I gave an unconference talk this weekend at the True North PHP conference in Mississauga. Chris encouraged me to speak so I decided to do a quick talk on WonderProxy.

My friend Morgan gave me advice several years ago: The best talks are the ones that only you can give. By this he means that anyone can give a talk on "Security" or "Performance", running through the numbers, but only you can give a talk on "Security at $company", or "Solving performance problems at $company", and those talks with the personal edge tend to be better. The more I reflect on the talks I've given, the wiser his words seem.

In the talk I ran through why I started WonderProxy, how the service grew, the problems we ran into along the way, and how we've developed other products on top of our global network of servers. I tried to mix in a few lessons we've learned that might apply to others, but by far the most appreciated parts were the funny anecdotes about the problems along the way.

It was great to speak in Ontario once more (I haven't since php|works left), and I'm looking forward to giving a better prepared and filled out version at ConFoo next year.