2017 Speakers

What an Amazing Group of Speakers!

We are delighted to be bringing together this group of exceptional technologists and presenters. There were far more truly impressive submissions than we could fit into this community event, which means this conference is jam packed with goodness. Below you can learn about the community members who will be stepping up to share thier knowledge. We are looking forward to having a wonderful time learning about technology and getting to know each other better at Pacific Northwest PHP in Seattle this September!

Marcia Burrows (@thelogicalwoman)

UX and UI
Using PHP and JavaScript to Design a Better Board Game

I'm Marcia Burrows. I've been creating learning games for over 40 years. A former math teacher, I started my programming career with a game published by CBS Software in 1983. "Math Mileage" was an award-winning educational game for the 48K Atari Computer written in Assembler for an 8K cartridge. After that I wrote many games and all sorts of code in many languages, including for the Detroit Institute of Arts and Chrysler. In 2014 - 2016 I participated in and then served as Community TA for MIT's edX MITx MOOCs "Introduction to Game Design" and "Design and Development of Games for Learning". In the past year I've completed two new projects, one online game and one board game. logicalgamestudio.com Next I’m creating a consortium of indie learning game designers.

Beth Tucker Long (@e3betht)

UX and UI
Becoming an Open Source Contributor

Beth Tucker Long is a PHP developer and co-organizer of (Madison PHP). You can find her on Twitter (@e3betht) or on her blog (http://www.alittleofboth.com). Beth is a firm believer in promoting community and mentoring. She runs Treeline Design, a web development company, and Playlist Event Music, a DJ company, along with her husband, Chris.

Chris Heilmann (@codepo8)

Making more human interfaces using Machine Learning APIs

Chris has dedicated a lot of time to making the web better. Originally in radio journalism, he built his first site around 1997 and spent following years working on large, international sites. He spent a few years in Yahoo building products and training people including Yahoo Answers, Search, Local and Maps. He worked at Mozilla moving HTML5 support forward and advocating Firefox OS as an open alternative to closed mobile systems. Chris wrote two and contributed to eight books on web development and wrote many articles and hundreds of blog posts for Ajaxian, Smashing Magazine, Yahoo, Mozilla, ScriptJunkie and more. He wrote the Developer Evangelism Handbook many companies use to coach evangelists. He currently works with the Microsoft Edge team as a Program Manager for Developer Outreach.

Edward Barnard (@ewbarnard)

Microservices: The Strangler Pattern

Ed Barnard had a front-row seat when the Morris Worm took down the Internet, November 1988. He was teaching CRAY-1 supercomputer operating system internals to analysts as they were being directly hit by the Worm. It was a busy week! Ed continues to indulge his interests in computer security and teaching software concepts to others.

Sara Golemon (@SaraMG)

Open Source
How PHP ticks
And who would have thought, it FIGures.

Sara is a long time contributor to the PHP language and runtime, HHVM Hacker, author of Extending and Embedding PHP, and PHP FIG Core Committee member.

Eryn O'Neil (@eryno)

UX and UI
Using Our Superpowers For Good

Eryn O’Neil is an independent PHP developer and tech lead based in Minneapolis, MN. Coming from the agency world, she has worked on everything from e-commerce and online promotions to a proprietary framework and CMS. Her philosophy is to build software by placing humans first: both the people who will use it and the developers who will build it with you (and maintain it afterward). Living in Minnesota, Eryn spends most of her free time teaching blues dancing, flying on a trapeze, and wishing it weren’t snowing.

Emily Stamey (@elstamey)

Open Source
Status Change: Now Using Event Sourcing

Emily Stamey works at InQuest, a network security company based in Washington, DC. She learned PHP in 1999 and loved it. This ignited her passion for Open Source! In her free time she enjoys music, legos, making things, playing games, and socializing. She is an active volunteer in the community as Director of Women Who Code Raleigh/Durham, Organizer of TrianglePHP, and volunteers for Girl Develop It. She enjoys helping people share ideas and learn together, which has led to her speaking at conferences.

Adam Culp (@adamculp)

Practical PHP Deployment with Jenkins
Does Your Code Measure Up?

Adam Culp (@AdamCulp) a Zend consultant at Rogue Wave Software, is passionate about developing with PHP and contributes to many open source projects. He organizes the SunshinePHP Developer Conference and the South Florida PHP Users Group (SoFloPHP) where he enjoys helping others write good code, implement standards, and refactor efficiently. He is a Zend Certified PHP engineer, is a voting member of the PHP-Fig, and holds a seat on the Zend Certification Advisory Board. You can also find him on his Run Geek Radio podcast and GeekyBoy technical blog. When he is not coding or contributing to various developer communities, he can be found hiking around the U.S. National Parks, teaching judo, or long distance (ultra) running.

Ben Edmunds (@benedmunds)

More Than Just a Hammer
Modern and Secure PHP

CTO of an awesome company you've never heard of by day, hacking on crazy ideas by night. PHP Town Hall podcast co-host. Author of Securing PHP Apps. Conference speaker. Open source advocate. Human.

Alena Holligan (@sketchings)

Demystifying Object-Oriented Programming
Let's Talk Scope

Wife, Mother, Programer, Designer, Teacher, Leader. Bringing over 15 years of PHP experience into her Teaching at Treehouse and leading the Portland PHP users group. She is passionate about helping people overcome their own barriers to excellence in order to achieve personal confidence in their ability to learn and succeed.

Sammy Kaye Powers (@SammyK)

Open Source
Let's Get Random: Under the Hood of PHP 7's CSPRNG
Bringing Old Legacy Apps To PHP 7 and Beyond

Sammy Kaye Powers has been making things on the web for fifteen years. Sammy spends the bulk of his time in coffee shops cranking out loads of Facebook apps for ad agencies. He dabbles in PHP internals and is the maintainer of the official Facebook PHP SDK. He loves sharing knowledge about Facebook development & PHP at SammyK.me. He co-organizes the Chicago PHP user group and hosts the PHP Roundtable podcast. He travels all over the States competing in a dance called West Coast Swing. He's also a volunteer magician performing bedside magic at children's hospitals.

Ian Littman (@iansltx)

Build a Bot

When he isn't building or maintaining web applications, primarily of the API variety, for a handful of clients, Ian's probably biking between coffee shops in Austin, Texas or bemoaning the fact that "artificial intelligence" is now merely a marketing term. He also helps organize the Austin PHP user group and the ATX Web Lunch, the latter of which is basically an excuse to grab tasty tacos while talking tech a few times per month.

Michelangelo van Dam (@DragonBe)

Let Your Tests Drive Your Development

Michelangelo is a veteran PHP consultant working at in2it, community leader for PHPBenelux, coach & mentor for kids at CoderDojo and a global conference speaker. Get him a coffee and he will tell you all about testing, continuous deployments, cloud or community work.

Margaret Staples (@dead_lugosi)

Open Source

Delighted Developer Evangelist @ Twilio. Proud keeper of best pupper ever, Lilith. Personally responsible sentient creature. Cybae. Consistent producer of code, philosophy, and attitude. Happy to help with all things Twilio. Let's make neat stuff.