Free slides for user group meetings

One of the problems I have heard that user groups have had is that it is quite difficult to get content.  Some of the larger, or more active ones, may not have as much of a problem with this but a lot of the smaller ones that I've talked to do.  So what I've decided to do is, in effect, open source a lot of my presentations for re-use at user groups.  What that means is that if you are looking for content specifically for a user group feel free to use some of my stuff to help you along.  No warranty or support will be supplied, and they are provided "as-is".  What that means is that if you see something on there that is weird or perhaps even "wrong" I was probably using it as a keyword or reminder for something I wanted to say.  So, if I wrote something that was spot-on, it was intended, if I wrote something that was wrong or inaccurate, I was trying to prove a point.  It's called nuance.  🙂

I am also going to provide several of the workspaces and projects that I used for delivering these.  Again, treat them with a grain of salt.  Often examples are done in the interest of expediency and I have a tendency to not re-use content, which means re-writing a lot of stuff, quickly, because I speak for a variety of audiences.  And, like the PPTs, I won't be able to provide much by way of support.  If it don't work, you'll probably be on your own, unless, in the vastness of my free time, I am able to help.  Also, I did all of my stuff using Zend Studio, so if there are project-related issues, using Zend Studio might help.

Caffeinated PHP – This is based off of the first presentation I did.  Since I kind of came from a Java background that was the easiest thing for me to do that differentiated myself right off the bat.  This is an updated presentation that I gave at Zendcon in 2009, I believe.  It talks about integrating PHP and Java using the PHP/Java Bridge in Zend Server CE.

There are two projects.  One called Caffeinated PHP, which contains a UI to all of the examples that I worked on.  Most of the examples work with just standard Java.  However, one of the examples uses JMS to connect to ActiveMQ and another uses JPS (Java Printing System) to print to a local printer.  The latter has a simple abstraction layer that provides some basic info to PHP. 

PHP Security.  This talk is an intro to some of the things that PHP developers need to know to help build apps that don't have glaring security holes.  Security is a complicated topic and as such this will not be complete.  However, there is some good content for you to re-use.

Deployment.  I have given this talk a few times and it seems to be relatively well received.  If you decide to use it, make sure to follow the links to the blog posts that I did on this, especially for the PEAR and RPM ones.  This does not cover Continuous Deployment or build tools such as Hudson.

PHP Performance.  Performance, like security, can be a very complicated topic.  What this presentation does is look at some common problems, common symptoms and common remedies. 

I think I have 3 or 4 more I will upload but it's approaching the end of the day and I'm trying to recover after Zendcon so we'll leave it at that for the time being.  Feel free to use all or part of these presentations in a user group.  Please do not use them in webinars or anything that is intended for commercial production/promotion.  If you want to do them in that kind of a context please contact me and I would be happy to do a joint webinar with you (pending boss approval, of course).

If you have criticism I am open to it, but do remember that when building for a presentation you are building for clarity.  Bear that in mind.