July User Group:: Beach Blanket Summer School

Traditionally, summer user group meetings are "lightly" attended. Between schools vacations, playing hooky from work, and just enjoying the [brief New England] nice weather who's got this time? Well, er, we do...but we're holding off on the formal presentations.

Bring your "thinking cap", a tough OSS/PHP problem, and an appetite for participation, we're throwing a Beach Blanket Summer School Party (beach blanket optional). We will have all the fixin's to throw code on the table, dissect and discuss the ins-and-outs of PHP.

So bring a topic/problem, bring a friend, bring Anette Funicello (remember, you can't play beach ball without a-net), bring your wallet (we're meeting at the Cambridge Brewing Company).

June User Group:: An introduction to jQuery

jQuery is a concise open source JavaScript Library used for Document Object Model (DOM) traversal, event handling, Ajax requests, and animations. Whether you're new to JavaScript entirely or experienced with JavaScript but looking to shorten and simplify your code, jQuery is a framework you need to be familiar with. A real-time demo and hands-on walk-through will be done, include the writing of an animated Accordion widget and Ajax to-do list from scratch.

Please join John Resig, the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library ,and BostonPHP as John introduces us to his library (examples written PHP) including discussion of several different PHP frameworks that use jQuery (Wordpress, Drupal, CakePHP).

May User Group::Designing, deploying and operating high-traffic PHP

We've all heard stories of PHP in high volume applications like Yahoo, Facebook, and Wikipedia, etc. but how many of us really know what that means? Please join Jack Steadman of Smarter Travel Media and BostonPHP as we explore the ins-and-outs of running "consumer-grade" websites.

April User Group:: The mystery of CSS and Design

There was a time when programming and visual design lived on opposite sides of the brain, however, in today's web 2.0 environment, it's wishful thinking that coders and artists can exist in isolation. Although it's always good practice to separate business logic from presentation (can you say MVC) it is equally important (for your career) to at least become conversant in the elements of design and style… and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the lingua franca to which you should aspire to speak. Neither fish nor fowl, CSS straddles the brain hemispheres to provide the tools of elegant design/web-apps while promoting the separation of presentation and business logic that we all strive for.

Is CSS a mystery to you? Do you find yourself editing your styles over and over just to get them to display correctly in IE and Firefox? Have you created a powerful application, and want it to look nice and clean? Do you want to take your knowledge of CSS and Design to the next level?

Join Michael Bourque, Director Parametric Technology Inc. (PTC), when he shows us how to make a powerful impact on end users by applying style and design through the construct of CSS. In this session you will learn:

• Basics of CSS
• Design & Layout
• Web Standards
• Usability Testing
• Tips & Tricks
• Rich Visual Behaviors

Michael will start by covering the basics and then move on to more advanced topics such as web standards, design & layout, and usability testing. He will explore the dramatic transformation that occurs when CSS is applied to non styled web apps. A non-exhaustive agenda might look like:

• CSS Basics
• History
• Block elements
• In-line elements
• Lists
• Layout
• Forms
• IE Box model
• Design
• Layout
• Forms
• Error Messages
• What are web standards
• Separating content from presentation
• Tools and Resources
• W3c
• Online tools
• CSS Zen Garden
• Firefox tools
• IE Tools
• Design
• Fluid or Fixed layouts
• Graphics
• JavaScript
• jQuery
• Mootools
• Prototype
• Techniques
• Rounded corners
• Background images
• Hacks
• Reset Styles
• Navigation and tabbed interfaces
• Light boxes
• Hints
• Usability testing
• Cheap easy usability testing
• Card Sorting
• Fuzzy identification
• Information Architecture
• Don’t Make me Think
• Do's & Don’ts
• Deprecated tags
• Embedded styles
• Tables for layout

March User Group:: An in depth view of Drupal

The Drupal CMS (PHP, GPL) allows you to assemble powerful web sites instead of writing them from scratch. It supports custom inter-related data types, configurable views and summaries of all content, user-generated content, search, user accounts, roles, media handling, and much more. Thousands of contributed modules provide all kinds of functionality.Eventually, though, many sites need custom functionality. Join Barry Jaspan, Principal Engineer at Acquia, Inc., for a deep introduction to Drupal development, including:

• Drupal hooks
• Custom modules
• Leveraging existing modules and APIs
• What's new in Drupal 6
• Becoming a professional Drupal consultant/site developer

The worldwide Drupal conference will be here in Boston, March 3rd-6th2008! Attend this talk then come to DrupalCon to learn even more. See http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/ for full details.

February User Group::Choosing an OSS license to match your business model/community

With six months now past since the release of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, there are reportedly 1200 projects that have released code under the new license ( http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss ). The addition of GPLv3 into the mix of 60+ other licenses approved as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative ( http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical ) has not made the selection of a license for a project any easier.

Join BostonPHP and:

• Karen Copenhaver of Choate Hall & Stewart, and
• Ira Heffan of TopCoder

as they talk about version 3 of the GPL and how to go about aligning your selection of an open source license with your business or other project goals.

January User Group:: Developing, pricing and delivering OSS applications

Your software chops are sharp; you've got the latest in hardware and development tools; now for that minor point: how do you price, develop and deliver the project without losing your shirt, pulling your hair out, or ending up in court.

Join BostonPHP and Cliff Hirsch (owner Pinestream Communications) as he describes the journey of a bootstrapped, entrepreneurial OSS development effort that seems to have followed "the flight path of a house fly". Cliff is a great guy and great speaker. Active on both the BostonPHP and NYPHP mailing lists and never one to shy away from controversy, Cliff's submissions always getting a lot of traction. This promises to be a fun and interesting discussion.

Cliff Hirsch is the president of Pinestream Communications, a publisher of newsletters focused on semiconductor and next generation network startups and emerging technologies for the investment community. He is over educated, possessing B.S, M.B.A, and Master of Electrical Engineering degrees from Cornell University, and spent the early years of his career immersed in the semiconductor industry.

So why is Hirsch presenting to BostonPHP? Several years ago, he had a web “idea” and absolutely no clue what that meant. By trial and fire, he learned…as old people do…slowly and painfully… He will openly share his many lessons with you:

December User Group:: Holiday Party

November User Group:: How to get your OSS venture off the ground.

Join Michael Skok (North Bridge Venture Partners) and Jay Batson (Founder of Acquia, Inc.) as they discuss what's needed to turn your PHP/OSS idea into a living, breathing business....in other words, the things that are important to have in place in order to fund your open source software technology company.

We will explore what's necessary (beyond simply building a better mouse trap) to get your idea to the altar and how to live happily ever after...

• What do investors look for;
• how do you build a team;
• where do you find talent;
• methods of validating business models;
• What else is needed, and
• where do you find it?
• ...and a whole lot more.

DEEP LEAN

a 2-day, single-track intensive seminar at MIT with Mary & Tom Poppendieck, Jeff Sutherland, and Nancy VanSchooenderwoert.

A continuation of the conversation started this past spring at Deep Agile, between Jeff Sutherland and Ron Jeffries; Deep Lean brings together thought leaders Mary and Tom Poppendieck (Lean Software Development), Jeff Sutherland (Scrum) and Nancy VanSchooenderwoert (embedded Agile) to discuss how Lean principles and Scrum can be used on a day to day basis to enhance the flow of business value through the software engineering enterprise. Focusing on specific techniques and methods, Lean and Scrum have been shown to enhance an enterprise's ability to produce business value and allow an enterprise to be more competitive in the global economy.
This event brings together the leading innovators in Lean/Agile/Scrum/XP for an advanced practitioners' seminar. Get your hard questions answered and learn about the highest performing teams and projects to raise your competitive advantage.

We expect this will sell out quickly with these speakers, the location and the affordable price for two intensive days.

October User Group:: What is Agile Scrum?

Scrum is one of the fastest-growing Agile methodologis used to rapidly develop products in shorter time and that meets the ever changing needs of todays business.

It was formalized over a decade ago by Ken Schwaber and Dr. Jeff Sutherland, and it's now being used by companies large and small, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, SAP, Cisco, GE Medical, CapitalOne and the US Federal Reserve. Many teams using Scrum report significant improvements, and in some cases complete transformations, in both productivity and morale. For product developers - many of whom have been burned by the "management fad of the month club" - this is significant. Scrum is simple, powerful, and rooted in common sense.

Join BostonPHP and Michael Bourque as he presents the concept of Scrum and shows why so many people are now deploying scrum to their development projects. Michael will take us through the process and talk about how his company, Parametric Technology Inc. (PTC) , is successfully applying Scrum.

September User Group:: Building the PHP-stack for the enterprise

PHP has become ubiquitous when it comes to personal blogs, content management systems, ecommerce sites and more. Take any list of Web 2.0 sites and you’ll find that more than 50% have PHP as back-end technology. What is less known is that PHP is also making significant inroads in the enterprise. Join BostonPHP, IBM and Zend as we discuss where "Enterprise" PHP (and OSS) is going and how it's going to get there. This promises to be a great evening with plenty of "horsepower" to answer your questions:

• Mark de Visser - Zend's CMO: In his presentation Mark de Visser will cover case studies of Enterprise PHP, and will discuss what drives the adoption and what still needs to be accomplished. He will cover the role of Zend and other commercial vendors in the PHP ecosystem, and will present a roadmap for the coming year of Zend’s main PHP products and services.

• David Boloker - IBM's CTO of Emerging Internet Technology: IBM's QEDWiki (written in PHP 5) began as a research project in 2004 to enable Line of Business professionals to remix Enterprise data in various ways using a graphical assembly tool. QEDWiki is part of a larger solution that creates catalog feeds as well feeds from things like Excel spreadsheets, SQL, XML documents, SAP/PeopleSoft/Siebel information and RSS/Atom feeds. Upon creation the feeds can be transformed and remixed using another tool that filters, annotates, merges, publishes and transforms them. Finally, the newly created feeds can be used by QED to create mashups. In his presentation, David will review the business drivers behind this idea as well do some extensive demonstrations of this technology.

August User Group:: Beach Blanket Summer School

Traditionally, summer user group meetings are "lightly" attended. Between schools vacations, playing hooky from work, and just enjoying the [brief New England] nice weather who's got this time? Well, er, we do...but we're holding off on the formal presentations.

Bring your "thinking cap", a tough OSS/PHP problem, and an appetite for participation, we're throwing a Beach Blanket Summer School Party (beach blanket optional). We will have all the fixin's to throw code on the table, dissect and discuss the ins-and-outs of PHP.

So bring a topic/problem, bring a friend, bring Anette Funicello (remember, you can't play beach ball without a-net), bring your wallet (we're meeting at the Cambridge Brewing Company).

July User Group:: Beach Blanket Summer School

Traditionally, summer user group meetings are "lightly" attended. Between schools vacations, playing hooky from work, and just enjoying the [brief New England] nice weather who's got this time? Well, er, we do...but we're holding off on the formal presentations.

Bring your "thinking cap", a tough OSS/PHP problem, and an appetite for participation, we're throwing a Beach Blanket Summer School Party (beach blanket optional). We will have all the fixin's to throw code on the table, dissect and discuss the ins-and-outs of PHP.

So bring a topic/problem, bring a friend, bring Anette Funicello (remember, you can't play beach ball without a-net), bring your wallet (we're meeting at the Cambridge Brewing Company).

June User Group:: Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) in action

Chuck Hagenbuch will introduce the concepts of ORM and then put them to work. Horde's RDO system is a light-weight, PHP 5, PDO-based version of ORM that also draws heavy influence from theData Mapper pattern(http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/dataMapper.html). Entity and Mapper objects are simple and very flexible, while providing plenty ofways to extend and add functionality and domain logic. Associatedpatterns such as Horde_RDO_Lens allow for powerful decoration of result sets with efficient memory and object use.

Bio: Chuck Hagenbuch founded the Horde Project in 1998 and has been workingwith PHP and the world of web development ever since. He is currentlya consultant doing work focused around Horde and PHP web development. He has provided professional PHP services to many prominent PHP-using organizations, including Google, PayPal, and Portugal Telecom.

Horde Framework:The Horde Application Framework is a mature, evolving application framework (featured in BostonPHP's Framework back-off) that has been used to build complex applications for years. It forms the core of the widely used IMP webmail application and the Horde Groupware suite. In addition, it provides a large number oftested, feature-rich components that can be used to build additional Horde applications, to integrate Horde functionality into other applications, or to build completely standalone sites.

May User Group:: PHP Frameworks part III

How many of us have searched Source Forge for a project that appears to fit our needs only to find there's no community or documentation behind it; or the code is really poorly written; or the project is about to fork...Sometimes selecting an open source project is like renting B-grade movies at the video store; it's not so much the cost that concerns you, but rather the time wasted if you select a dog.

Please join BostonPHP as we continue our panel discussion on how to select a robust PHP framework culminating in a "PHP framework bake-off".

This month's showcased frameworks:

• Andromeda - Kenneth Downs (founder)
• Drupal - Moshe Weitzman (core developer)
  

Andromeda is a complete application development system, it includes a powerful database generator, a complete web server framework, and a documentation generator. Andromeda provides source control, and an Andromeda "node" can simultaneously support any number of distinct instances of an application. Andromeda can use Joomla templates, providing and instant choice of hundreds of possibilities for the public appearance of an application.

The heart of every Andromeda application is a data dictionary, a database specification that includes all business rules for an application, including security, constraints, and automations. This dictionary is used to automate the building and upgrading of databases, and is used by the web server framework to provide zero-coding standard editing forms for the entire database.

Some frameworks aim to manage and regulate the labor of software development, but Andromeda seeks to eliminate labor. Anything that can be done automatically is done automatically. In this way Andromeda fundamentally changes the cost dynamics away from tedious repetitive technical matters and allows you to focus entirely on customer service.

more information: http://docs.secdat.com/

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites

Moshe Weitzman

Moshe has been a consistent contributor to Drupal core and Contrib since November 2001. As such, he has pretty much touched the whole core code. He maintains the user.module, the bootstrap code, and the groups.drupal.org web site. He is also a member of the Security team and a Permanent Member of the Drupal Association.

Moshe will show key pages from public Drupal powered web sites such as http://goodcharlotte.com and http://musicbox.sonybmg.com/ and http://groups.drupal.org. He will detail the techniques used to accomplish each site, thus introducing the audience to the key modules and techniquesused in Drupal development.

April User Group:: ODF what's in it for you?

The Open Document Format (ODF) standard has been developed by a variety of organizations and is publicly accessible. This means it can be implemented into any system, be it open source or a closed proprietary product,without royalties. The ODF is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats so organizations and individuals can enjoy document portability, a common taxonomy and vendor independence.

Public entities (e.g. federal, state and local governments) have a unique obligation to their customers (i.e. the taxpayer) that private sector enterprises do not. From accessibility, to availability, to archiving, public documents must withstand a higher level of scrutiny all the while operating within the confines of strict public budgets. ODF plays a crucial role filling that requirement.

Join BostonPHP along with Tim Vaverchak (Manager of Shared Services from the Commonwealth of MA IT Division) and Greg Rundlett (Technical Services Manager from OASIS) discuss the Commonwealth's business reasons for deploying ODF and the technical/PHP methodology to access, manipulate and create ODF documents.

The Commonwealth of MA IT Division (ITD) - http://www.mass.gov/ ITD plans to implement ODF using translator technology plugged in to Microsoft Office, in a group of early adopter agencies, including the Massachusetts Office on Disability, by January 1, 2007. Thereafter, ITD plans to migrate all Executive Department agencies to compliance with the standard, in phases, by June of 2007. These target dates are not set in stone; they are dependent on a number of factors, including the adoption by the OASIS standard setting organization of ODF Version 1.1 (which will address minor accessibility issues related to the format itself), the timely delivery of completed translators by one or more of the multiple vendors that are currently developing this technology, and the validated accessibility of the translators themselves.

March User Group:: PHP Frameworks part deux

Please join BostonPHP when Seth Aaronson continues our panel discussion on how to select a robust PHP framework culminating in a "PHP framework bake-off" (more).

Showcased frameworks:

• Matthew Weier O'Phinney - Zend Framework developer, and
• Chuck Hagenbuch - founder of HORDE

Each framework will develop a CRUD (create, read, update, delete) catalog application (e.g. products and categories) that generates multiple formats (xhtml + some xml, etc).

February User Group:: Venture Capital 101

Got a great idea but no money to fund it? Looking to move your company public? Not quite sure what a term sheet is or what it should look like? Wouldn't know bootstrap from mezzanine funding if you bumped into it on the street?

Join BostonPHP, Austin Westerling of Charles River Ventures, Larry Bohn of General Catalyst Venture Partners , Michael Skok of North Bridge Venture Partners and David Beisel of Masthead Venture Partners (and founder of the Web Innovators group - listen to BostonPHP's interview with David here ) to get answers to these and a host of other questions.

In addition to the basics, we will also delve into areas like:

• Why are VC's interested in OSS?
• Is VC funding obsolete in Web 2.0?
• Is mobile the micro payment savior - or will the Web's financial future remain in the hands of Goggle AdWords?
• What are the latest business OSS models and what's GPL v3's impact on them?
  

Help MC this discussion - add your topic to our wiki Can't make it to the meeting? Listen via Skypecast (search on BostonPHP).

November User Group:: AJAX update

Without a doubt, the concepts behind AJAX are providing the catalyst to move the web from its old clunky "send it all back the server for an update" into the thick client "desktop" feel the average computer user has come to expect.

Earlier this year we heard from the AJAX community to get a primer and snapshot of where the technology sat (click here for a meeting summary). This time around we're going to listen to two more players in the AJAX space:

• Max Carlson - Co-Founder OpenLaszlo.org
  
  The Road to AJAX - In the past, OpenLaszlo been regarded as a Flash-only tool. In fact, OpenLaszlo is a powerful language for rich, custom declarative user interface programming that's been under development for over 5years. It's a powerful framework, and it has an exciting future as a single (OpenSource) language that can target Flash, DHTML and soon,other runtimes.
  
  In this talk Max will talk about the process of making OpenLaszlo a runtime-independent platform, including the first year of AJAX. He will ive an overview of the current multi-runtime architecture, includingtechniques for using and extending it. See an overview of the language, and talk about the future of OpenLaszlo as an AJAX platform.
  
  
• Alex Russell - President of the Dojo Foundation.
  
  Dojo - Dojo is the Open Source Javascript toolkit that makes professional web development better, easier, and faster. This talk will cover some of Dojo's core APIs, including those for Ajax, Drag and Drop, Animations, and AOP-style event handling. Alex might also discuss some of the stock widgets, various ways to take advantage of them, and how you can use Dojo's package system to help make your own code faster and more portable.

This should be a great opportunity to hear more about the technology and cut through all the hype to determine if AJAX is moving to prime time, or is it just another page in the browser wars (e.g. redundant code that conducts extensive checking of agent type in the HTTP header).

We're leveraging the presence of the AJAX Experience in Boston - please mark your calendars (note this not our normal date).

October User Group:: Selecting A PHP Framework

How many of us have searched Source Forge for a project that appears to fit our needs only to find there's no community or documentation behind it; or the code is really poorly written; or the project is about to fork...Sometimes selecting an open source project is like renting B-grade movies at the video store; it's not so much the cost that concerns you, but rather the time wasted if you select a dog.

Please join BostonPHP in October when Seth Aaronson will moderate a