My First Workshop @ php[world] 2019!

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of php[world]: php[world] 2014 was my first big speaking engagement, and I’ve spoken at the 2016 and 2018 editions of the conference (and attended in 2017). That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be returning to Washington, D.C. this October for php[world] 2019!

This year’s conference is especially exciting, as I’ll be giving my first-ever full day workshop:

Testing Like You’ve Never Tested Before (Because You Haven’t)

This is the training version of my testing talk of the same name.

When I submitted to the php[world] CFP, Eli White (one of the organizers of php[world] 2019) reached out and basically said “we like your testing talk proposal,  have heard really good things about this talk, and we think it would work well as a training session. Would you be open to that?”.

As 2018 was winding down, I started setting goals for new places I wanted to speak and new talks I wanted to give. The goal for 2019 was to give my first keynote (nailed it, thanks to WordCamp Dayton), and once I was able to cross that off the list I started toying with giving a workshop and/or training session. Now, thanks to my friends at One for All Events, I get to cross off my 2020 goal early! 😁

Testing software in an automated fashion is one of the best ways to guarantee quality, reduce bugs, and prevent regressions in our code, and is a prerequisite to operating in a Continuous Integration environment. Unfortunately, the most difficult parts of testing come right at the beginning: scaffolding a test suite and writing our very first tests. For those who are new to automated testing, these hurdles can prove overwhelming.

This training course covers the fundamentals of testing, in a beginner-friendly way. We’ll discuss how testing makes software better, the various levels of the Automation Pyramid, how to scaffold some basic unit and integration tests, and discuss the characteristics of great tests. From there, we’ll step into building real tests for an application, including regression tests when bugs inevitably pop up!

Build and Release Confidently with Continuous Integration and Delivery

I’ll be giving a regular session at php[world] 2019, too: this time, it’s around my love for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. This is a newer talk, which will be premiering at Cincy Deliver 2019 in a few weeks:

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are the Holy Grail for software development teams: no matter who pushes the feature, the same tests are run, the same processes are followed, and nothing gets released without satisfying well-defined quality standards.

Unfortunately, setting up that initial CI/CD workflow can be a bit daunting for teams that don’t have an experienced DevOps engineer.

Fear not, my dear developers! This talk breaks down the basic concepts of continuous integration, continuous delivery, and how to integrate them into your team’s workflow. Whether you’re working on a small side project or your next big idea, CI and CD can make the journey better.

For this talk, we’ll be using GitLab’s (free) CI/CD pipelines, but the principles translate well to any major CI/CD platform!

Washington, D.C. in the fall is a lovely place (current administration notwithstanding), and it’s even better when you get to attend a great conference. I hope to see y’all in October!