The Free the Geek podcast, hosted by Matthew Setter, has posted their latest episode - Episode #13: Talking Nomad PHP, Laravel, and Conferences with Joe P. Ferguson.

In this episode I have a fireside chat with the voice of Nomad PHP, Joe P. Ferguson. Joe shares how he got started as the voice of Nomad PHP.

He gives a rousing tale of what it was like to effectively build the community from scratch, with nothing but the backing of Cal Evans to open doors for him. Ok, Cal's name is legendary in the PHP community. He also shares what it's been like for him personally, growing over that time, and how he keeps sounding so passionate and enthusiastic on the show. You won't believe his secret. As well as this, we talk about being a conference speaker, whether that's starting out, or being a professional, along with some of the ups, downs, dos and don'ts.

And what would a chat with Joe be without a bit of Laravel. So grab your favourite beverage, your comfy chair, and get ready for a rousing fireside chat with Joe and I.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 itself for listening offline. If you enjoy the show be sure to subscribe to their feed to get information on the latest shows as they're released.

The 7PHP.com site has announced a giveaway of free tickets to this month's Nomad PHP virtual user group meeting, the European chapter. The topic for this month's EU meeting is authorization and authentication (disclaimer: I am the speaker).

Here I am again for another NomadPHP Ticket(s) give-away. Two tickets will be given away – to the 1st & 2nd draw winner! If you did not know, NomadPHP is virtual PHP User Group mainly for people who do not have the chance to avail of a local PHP user group. But it is open to ANYONE around the world. I also remind you that NomadPHP is an initiative brought forward by the icon of The PHP Community, namely ‘His Awesomeness’ Mr Cal Evans.

To enter the contest to win the tickets, you just make a comment on the post and he'll select the winners before the event. The meeting is Thursday, October 17th at 8pm CEST.

The Nomad PHP (virtual) user group has announced their speaker for the November 2013 meeting - Ed Finkler talking about the problems that come with having "more code" in your applications.

In this talk I’ll extend the concepts to other languages we work with in web development, establishing these core principles: Learn languages, not frameworks, build small things, less code is better than more, and create and use simple, readable code We’ll cover how following these principles makes you a better developer, and makes the job of maintaining and verifying your code much easier.

The meeting is on November 14th and you'll have to sign up if you'd like to attend. There's a $10 USD cost for a ticket and you can purchase them right up until the event.

On the 7PHP.com site today there's a new community interview posted - this time with Corey Ballou, the co-organizer of the Queen City PHP user group (and upcoming Nomad PHP speaker). They talk some about his background, how he got involved in the community and some of his thoughts on PHP on general.

In this edition I talked with Corey Ballou who is the co-organizer of the Queen City PHP meetup group. @cballou has also been working as a developer with the cool mojoLive team. To be noted that Corey will be the speaker for the next, 3rd NomadPHP Online Talk this week and he will be presenting “Creating Realtime Applications with PHP and Websockets“. I now invite you to learn from his experience and get to know his personality.

They talk about Corey's early start with computers and how he evolved from things like VBScript and Perl up to PHP and other web technologies. He touches on some of the good and bad he sees about the language and some of his top advice to beginners. He also recommends some other resources and books to check out to gain even more knowledge. He finishes off the interview with a suggestion to all of those "on the sidelines" out there - get involved, speak and become a real proponent of the language!

There's a new post on 7PHP.com talking about a new giveaway they're doing in collaboration with the Nomad PHP (virtual) user group and giving away two tickets for the upcoming meeting.

NomadPHP is already on their 3rd edition and I’m hence also on my 3rd Ticket(s) give-away. [...] The topic of this 3rd talk will be centered around PHP and Websockets and will be presented by speaker Corey Ballou.

There's two ways to enter into the contest - either subscribe to their mailing list or Tweet about it (with the given tweet). The contest ends July 21st, so hurry and enter if you're interested. The Nomad PHP user group is "a (virtual) place to call home" if you don't have a user group in your area. It meets online once a month.

7PHP.com has a new post that shares some of the feedback - from both the speaker and other attendees - of the latest Nomad PHP meeting featuring Phil Sturgeon talking on Laravel 4.

Previously on thursday 27th July 2013 (8pm CDT), NomadPHP hosted their 2nd talk which was about “Laravel 4” – the speaker being Phil Sturgeon. I also announced my 2nd free ticket giveaway for this online event – a generosity awesomely made possible by the ever-awesome @NomadPHP organizer; Cal Evans. In this short (as compared to the previous one) article, the spotlight will be on the speaker and an attendee. I’m thankful to both for their responses and sharing their NomadPHP experience with us. We’ll also have a quick (as in very quick) glance at the ticket winners.

The article starts with some of the feedback from Phil and his observations from the speaker side of things. This is followed by the attendee perspective from Don Gilbert, a maintainer of the Joomla framework. They talk about the goods and bads of the presentation and things they think the virtual user group could improve on in the future.

The Nomad PHP virtual user group has announce the latest meeting - this time it's Corey Ballou presenting about realtime applications and WebSockets in July.

We’ll start out with a brief introduction to WebSockets to get everyone up to speed before jumping in to high level scaffolding code of the frontend and backend implemetations (the spec). Once the groundwork has been laid, I’ll introduce you to a both client and server side tools for implementing WebSockets directly in your PHP code. From here, we’ll jump into multiple interactive demos of increasing complexity utilizing the open source Ratchet library. I’ll walk through the source code of the first two intro demos to give you a better sense of how to structure your own WebSockets applications

If time allows, I’ll run through a complex demo where I introduced WebSockets to an existing CRUD todo application. The last demo is not for the faint of heart. By the end of the presentation, you’ll walk away with access to a github repository containing all of the presentation slides and demos ready to run yourself!

You can pick up your tickets for this meeting (happening July 25th) directly from the Nomad PHP site.

For those out there that don 't have a local PHP user group, you should check out the Nomad PHP virtual user group. It meets once a month online and this month's topic is an introduction to Laravel 4 (from Phil Sturgeon). It'll be happening at 8pm CDT on the 27th.

An introduction into Laravel 4, the Yet Another Framework that does things a little differently. See how it leverages Symfony components for its core along with multiple other Composer components instead of building everything from scratch. Learn how despite the complex Symfony underbelly Laravel 4 still gives a slick API to ease the learning curve of the framework to more of an accessibility ramp. After this run through of Laravel 4 you'll be psyched to trial it out, no matter what your usual "go to framework" is.

If you'd like to attend, tickets for the meetin g(to help cover the costs of the virtual meeting tools) will only run you $10 USD. If you're interested, check out this month's meeting page for more details.

On 7PHP.com today there's a new interview posted around the first ever Nomad PHP user group meeting that featured Rob Allen. The interview spans a few different people - the organizer, the speaker and three of the people in attendance.

Wednesday 22nd May 2013, NomadPHP hosted their first talk which was about “Zend Framework 2″ – a talk by Rob Allen. I even announced a two-ticket giveaways which was made possible by NomadPHP. In this article you’ll find short interviews which will showcase the opinion, feedback and suggestions from the NomadPHP organizer (Cal Evans), Rob Allen (The Speaker) and three attendees – two of which were the 7PHP Ticket winners.

There's lots of good information and feedback in the interview and if you're at all interested in the Nomad PHP (virtual) user group, you should definitely give it a read. There's information from Cal Evans (the organizer), Rob and the three attendees - David Weinraub, Peter Kokot and PJ Hagerty with their own feedback on the event.

The 7PHP.com site, in collaboration with the Nomand PHP user group is giving away two free tickets to attend this month's user group event (happening May 22nd).

NomadPHP is like a virtual PHP User Group mainly for people who do not have the chance to avail of a local PHP user group. But it is open to ANYONE around the world. NomadPHP is an initiative brought forward by the icon of The PHP Community, namely ‘His Awesomeness’ Mr Cal Evans. It will kick-start its first group talk session on the Wednesday 22nd May 2013 (i.e in some 16 days as from the date of this post). The speaker is the PRO PHP Guy / PRO Zend Framework Evangelist and author of the book Zend Framework in action, Rob Allen. Rob will be introducing and talking about Zend Framework 2 – it is a must for anyone willing to learn ZF 2.

The Nomad PHP user group is designed to be a "user group for those that don't have one". It's a virtual group meeting once a month that you can attend anywhere in the world. You do have to purchase tickets, however. This post shows you how you can enter to win one of the two free tickets, though - either via email or by writing a PHP article for 7PHP.com.