2020 Speakers.
Join 38 great speakers this year. Subject to change.
Andy Snell PhoneBurner
Andy Snell has been a self-taught computer nerd since his junior year of high school when first introduced to Gentoo Linux. He picked up programming from “PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites“, and since then, he has worked on building PHP applications in the electronic payments and telecom industries. He has a passion for simple and elegant solutions for difficult problems. When not debugging his code, he enjoys Magic the Gathering, travel, and recreational mathematics.Talks:
‐ Zombie Hunt: Find and Safely Remove Undead Code‐ Enums: The Missing Data Type
Ankit Sobti Postman
Ankit Sobti is the co-founder and CTO of Postman, an API Development Environment (ADE) used by 8M+ developers and 400K+ companies around the world. With previous engineering roles at Adobe and Yahoo, and experience in product, business, and development, he now leads the core technology group at Postman. Ankit is a big Neutral Milk Hotel fan and Chelsea FC supporter. He loves his piano, books, beers, and bacon.Talks:
‐ Keynote: From a passion project to 8M+ users: the Postman story
Ben Edmunds Wayfair
Forcing PHP to be web scale by day, hacking on fun ideas by night. PHP Town Hall podcast co-host. Author of Securing PHP Apps. Open source advocate.Talks:
‐ Web Scale System Design and Architecture‐ Workshop: Passing the Technical Interview
Brandon Savage Tailwinds, LLC
In around 2004, Brandon realized that he could automate tasks by writing a small program in PHP. His first application, an online roleplaying game, inspired him to continue learning how to use PHP. Shortly after he graduated in 2007 from University of the Pacific in California, Brandon became a full-time software developer. For Brandon it was a learning experience and a true dream job – one he’s loved doing ever since.Talks:
‐ Effectively Refactoring Your Legacy Application‐ The Ten Commandments of Object-Oriented Code
Cal Evans E.I.C.C. Inc.
Many moons ago, at the tender age of 14, Cal touched his first computer. (We’re using the term “computer” loosely here, it was a TRS-80 Model 1) Since then his life has never been the same. He graduated from TRS-80s to Commodores and eventually to IBM PCs.For the past 15 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux, OSX, and Windows. He has built a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications. When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, he enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”. These days, when not working with PHP, Cal can be found working on a variety of projects like Day Camp 4 Developers. He gives motivational talks to developers around the world. If you happen to meet him at a conference, don’t be afraid to buy him a shot of Rum. Cal is based in West Palm Beach, FL – US where he is happily married to wife 1.36, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT.Talks:
‐ Keynote: Which Way is the ElePHPant Pointed and other ElePHPant Jokes
Chris Holland TriNet
Chris Holland leads a small Software Engineering Team at an HR company. Throughout a career spanning more than 20 years, Chris has held Sr. Engineering and Leadership roles for small and large successful publicly-traded companies such as EarthLink and Internet Brands, serving business models across Content, Commerce, Travel & Finance on a wide variety of technology stacks including PHP/LAMP, Java/J2EE and C#/.Net, catering to audiences over 100 million monthly visitors. Chris is also a contributor to NomadPHP and php[architect] magazine, and has been published in CIOReview.Talks:
‐ DDoS Attacks: Threat Landscape & Defensive Countermeasures
Dana Luther Envisage International
Dana is a Senior Web Application Architect at Envisage International. She has been developing in PHP since 2000 (yes, PHP 3), and building almost exclusively in the Yii Framework for the last several years. She is a graduate of the University of Florida, and works with a small agile group of Yii developers to meet the demands of a diverse international company that serves the needs of international students around the world with over 650,000 monthly visitors and generating over 1,200,000 page views. Dana is one of the co-organizers of the Yii-Jax Meetup group, a regular contributor to the Envisage International Blog and maintains her own blog on the Yii Framework and docker.Talks:
‐ Integrated Feature Management - Using Feature Flags
Danielle KAYUMBI DK WAVE TECHNOLOGY
Graduated from the Sup Galilée School of Engineering in Software Engineering in 2010, and mother of 3 boys including a pair of twins, I am passionate about web technologies, including PHP language, the Symfony Framework. For 4 years I have been freelance in web development PHP 7 / Symfony 4, in parallel with my activity as General Manager of my own company, DK Wave Technology. Today I am preparing myself to pass a PHP certification and I wish to bring new ideas into the PHP community. I also had the privilege of sharing my experiences during two conferences in France: Symfony Live Paris 2019 and PHP Tour Nantes 2017. Besides development, I also love martial arts (Taekwondo) and baking from every angle.Talks:
‐ API: Designing, Security and Monitoring
Dave Stokes Oracle
Dave Stokes is a MySQL Community Manager for Oracle and the author of MySQL & JSON - A Practical Programming GuideTalks:
‐ MySQL 8.0 Features for Developers
David Kanenwisher Bushel
David Kanenwisher has worked at a few different start-ups in Fargo, ND, most recently at Bushel where his current position is Head Coach of Engineering. As a web developer he’s worked in a variety of languages, the most exotic being Erlang, but his favorite is still the plucky and pragmatic PHP.Talks:
‐ Build Your Own GraphQL Playground
Dr. Shallon Elizabeth Brown North Studio
Dr. Shallon Elizabeth Brown has been in software engineering for over 20 years and specifically worked in Drupal since 2007 on Drupal Core 5. She recently completed her Doctorate in Information Systems Engineering, where she graduated at the top of her class with a 4.0 GPA as the first African American woman in the world to publish a manuscript on open source technology. Her manuscript was titled “Motivations in Open Source: A Quantitative Study on Drupal in Academia” which was the first doctoral manuscript in the world to ever be published on Drupal at the time of publication. She was chosen as the Keynote Speaker for Baltimore’s 2017 Drupalcon Higher Education Summit where she got to present the findings of her work. She has developed hundreds of Drupal websites for major organizations, such as Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine Cardiovascular Research, the IRS, Columbia University, the Centers or Medicare and Medicaid, Fluke, and Expedia. As an API integration and build migration specialist, She has a passion for mentorship in engineering and loves working with other developers to expand into new toolsets for web development. She has most recently begun working to obtain AWS cloud certifications as well as developing more full-stack PHP applications with Laravel, React Native and Django. In addition, Dr. Brown’s doctoral specialization is Adult IT Education where she specifically wrote about pedagogy in Information Technology and theories on how adults process and respond to web applications.Talks:
‐ When Open Source Goes Very Wrong: Cautionary Tales in Web Development
Eric Mann
Eric is a web developer, technical leader, and polyglot with over a decade of experience working with companies and projects big and small. He's been working with PHP through his entire career, both professionally and recreationally. Today, Eric focuses his time on helping developers get started with and level up their skills with their technology of choice.Talks:
‐ Monkeys in the Machine
Erwin Earley Perforce
Erwin Earley, Senior Solutions Consultant, Zend by Perforce Erwin offers more than 20 years of experience working in the IBM i community, as an IBM employee and now with Zend by Perforce. He has worked with many technologies on the POWER platform including cloud (PowerVC), Dev/Ops solutions (Docker and Chef), and open source technologies (Linux, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP). Erwin is a frequent speaker at various user groups and technology conferences and has authored numerous articles on Linux, PHP, virtualization, and systems management.Talks:
‐ Understanding & Managing the PHP environment on IBM i
Ian Littman Cloudy Hills
When he isn't building or maintaining web applications, primarily of the API variety, for a handful of clients, Ian's probably biking between coffee shops in Austin, Texas or opining on transportation or telecommunication networks. He also helps organize the Austin PHP user group and Longhorn PHP Conference.Talks:
‐ Building Encrypted Systems Worth Their Salt
James Titcumb Roave
James is a consultant, trainer and developer at Roave. He is a prolific contributor to various open source projects and is a Zend Certified Engineer. He also founded the UK based PHP Hampshire user group and PHP South Coast conference.Talks:
‐ Workshop: Best practices for crafting high quality PHP apps‐ Climbing the Abstract Syntax Tree
Janna Hilferty TriNet
Janna Hilferty is forever curious. Recognized by her coworkers as "Captain Marvel" and "Automation Champion," she is currently a DevOps engineer at HR company TriNet, and blogger at TechGirlKB.guru. In the not-so-distant past, she was nicknamed "War Janna" for her fierce dedication to problem-solving in web hosting and Linux server admin work, where she specialized in performance, cacheability, and technical documentation.Talks:
‐ Ride the Wave: Tuning Resilient Server Architecture
Jason McCreary Pure Concepts, LLC
Jason McCreary, or JMac, has been writing code for over two decades. He's the creator of Laravel Shift. author of BaseCode, and producer of Getting Git. JMac considers himself an "active geek" - with a passion for programming & the great outdoors.Talks:
‐ Workshop: Laravel - From Noob to Elite
Jenna Quindica OSMI
Jenna Quindica is deeply familiar with working on lean teams, as she's worked at early-stage startups for most of her career, aside from her current role. In her current role, she's on an engineering team of size one, at an early-stage venture capital firm called First Round Capital. Her favorite things in life are the Starbucks drive thru, sunrises over the ocean, and musicals.Talks:
‐ Keynote: Lessons from a three-year-long mental health journey
Jesse Gorzinski IBM
Jesse Gorzinski is a Business Architect at IBM. His focus area is open source technologies, particularly on the IBM i operating system. Jesse is an expert on application development on IBM i, as well as I/T transformation strategies. His hobbies include playing with his dog, replacing complex applications with small snippets in open source languages, and advocating for the use of new technologies on IBM POWER Systems! He has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science as well as a Master of Business Administration degree.Talks:
‐ AI and IBM i
Jesse Davis Ajito
Jesse has been building enterprise software products and teams for over 20 years, and is a respected software executive, author, and speaker. Jesse developed the first data access for Java, serving as an expert on industry standards including JDBC and ANSI SQL. He is passionate about people and technology, and after leading a large development team with over 100 engineers as VP of Engineering at Progress, Jesse “crossed the divide” onto the business side by serving as Chief Operating Officer at Devada; leading the company to double its enterprise value, followed by a successful exit to private equity. Jesse loves to code in Java, and is currently working to build his new startup, Ajito, that’s focused on helping grow the global developer tribe to meet the world’s growing technology needs.Talks:
‐ Keynote: Beautiful Code: The Way of the Developer
Jessica Mauerhan Skillshare
Jessica is a software engineer who has been working with PHP and related technologies for over a decade. She enjoys mentoring fellow engineers in automated testing, test driven development, and quality code design. She lives in McKinney Texas with her family and loves coffee, comedy and podcasts.Talks:
‐ Workshop: Double Loop: TDD & BDD Done Right
Joe Karlsson MongoDB
Joe Karlsson is a software engineer turned Developer Advocate at MongoDB. He comes from the frozen tundra of Minneapolis, Minnesota (and yes, it does get really cold here, and no, not everyone here has the accent from the movie, Fargo 😝). Joe has been primarily a Node and JavaScript engineer. He has been writing, teaching, and talking about code his entire career. Sharing what he knows and continuing to learn about programming is truly the thing he loves doing the most. Joe is the co-creator of open source software, including bechdel.io, a web app that tells you if a movie script passes the Bechdel Test or not. In his free time, he is usually drinking Gin and Tonics, eating at a new restaurant, or tinkering on a new art project or open source project.Talks:
‐ MongoDB Schema Design Best Practices
Joel Lord Red Hat
Joel Lord is passionate about web and technology in general. He likes to learn new things but most of all, he likes to share his discoveries. He does so by travelling at various conferences all across the globe. He graduated from college in computer programming in the last millennium. Apart for a little break to get his BSc in computational astrophysics, he was always in the industry. As a developer advocate with Red Hat OpenShift, he meets with developers to help them make the web better by using best practices around Kubernetes. During his free time, he is usually found stargazing in a camping site somewhere or brewing a fresh batch of beer in his garage.Talks:
‐ Containerization For Software Developers‐ Workshop: Hands-on Intro to Kubernetes (and OpenShift) for Developers
Joyce Lin Postman
Joyce is a developer advocate lead at Postman, an API Development Environment (ADE) used by 8M+ developers and 400K+ companies to access bazillions of APIs every month. Puns and dank memes are kind of her wheelhouse.Talks:
‐ 10 things you didn’t know about Postman
Kyle Davis Redis Labs
Kyle is a full-stack architect and Head of Developer Advocacy at Redis Labs. Kyle built his first major project in PHP in 2000 and has worked in several ecosystems since, yet always seems to come back to PHP every few years. Kyle is the author of Redis Microservices for Dummies (Wiley). Kyle holds a BS from University of Southern Indiana and a Masters of Science from the University of Central Missouri. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.Talks:
‐ Microservices Architecture Communication: Streams & HTTP
Larry Garfield Platform.sh
Larry Garfield is an aspiring blacksmith who moonlights as Director of Developer Experience for Platform.sh. When not trying to hand-forge his own medieval armory from scratch he tries to teach developers and development managers the skills of yesteryear that the industry has forgotten.Talks:
‐ Never* use arrays‐ PHP 7.4: The new hotness
Matthew Turland Waitr, Inc.
Matthew Turland has been working with PHP since 2002. He has been both an author and technical editor for php|architect Magazine, spoken at multiple conferences, and contributed to numerous PHP projects. He is the author of "php|architect's Guide to Web Scraping with PHP" and co-author of SitePoint's "PHP Master: Write Cutting-Edge Code." In his spare time, he likes to bend PHP to his will to scrape web pages and run IRC bots.Talks:
‐ What Makes a Great Developer?
Mike Stowe RingCentral
Michael Stowe is a professional, Zend Certified Engineer with over 10 years experience building applications for law enforcement, the medical field, nonprofits, and numerous industrial companies. Over the last several years he has been focused on APIs and ways to improve industry standards and efficiency. He now works for RingCentral, a company on the leading edge of cloud communications. You can view slides from his other talks at mikestowe.com/slides or follow him: @mikegstoweTalks:
‐ Welcome and Closing
Omni Adams When I Work
Omni Adams has been a professional software developer for twenty years, primarily using PHP, though he's branched out to know enough Go, Python, and Javascript to break things. When not playing hockey or brewing beer, he barks at coworkers about their lack of unit tests and automates all of the boring things in his job.Talks:
‐ Alexa, Ask Me About PHP!
Peter MacIntyre Paladin Business Solutions
Peter MacIntyre has almost 30 years of experience in the information technology industry, primarily in the area of PHP and Web Technologies. He has contributed writing material for many IT industry publications: Author of "PHP: The Good Parts" (O’Reilly); co-author: Pro PHP Programming (APress), Programming PHP (3rd Edition - O’Reilly), Using Visual Objects, Using PowerBuilder 5, ASP.NET Bible, Web Warrior Survey on Web Development Languages, and Zend Studio for Eclipse Developer's Guide. Peter has 2 book projects currently underway. Peter is a co-founder and past co-chair for the Northeast PHP Developer's Conference held in Boston, MA and Charlottetown, PE Canada for 6 years (northeastphp.org). As well, Peter has spoken several times at North American and International computer conferences including PHPDay 2019 in Verona Italy, PHPCE 2017 in Warsaw, Poland; PHP[World] 2016 in Washington, DC; ZendCon 2016 in Las Vegas, NortheastPHP 2017 & 2016 (Charlottetown, PE, Canada), Prairie Dev Con 2016 in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, CA-World in New Orleans, USA; CA-TechniCon in Cologne, Germany; and CA-Expo in Melbourne, Australia. He is a Zend Certified Engineer in PHP 5.3 and PHP 4.0Talks:
‐ Workshop: Certification Prep & Certification Exams
Rob Allen 19FT
Rob Allen is a software consultant and developer with many years experience in a variety of interesting languages. He's particularly interested in APIs and the ecosystem around them along and contributes to rst2pdf, Slim Framework, Apache OpenWhisk along with other open source projects. Rob is a published author and based in the UK where he runs Nineteen Feet Limited, focussing on API development, training and consultancy. In his spare time, Rob blogs at akrabat.com and can often be seen with a camera in his hand.Talks:
‐ Slim 4: PHP's microframework‐ Serverless PHP Applications
Scott Keck-Warren WeCare
Scott Keck-Warren (@scottkeckwarren) is a father of two, a partner to Stephanie, Directory of Technology at WeCare Connect, and blogger at @thisprogramming. Scott has been working professionally as a PHP developer for over a decade. He currently manages a team that focuses on developing PHP based solutions to better help their customers.Talks:
‐ Developing a Culture of Quality Code
Tanja Hoefler RingCentral
Tanja is a firm believer in community, volunteering to help numerous developer community events including hackathons, conferences, and meet ups. Her passion goes beyond tech and events into helping others learn, even putting in 9 months as a research assistant to help kids in third world countries read.Talks:
‐ Hiring Mixer
Tessa Mero Cloudinary
Tessa Mero is a Developer Advocate at Cloudinary. She regularly organizes meetups, such as APIs, Vue.js, JAMStack, and Developer Relations. In the past, she has contributed to a leadership team for the open source Joomla! Project for 5 years, including the board of directors, leading the production team, as well as evangelizing Joomla as a public speaker. She organized a PHP Conference for 3 years and how organizing an API Conference. She also is an avid career mentor and has helped countless developers become successful. On her free time, she likes to play video games, learn new tech, go camping, and eat KBBQ.Talks:
‐ Optimize Media Performance in WordPress with Cloudinary
Tim Riggs LeanCor
I have been playing in the web development world for about 10 years. Have worked in the web application industry for the past 8 years, and have been a software developer about 5 of that. I enjoy solving problems and teaching others better ways to handle things. I tend to focus on clean code, performance, and security.Talks:
‐ Overcoming the OWASP Top 10
Wim Godden Cu.be Solutions
Wim Godden has been working with open source technologies since 1997 and has been involved in open source projects such as PHPCompatibility and OpenX. Next to web development, he's worked with a wide range of technologies (from database clusters to Internet backbone design) and focuses a lot of his time on high-scalability projects and on coaching/training web engineers.Talks:
‐ The why and the how of moving to 7.x‐ Workshop: Your app lives on a network - networking for PHP devs