Web414 - Milwaukee's Web Community

AGENDA:
6:05 to 6:55 --- Inside/Out Steve Klebar – Steve will lead a discussion on the services module and it uses and application.
6:55 to 7:05 --- Break
7:05 to 7:20 --- Kevron's Korner - Kevin Ciesielski will present those awesome applications and tools he has uncovered and discuss their potential value for Drupal developers.
7:20 to 7:50 --- Drupal Tune-ups - Bring you Drupal issue to the meetup for analysis, troubleshooting tips and possibly a fix.
7:50 to 8:00 --- Next Steps - Discussion on the agenda for our next meetup.

LOCATION: C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions - 222 Erie Street - Suite 330 - Milwaukee, WI

Call for presentations! Pick a topic or area of interest and share it. Join us as we continue to evaluate and add capabilities to our Drupal414 community web site. Dinner will be served, please sign up at www.Drupal414.com

CONTACT: In the event that you have any questions or suggestions for future topics please contact Steve Klebar at 414-737-2596 or email mkehack@promentor.biz

"It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools."

An old adage, but one I also believe. So don't take this as me blaming PHP for the bad PHP code I've written through the years. I'll take ownership for it, just like all the other bad code I've written in all the other languages before and since.

But sometimes PHP seems to actively discourage good coding habits.

Michael Booth, over at mechanicalrobotfish.com, is seeing the same thing.

He was writing a Drupal utility in ruby (pacem, read the post if you're outraged; I'm just being the messenger, here) when it occurred to him to wonder what kind of good testing tools he could find for PHP.

His quest led him to compare what he had known in ruby with what was in PHP, and the difference is drastic. Have a look at the differences between the two testing files and see what he means.

I know I've run into it more than once. It's quite possible to write good, even elegant, PHP code. I've seen and I've even done it myself. Still, the klunky syntax doesn't help; in fact it often gets in the way.

But the point here isn't to hammer PHP. I just want to encourage you to expand your horizons. Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote "A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its former shape." In this specific case, someone who had encountered testing tools outside of PHP, brought the ideas back and is hopefully enriching the PHP culture with it.

Matt has a BarCamp session on exotic languages. Come on out for it, and if you happen to know about something off the well-travelled PHP/javascript/C# track, bring it along and show us why you like it.

Or, if you don't, come on along anyway. Get your mind stretched. And then bring that bit of stretch back to your corner of the dev world, and see what it comes out looking like.

You'll be better off for it.

Bring all of the stuff you haven't been able to get done during the day or things that you've gotten stuck on and need help with. This group is open to designers, developers, programmers - anyone who can work remotely.

We'll be meeting at Bucketworks every Monday. Parking on the street is free after 6pm, you can come in through the front glass doors (ring the bell!).

We'll provide power, internet, chairs, and tables. You bring anything you need to work on and any snacks or drinks you'd like.

First half: Open QA
Joel and I will be leading an open Question/Answer section. Have a bit of code that is stumping you? Bring it! Need some suggestions on some different tools? Let's share. Just know where to go 'from here', we can cover that too. This will be a pretty informal portion - similar to our previous on Developer Best Practices / Tips and Tricks.

Second half - Arlen Walker: The Saga of Tracker 9725

Showing the trials of adding unit tests to decade-old legacy code from an Open Source project which was designed and written without testing in mind. We'll cover some approaches to testing legacy code, some test "smells," breaking dependencies, and along the way show how adding the tests led to "discovering" bug #9725 and fixing it without looking for it.

Kevin Schroeder - Technology Evangelist from Zend
Check him out at http://www.eschrade.com/ or @kpschrade on twitter.

During our first hour I will show and demonstrate the capabilities of various Zend products as well as talk about Zend’s open source and community contributions. We will look at the new Zend Studio 8.0, which is currently in public beta, but we will spend most of the time going over the features in Zend Server, our application server offering, demonstrating such features and Job Queues, Event Monitoring and Code Tracing.

In our second hour we will dive into how to build a Zend Framework-based application and show several of the Zend Framework components that might be interesting to you.

Freebies!
Raffling off a license for Zend Studio
$100 off Zendcon admission vouchers for anyone interested who attends

Make sure to grab a bite before coming - this hsould be 2 packed hours of awesomeness. We will probably be eating at La Perla before the meetup, so stop by.

This - as usual :) - is at Bucketworks.

DATE: 19 August 2010 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Call for presentations! Pick a topic or area of interest and share it. Please come and share your thoughts as we continue to evaluate and add capabilities to our Drupal414 community web site. Dinner will be served please sign up.

LOCATION: C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions - 222 Erie Street - Suite 330 - Milwaukee, WI

AGENDA:
6:05 to 6:55 --- Inside/Out Ashe Dryden – Ash will present theming material for beginner to intermediate users. Topics - How to find a pre-made theme and install it. What is a theme made of (html, css, JavaScript, php)? , What is the file structure like? What are the best base themes? Theming Views/CCK.
6:55 to 7:05 --- Break
7:05 to 7:20 --- Kevron's Korner - Kevin Ciesielski will present those awesome applications and tools he has uncovered and discuss their potential value for Drupal developers.
7:20 to 7:50 --- Drupal Tune-ups - Bring you Drupal issue to the meetup for analysis, troubleshooting tips and possibly a fix.
7:50 to 8:00 --- Next Steps - Discussion on the agenda for our next meetup.

CONTACT: In the event that you have any questions or suggestions for future topics please contact Steve Klebar at 414-737-2596 or email mkehack@promentor.biz

Back in July 2008 we had a guest at Web414, it was Tim from Teecycle. He talked a little bit about what Teecycle was, and he took some photos. If you weren't there, and haven't had a chance to meet Tim, we can tell you, he's an all-around nice guy!

Fast-forward to July 2010... Tim's house flooded, and he and his family can't even live in it right now. Major Bummer as far as Bummers go.

But there's hope! People are pitching in any way they can, and there's even a fundraiser being organized.

Web414 people... if you can help Tim, or even just provide some words of encouragement, please do. Let's show people we're not just a community of hardcore web geeks, but a community who cares about people, even if they aren't hardcore web geeks.

Arlen was kind enough to publish the slides he showed us during his HTML5 talk at the Web414 July 2010 Meeting ... enjoy!

Our friend, and patron Phil Gerbyshak (The Make it Great Guy) brightens the July 9th Milwaukee Business Journal with his trademark smile.

What to go Phil! Keeping Social Media real in the Cream city!

Arlen was kind enough to provide all the links he discussed during his HTML5 talk at the Web414 July 2010 Meeting... enjoy!

• The Spec
• The Spec (Author's Edition)
• Dive Into HTML5
• HTML5 Doctor
• HTML5 Gallery
• Oli's Flowchart
• Technical Analysis of WebM
• HTML5 Outliner
• VFE (Video for Everyone)
• HTML5 Video
• HTML5 Audio Player
• HTML5 Shiv source
• Modernizr
• Using Canvas for 3D games
• Miscellaneous HTML5 Demos
• The P*rn Announcement

I thought that people in the group might be interested in the upcoming Netroots Wisconsin conference in Madison on Sept. 25. Please come visit http://netrootswisconsin.org for more information and to register or propose sessions.

Unite the Cheddarsphere!

Beginner / Business Presentation
Kforce and Christa Schroeder, Technology Recruiter and Aaron Stratman, Market Director
Kforce will provide an overview of both their organization and the current marketplace. In addition, provide resume writing tips and other ideas to prepare you for a job search. Please bring your questions as they would be happy to answer anything specific you might have as well. The time will be split between Kforce/The Marketplace/Working with Recruiters, Resume Writing and Open Questions.

Advanced / Tips and Tricks Presentation
PHPed IDE by NuSphere
Greg Ryan
PHPed by NuSphere provides an integrated editing, debugging and
profiling tool for the development of PHP code. Built-in browsers,
MySQL monitors and server side debugging allow the programmer to step,
monitor and evaluate code on a line by line basis with watch and break
points. Although not an open source product, the capability and
advantages that the product offers may make the purchase of a licence
an easy decision.
PHPed runs on a Windows or Linux platform and can run on Mac via Wine
or Parallels.

SPONSOR!!
Kforce is bringing Pizza - so come hungry! Were you wondering what Kforce is? WEll...
Kforce (Nasdaq:KFRC) is a professional staffing and solutions firm providing contract and permanent staffing solutions in the specialty skill areas of: Information Technology, Finance & Accounting, Healthcare and Government Solutions. Kforce has over 1,900 staffing specialists across 63 offices in 41 markets in North America and two in the Philippines, bringing the value of over 45 years of experience to your career development needs. Locally to Wisconsin, we have offices in Milwaukee and Madison with an impressive team of over 25 staffing specialists.

ALL THIS AND MORE at Bucketworks on 5th and National at 6p.m.