The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted a roundtable, hosted by Cal Evans, session it recent recorded with several conference organizers sharing what conference organizers wish speakers knew about speaking, the events themselves and how they can improve as a speaker.

Cal is joined by organizers from five different conferences all around the world:

• Adam Culp (Sunshine PHP)
• Chris Cornutt (Lone Star PHP)
• Anna Filina (ConFoo)
• James Titcumb (PHP Southcoast)
• Michelangelo van Dam (PHP Benelux)

You can catch this latest episode in a few different ways either using the in-page audio or video player or by downloading just the audio. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter for updates when new shows are released.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted their latest episode in their "It's the Booze Talking" series of roundtables. In this new show host Cal Evans talks with guests to the show about entrepreneurship.

Cal is joined in this episode by:

• Eli White
• Jacques Woodcock
• Beth Tucker Long
• Brett Florio
• Luke Stokes
• Adam Culp

Topics mentioned during the show include FoxyCart, the Docker for Developers ebook, Zend Expressive and NomadPHP. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3. You can also subscribe to their feed if you enjoy the episode and want to hear more.

A new Laravel-centric podcast has started up and has posted its first episode: LaraChat Live. Their first recording if from a Google Hangout of a roundtable with host Shawn Mayzes and several other community members from the LaraChat Slack channel

Larachat Live is a live round table discussion from the Larachat community. We discuss PHP and Laravel as well as various other industry related topics.

This weeks discussion (our first round table) will include introductions from community members and our meet & greet outside of Larachat.co. This weekly round table will also include our discussion on PHPMD and PHPCS.

You can watch this episode either using the in-page video player or directly on YouTube. If you enjoy the show and want to keep up with future episodes, subscribe to their YouTube channel and you'll be notified as new videos are published (and when new shows are coming up).

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted their latest episode but this time it's another in their special "It's the Booze Talking" series. In this latest show they gathered together people from several PHP projects and other well-known individuals from the community:

• Tessa Mero
• Emily Stamey
• Amanda Folson
• Anthony Ferrara
• Larry Garfield
• Joe Ferguson

In this episode they talk about how they started in open source and contributing to projects. They also talk about some of their own definitions around what "contributing" means for open source and its projects. Cal also asks the group about how contributing to open source has helped (or hurt) their career. There's also some discussion about leadership and management in open source projects. The group also shares some of the "worst" things they felt when making their first pushes to an open source project.

You can listen to this latest show either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 directly. If you enjoy the episode and want to hear more (and other interviews with members of the PHP community) be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released its latest episode, the next in their "It's the Booze Talking" roundtable series - Episode #5, "Core Developers".

This episode was recorded live at last year's ZendCon PHP Conference in Santa Clara, California. Guests for the episode were:

• Sara Golemon
• Derick Rethans
• Illia Alshanetsky
• Ben Ramsey Liz Smith
• David Stockton

There's also mention of the PHP Mentoring project and the PHP RFC process. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 for listening at your leisure.

On the NetTuts.com site today they've posted the transcript of a panel discussion they had with several developers about exceptions and whether or not they should be used for flow control.

I’m pleased to release our first ever round table, where we place a group of developers in a locked room (not really), and ask them to debate one another on a single topic. In this first entry, we discuss exceptions and flow control.

The opinions vary among the group as to what exceptions should be used for (even outside of the flow control topic). Opinions shared are things like:

• Exceptions are situations in your code that you should never reach
• Errors cause Failures and are propagated, via Exceptions.
• So, essentially, exceptions are an “abstraction” purely to model the abnormality.
• Personally, I envision exceptions more as “objections.”
• Exceptions like this should be caught at some point and transformed into a friendly message to the user.

There's lots more than this in the full discussion so head over and read it all - there's definitely some good points made.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode - a "roundtable" with coorganizers of the Atlanta PHP group - Chris Spruck, Kevin Robert and Nic Rosental.

Cal talks with them about the Atlanta PHP group and some of their experiences with it - what's worked for them in the past, what hasn't gone so well and some recommendations they might have for other user groups out there. More, specifically his questions were:

• Do you think it's important to have a "committee" rather than a single oragnizer?
• Talk about what you're proudest of around the group
• Talk some about what didn't work with the group

You can listen to this latest episode through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode in the "It's the Booze Talking" series. In this new episode (Ep. #3) the group talks about APIs. The host this time is Keith Casey.

They talk about common problems and solutions around their company's APIs (and others they've dealt with). They cover one of the most important part of any API's structure, security, and different methods of handling it (HMAC, Oauth, etc).

Others involved in the discussion are Jason Austin, Brandon West, Rob Richards and Luke Stokes. You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant Podcast has posted their latest episode - a special recording made at this year's php|tek conference (Chicago) and features several guests like Keith Casey, Eli White, Chris Hartjes, Luke Stokes, Paul Jones and Ed Finkler.

This special show (ITBT meaning "It's the Booze Talking") is a roundtable where they all discuss telecommuting from both a developer and manager's perspective. They each share something that works really well for them about telecommuting and something that doesn't. It's longer than a usual episode (about 1h 15m) but it's good discussion from a lot of different perspectives in the community.

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mo3 directly or by subscribing to their feed.

In a new post to his blog today Cal Evans looks at PHP, the community and how user groups fit into the mix. He shares opinions from the community and a video taken of a roundtable at this year's TEKX.

Those that know me know that the PHP community is near and dear to my heart. I am always looking for ways to support it, usually to the chagrin of my employer. We have the greatest community of any programming language I know of and I like helping people find ways to participate in it.

The video is a roundtable featuring Raphael Dohms, Lorna Mitchell, Michelangelo Van Dam and Ben Ramsey talking about some of what they've seen as experienced group leaders. Cal also includes suggestions from other community members about what has worked in their user group (to help others out there either just getting off the ground or wanting to grow their group).