Angela before. This was actually the first time I saw her speak. Yes, this was definitely keynote material and I love the story: Drupal stepping up its game, using Symfony components, getting ready for the next level. And of course: a story of 2 communities helping out eachother. Good stuff!

(17.Nov.2014)

A Decoupled Drupal with Silex

I didn't expect this to be a talk about 1 specific use case. But luckily it was a good one. Larry is a good speaker and an all-round admirable community guy. It was nice to see how you can keep Drupal for content management, but use more powerful alternatives as the API layer. I'll probably advise this kind of setup to a couple of clients in the future. I personally love Silex & ElasticSearch and it is nice to see that others use it as well.

(17.Nov.2014)

Writing Faster PHP with HHVM & Hack

I learned a lot! Didn't expect this talk to cover so much detail. Absolutely loved it. Hack offers way more than I expected.

(17.Nov.2014)

High Performance Magento in the Cloud

Although quite similar to my talk, I loved this one. Fabrizio is a very knowledgeable guy, so I was glad to see him in action for the first time. I learned a couple of nice tricks that I'll surely apply in the near future. I'll definitely stay in touch with him and I look forward to seeing more talks by Fabrizio.

(16.Feb.2015)

Meeting introduction

Ik hou van jullie humor, jullie zijn een leuke tandem. Ik vond het ook fijn om te zien hoe PHP-WVL geëvolueerd is in een jaar tijd.

(16.Feb.2015)

Wat kan Drupal 8 voor Symfony developers betekenen?

Een welverdiende 4 op 5. Inhoudelijk erg to the point en eens een leuke afwisseling van de typische Drupal 8 talks. Het beste vond ik dat het een talk was vanuit PHP/Symfony standpunt. De andere Drupal 8 talks die ik al gezien heb, starten altijd vanuit Drupal standpunt. Niels was erg zenuwachtig, wat te verstaan is voor een eerste keer. En eigenlijk zijn die zenuwen voor niets nodig: inhoudelijk stond de presentatie als een huis en het PHP-WVL publiek is een erg aangenaam publiek. Aandachtspunten op vlak van talk "delivery": - Minder zenuwachtige indruk maken (ik weet het, dat is niet makkelijk) - Beter articuleren, minder woorden inslikken - Wat aandacht voor de uitspraak van Engelse woorden (vb. feature niet als future uitspreken) - Meer interactie met het publiek Voor de rest een prima resultaat voor een eerste keer. Ik ben nieuwsgierig hoe Niels als spreker zal evolueren.

(16.Feb.2015)

PDF zonder zorgen

Zelfde feedback als de andere mensen: - Goeie spreekstijl, persoonlijkheid van de spreker komt naar boven - Aangenaam om naar te luisteren - Veel interactie met het publiek - Helaas schiet de talk inhoudelijk te kort Graag volgende keer meer voorbeelden en meer diepgang.

(23.Feb.2015)

Everything That I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Rabbinical School

Saw the 60 minute version of this talk at PHPBenelux and liked the 30 minute version even better: it feels more balanced. Again: the opening phrases are brilliant. One would think you're doing a sort of intro, but you're already in full-on Rabbi mode. Awesome. And the Hebrew/Yiddish is relevant, don't be fooled by other comments about it. This talk is how you apply Talmudic insights to your work as a developer. You learned it in Israël where they speak those languages. Still one of the best keynotes I've seen. How to make it better? The slides ... the slides ... the slides. They just don't fit your message. Git rid of the Pacman font, change the colors to black and white and apply your speaking style to the layout of your slides.

(23.Feb.2015)

Modern Software Architectures

I only saw half of the talk because I arrived a bit too late (sorry for that), but I loved it. Not only do I like Ricard's style, content wise it was rock solid. I really look forward to one of Ricard's future talks.

(23.Feb.2015)

Bring your PHP application to the next level with React.JS

Very interesting concept, well delivered, but next time I'd like to see an "end to end" example. Right now I see the point, I get most of the concepts, but there's still a small gap. This "end to end" example will definitely close that gap. Well done!

(23.Feb.2015)

The NoSQL Store everyone ignores: PostgreSQL

A very well structure presentation. Now I understand how Postgres can be used for some more NoSQL-like use cases. Mission accomplished!

(23.Feb.2015)

HHVM at Etsy: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Great talk and very relevant. I'm interested in doing more with HHVM, now I know what to expect. Next time I'd like a bit more information about setup, configuration and troubleshooting.

(23.Feb.2015)

Open Source, Love, and Social Responsibility

Good stuff by a really good speaker. I really want to see this talk again, because I believe I can learn more from it. I didn't fully "ingest" all of the content, but that was my fault, not Davey's. I'm confident that a 2nd viewing will result in a 5-star rating.

(23.Feb.2015)

Reverse caching proxies: Varnish or Nginx?

Dear anonymous feedback person Thanks for the 4-star rating. Unfortunately the video footage is not something I control. The PHPUK conference organizers have a crew that deals with this. I'm pretty sure it will require some time before all footage is edited and uploaded. If you have questions about that, please contact the PHPUK organizers. In the meanwhile please enjoy the slides I've just uploaded: https://speakerdeck.com/thijsferyn/reverse-caching-proxies-varnish-or-nginx-phpuk15

(26.Feb.2015)

Long live the codebase

Great talk about a not-so-sexy subject. This presentation proves that long-lived codebases can remain manageable and interesting if you approach it with the require precautions. I also loved the presentation style. One tiny remark: you sometimes start giggling just before you're about to tell a clever joke. Try to avoid that and laugh after you made the joke. Apart from that, this is definitely conference material. Well done!

(26.Feb.2015)

Comparing Composer

It love to give this talk a 4-star rating, but honestly I cannot. I love the idea behind this talk: comparing composer to other package managing tools. In reality the comparison ended after 5 minutes and turned into a "tricks & tips in Composer" talk. Don't get me wrong: I liked the tricks & tips. But this wasn't really the way I expected this talk to go. The tips & tricks focus primarily on 2 items. Agreed, they're important, but I felt they dominated the talk and kept being repeated over and over again. Repetition can also be a good thing, so in that respect, the message definitely came across. So content wise it wasn't bad at all, but deviated from the initial scope. To improve this talk, you should compare more or just make another talk out of it. Another issue that stops me from giving this one a 4-star rating is the delivery: I was under the impression that you didn't practice the talk very well. The fact that you hesitated and got lost for words numerous times made it difficult to focus on the underlying message. You also seemed to struggle with some English expressions. However: I'd love to see an improved version of this talk. This means: more comparisons, better preparation, a smoother presentation style, more variety in the tips & tricks. And most importantly: meet audience expectations based on the talk outline/abstract/title.

(17.Jun.2015)

Symfony Kunstmaan bundles

Ik heb dezelfde kritiek als de andere mensen, maar ik vind dit wel 4 sterren waard omdat de talk goed gebracht werd. Voor mij is "delivery" minstens even belangrijk als de inhoud. Deze talk is heel goed en overtuigend, maar komt meer tot z'n recht bij een niet-technisch publiek. Voor een technisch publiek zoals PHPWVL is het belangrijk om iets dieper te gaan in de technologie en wat meer "onder de motorkap" te werken. Voor de rest een prima talk en een weldverdiende 4 sterren.

(17.Jun.2015)

Meeting introduction

Heel goeie intro. Ik vind het altijd leuk dat er een "previously on" onderdeel is. En ook de roadmap en bijhorende transparantie spreken me aan. Goed gedaan!

(17.Jun.2015)

Introduction DX-Solutions

Kort - krachtig - no bullshit. 5 sterren! Ook leuk dat je zegt: "iedereen hier kent me toch", wat voor 99% waar is. De 1% die je niet kent vraagt zich waarschijnlijk af: "oei, ik ken die kerel niet, maar al de rest wel, hij zal wel belangrijk zijn". Mooie marketing truc ;-)

(28.Jun.2015)

Hacking Foresight from Hindsight

Although I've heard enough talks about mentoring lately, this talk is definitely a 5-star talk and that's because Josh is a fantastic speaker/performer. The delivery of the talk was spectacular as usual. There were definitely some key takeaways for me. But as discussed: the slides were not on par with the quality of the talk. Throw away the slide deck, get a better color scheme and better visuals, because this deck is very 90's. When Josh speaks, I listen. A job well done!

(28.Jun.2015)

Using Docker to orchestrate local PHP development

Knowledgeable and talented speakers, interesting message, but a chaotic display! when you get a speaking slot at an event like DPC, one would expect way better presentation and coordination. Especially with 2 speakers, which complicates things more. I wouldn't say this is a bad talk, it has SO MUCH POTENTIAL. This talk could be turned into a 5-star presentation, but that will require more discipline from both speakers. And finally: I was impressed with the expertise and the speaking style of Marc. That being said: I'd definitely check this guys out again, but only when they've done a better job preparing the talk. I'm forced to give this presentation a 3-star rating, sorry about that guys!

(28.Jun.2015)

Automation made simple with Ansible

5-stars, well deserved. I know Erika is an expert, but the reason why I give this talk a 5-star rating is because the delivery of the presentation was really good. In past presentations the level English was a bit questionable, but now I noticed that Erika's English has improved a lot. Good job! Would love to see variations of this talk that cover specific subjects in-depth.

(28.Jun.2015)

Revisited: The Webstack in 2015

Good talk, good (experienced) speaker. Worth a 5-star rating. I would appreciate more advanced details in this talk, it was a bit superficial. But for novice users, this was probably a great introduction into scalable PHP stacks.

(28.Jun.2015)

HTTP is Dead. Long Live HTTP/2!

Ben is a very experienced and knowledgeable speaker. I always enjoy watching him present. Unfortunately, the talk didn't really meet my expectations. The RFC bit got boring after a while. It'd be better to trim that a bit in the future. I was also hoping to learn more about additional features of HTTP2. But that being said: Ben definitely got his point across and he definitely showed us about the connection multiplexing and a better use of TCP. But surely HTTP2 brings more to the table than just that ... I'd definitely like to see this talk again, but maybe with some improvements.

(28.Jun.2015)

Behind the Scenes of Maintaining an Open Source Project

This is a new level of keynoting which I enjoy. We've seen our fair share of inspirational speakers over the years (which I always enjoyed). Jordi is a different breed of speaker: no nonsense, to the point, a healthy dose of humor and sarcasm. But the humor and sarcasm never went to extreme levels and throughout the talk it was balanced by very nuanced statements. A very well balanced talk about life in the OSS trenches. In the past I didn't see "keynote material" in Jordi, but the experience and the years have shaped him. Jordi has become an expert, he has seen some good stuff and bad stuff and DEFINITELY has a right to stand there on stage doing a keynote. Congratulations, enjoyed it a lot!

(30.Jun.2015)

ElasticSearch in action

Hi Federico, Sorry I left you disappointed. The SQL stuff was only included to make sure novice users could understand what was happening. I've done this talk before and some people really found it convenient. Now I notice some people didn't like it. I had no intention to start any discussion, the only goal was to "get things done". A 40 minute time slot is too short for that, unfortunately. Also it's way too short to cover stuff in-depth, like the management part. I specifically mentioned that in one of my slides: "Plenty of ways ... for which we don't have time" Maybe one day, I'll do a dedicated talk about ElasticSearch management. I'll let you know if/when that happens. Too bad I wasted your time. Do you believe you were misled by the abstract? Let me know if there's a way to improve that. Thanks for the honest feedback Thijs

(24.Oct.2015)

Opening Keynote - The Joint

Although I understand and respect the commercial agenda of Zend, I did believe the community didn't get enough credit for what is happening with PHP 7. Sure, Zend plays a part in that, but the keynote made the audience believe that is was Zend and Zend only who's responsible for the development of PHP 7. Would have appreciated a more neutral stance there. I also felt like HHVM was treated like a competitor, whereas in reality both PHP and HHVM are open source projects. On a positive note: I do agree that these are exciting times for anyone involved with PHP and I appreciate the emphasis that was put on the community crossover with Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla & Magento

(24.Oct.2015)

Supercharging Content Delivery with Varnish

I work with Varnish a lot and I even do presentations about Varnish. Nonetheless I was very impressed with Samantha's presentation. She absolutely bossed it! Love the cool presentation style and loved the attention to detail. She really pinpointed the right things people need to remember. Although I didn't learn much about Varnish, I did appreciate the way she explained the Varnish features to people who don't have the experience. We'll definitely borrow/steal some of those ideas ;-) I would definitely like to see more presentations by Samantha. Good job!

(24.Oct.2015)

Asynchronous PHP

Wow, this was by far the best talk at Zendcon for me. The subject itself is very relevant and there are many ways to do concurrency and async processing. The talk featured a nice overview. I also liked the bits and pieces of advice you added to the features you summed up. Based on this presentation, I definitely feel more comfortable using/advocating some of the technologies you covered. Also loved the delivery and the style. Yes it was fast, but I like it that way.

(24.Oct.2015)

Special Evening Performance - The Joint

Game changer! BOOM ! Nothing more to add.

(08.Mar.2016)

Selenium 101

Altijd leuk in 't West-Vlaams, dat op zich is al 5-sterren waard. Inhoudelijk ook een solide talk. Bert heeft ervaring, dat is duidelijk en hij brengt het zelfzekerd over. Goeie talk!

(06.Apr.2016)

Meeting introduction

Ik hou van de humor en de 24 zinspeling.

(06.Apr.2016)

Let's get phpysical

Ik vind het enorm belangrijk dat een spreker zijn publiek kan entertainen. Dan pas ben ik bereid te luisteren naar de inhoud. Arno heeft dit in stijl gedaan: zonder zever, veel humor, to the point, massa's enthousiasme en die onvermijdelijke Oostendse je-ne-sais-quoi. Het was enerzijds een trendy onderwerp, IoT is hot, maar het was ook leuk gestructureerd. Het feit dat er heel wat live demo's waren met led's, schakelaars en potentiometers was TOP. Beste talk die ik al gezien heb op PHP-WVL. Arno for president!

(06.Apr.2016)

Getting started with Codeception

Ik ben fan van Tom, altijd al geweest. Maar toch was dit geen 5-star presentatie. Teveel blijven vastzitten in de introductie. Wou meer BDD zien. Los daarvan heb ik wel veel bijgeleerd over setup, config en importeren van bestaande unit testing projecten. Goeie basis, mag nog iets meer verfijnd worden.

(06.Apr.2016)

Chatops - Modern workflow

Good talk, nice overview & intro about the TheseDays ChatOps integration. Was hoping get more in-depth information on how to implement this myself. Was also hoping to get more info on the Slack-side of the project and how you implemented the commands & bots.

(06.Apr.2016)

Lessons learned from building an asynchronous filesystem component

Your entire talk was a great introduction. Just when I thought you would get started, you ended. A WTF moment ;-) A complete mismatch with what I expected. Was really hoping to learn more about ReactPHP/Filesystem and other related projects. If you manage to do that and trim down the unix filesystem intro stuff, you got yourself a killer talk.

(22.Feb.2018)

Going Backstage on Community Trends: Bug or Feature?

Glad to see Jenny on the big stage! A great "behind the scenes" of the struggles of a community leader. Organizing meetups & conference is hard and Jenny shared those stories excellently!

(22.Feb.2018)

What You'll Miss on AWS & How To Find It

Loved it. Very practical approach. Great tips & tricks.

(22.Feb.2018)

Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Playing 'Developer'

I love Gary, I love his talks, I love his mild gaming addiction and his love for Liverpool Football Club. Gary is a true keynote speaker, although he'll be too modest and tell you he's not. I love his down to earth conversational style. Great stories, but the inspiration I got from it is even better. This presentation inspired me in a very specific way and made me decide to take my own speaking game to the next level.

(22.Feb.2018)

Urban Legends: What You Code Makes You Who You Are

PJ is a rock star, because he is a good speaker and actually plays rock music. Loved the Ruby references, because it shows that other communities have the same struggles, similar values, similar goals.

(22.Feb.2018)

Service Workers and their role in PWAs

Good speaker, ideas were well layed out. Would have appreciated more code examples and a more practical approach when it comes to code examples.

(22.Feb.2018)

Getting started with Kubernetes

For some reason Bastian's talks are always about topics I'm very excited about. Nice overview, solid message, great speaker!

(11.Jun.2018)

Keynote : The New Revolution

Excellent talk, great speaker. I'm not too familiar with the history of computer science and networking, so that was an eyeopener for me.

(11.Jun.2018)

Application metrics with Prometheus

Rafael is a really good speaker, a respected professional and an all-round good guy. I was disappointed with the end result of this talk and told him why: I was expecting a Prometheus talk, not a "here's my experience with metrics talk that happens to have a tiny bit of Prometheus included". I was planning to give this a 3/5, but that would mean it wasn't a good talk. It was a good talk, but I expected something else. A 4/5 is granted. This talk could be split up into 2 different talks: a) A talk about your experiences with metrics b) A talk about Prometheus (might require a bit of research from your end) Conclusion: disappointed with the result, but not with the quality of the presentation.

(11.Jun.2018)

Write history, keep a diary

Jachim is a Git PRO, I know this first hand. The idea behind the talk is brilliant, but the fact that some of the demos didn't work out as planned is a bummer. Maybe compartmentalize the talk a bit more in the future and attach simple pre-recorded Git examples to each step.

(11.Jun.2018)

Designing for Autonomy

I love watching talks from speakers that are smarter than me. I love the fact that this wasn't presented as "just another microservices talk". Instead it was a balanced talk where software design choices made sense and had a purpose. Glad to see that it wasn't the typical Microservices Kumbaya and that the pros and cons were clearly mentioned

(12.Jun.2018)

Keynote : Controlling the variables

Thanks for all the feedback: both positive & negative. It was nuanced and very respectful, which I really appreciate. Based on all the comments and ratings, I now have a clear view on how to improve this presentation. It is obvious that there is a common pattern in the feedback. I will reflect on it, use it and turn it into a v2. To use a metaphor from my presentation: this is a new variable that has appeared, and I'll use it in my quest to become a better speaker. Thanks again everyone!

Events They'll Be At

No events so far

Events They Were At

Dutch PHP Conference 2018 Jun 06, 2018

PHP UK Conference 2018 Feb 14, 2018

SymfonyLive Berlin 2017 Oct 24, 2017

PHP-Cafe Feb 09, 2016

Dutch PHP Conference 2015 Jun 24, 2015

PHP UK Conference 2015 Feb 18, 2015

PHP-WVL: February Meetup at King Foo Feb 09, 2015

PHPBenelux Conference 2015 Jan 22, 2015

php[world] Nov 10, 2014

PHP-WVL: Oktober Meetup at Studio Emma Oct 06, 2014

PHP-WVL: June Meetup at Webdoos Jun 02, 2014

PHPBenelux Conference 2014 Jan 23, 2014

PHPNW 2013 Oct 03, 2013

Dutch PHP Conference 2013 Jun 05, 2013

PHP North East Conference 2013 Mar 19, 2013

PHP UK Conference 2013 Feb 21, 2013

Fronteers @ Combell Oct 24, 2012

PHPNW12 Oct 04, 2012

PHPCon Poland 2012 Sep 27, 2012

Drupal User Group Meeting Sep 12, 2012

WPUG.be meeting 1 Jun 19, 2012

PHPBenelux meeting May 30 Houthalen May 29, 2012

PHP UK Conference 2012 Feb 24, 2012

PHP Barcelona Conference 2011 Oct 27, 2011

ZendCon 2011 Oct 17, 2011

PHP North West 2011 Oct 06, 2011

PHPBenelux User Group Meeting Gent Oct 04, 2011

PFCongres 2011 Sep 16, 2011

Dutch PHP Conference 2011 May 18, 2011

phpDay 2011 May 10, 2011

Loadays 2011 Apr 14, 2011

ConFoo 2011 Mar 07, 2011

PHP UK Conference 2011 Feb 24, 2011

PHPBenelux User Group Meeting - Feb '11 Feb 21, 2011

PHPBenelux Conference 2011 Jan 27, 2011

PHP Barcelona Conference 2010 Oct 28, 2010

PHPBenelux October meeting 2010 Oct 26, 2010

PHP North West 2010 (PHPNW10) Oct 07, 2010

Dutch PHP Conference 2010 Jun 09, 2010

PHP UK Conference 2010 Feb 26, 2010

Thijs Feryn

Talks (By Name)

Build, provision & deploy in the Cloud with Packer, Ansible & Terraform

C.R.E.A.M (Cache Rules Everything Around Me)

CLI, the other SAPI

Controlling the variables

Develop & Deploy Using Hybrid Cloud Strategies

Develop & deploy using hybrid cloud strategies

Develop & deploy using hybrid cloud strategies

Developing cacheable PHP applications

ElasticSearch in Action

ElasticSearch in action

Getting things done with ElasticSearch

J’et aan je rekker met ElasticSearch

Keeping The Cloud In Check

Keynote : Controlling the variables

Lost In The Cloud: cloud computing, hope or hype?

Magento doen affeceren

Making Magento Go Fast

Making Magento go fast

Making PHP see using the Google Cloud Vision API

Managing a shared MySQL farm

PHP Projects Beyond the LAMP Stack

PHP Through The Eyes Of A Hoster

PHP through the eyes of a hoster

Reverse caching proxies: Varnish or Nginx?

Scalability Issues: Cure First, Prevent Later

Scalability issues: cure first, prevent later

Scaling WordPress using W3TotalCache

TUTORIAL: Varnish workshop

There’s this thing called HTTP

Vagrant, Puppet and Chef FTW

Vagrant, puppet & chef for beginners

Varnish Caching

Varnish In Action

Varnish in-depth

Varnish workshop

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