In the most recent episode of the North Meets South podcast - Episode #28 - hosts Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda talk about Laravel. More specifically they cover Eloquent functionality, client expectations, and packages.

In this episode, Jake and Michael talk about Eloquent observers and answer listener questions about managing client expectations and packages we use in our Laravel applications.

Other topics mentioned in this episode include Dash (the documentation tool), the "Supercharge Your Tinker Workflow" article and the Sentry package for Laravel. You can listen to this latest show either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly for listening offline. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter to get the latest updates when new shows are released.

On PHPMaster.com today there's a new post that takes a different approach to PHP development than some of their articles in the past. It comes at it from the project management side of things, talking more about how to run the project and less about the technology it involves.

Whether we like it or not, unless we are doing a hobby project just for our own amusement, even the most technical among us are really just project managers who can code. And, as a project manager, we can experience the heartbreak of project failure. [...] So what can you do as a technical project manager to minimize your chances of adding “leader of a failed project” to your resume? The answer is: pretty much what non-technical project leaders do.

He touches on a few key points that are important to any technology project, not just PHP ones - managing the expectations of the team and the business, using iterative processes and development and avoiding scope creep. He also drops in a bit about watching out for "weird stuff" that might be new or different to your group and their technology choices.