If you run a brick & mortar store, and you have a website (you probably should) your website has failed if a customer can not arrive at your website and locate the store closest to them and determine the hours within a few moments. The point of websites, flyers and advertisements is to supplement not supplant the real store.

I just gave giving a lightning talk a try here at Vancouver PHP. I really like the concept, basically you sign up, then get up and have 5 minutes to give a talk on whatever you would like.


I gave my talk on SAX, the other way to parse XML in PHP (the main method being DOM). My example was parsing the iTunes XML file which I've blogged about before in all it's horribleness.

Yesterday ended day 1 of Vancouver PHP, a user-group conference I'm having a lot of fun with. Attendance has been great, Shane reported ~200 pre sales, expecting to break somewhere in the 220-250 range with sales at the door, which is a great turn out, especially for a conference that has only been run sporadically in the past few years. I really need to move out west to meet more PHPers. I gave a talk on the Zend Certification exam, giving some basic exam tips and a few books away. The talk was rather poorly attended, a fact I will blame on me not being sure I would make it, resulting in some last minute scheduling changes. I signed up to give a lightning talk on SAX, (I really like the lightning talk concept, though a few of the people giving them seemed a bit confused as to their purpose), but they ran out of time, hopefully today.