Sigh.

I was going to try to get these done the day of or shortly after. It's now Friday night and I've fallen way behind. Oh well. It's because I was busy at the conference, thanks to the amazing folks at PHP Architect. And it means these will be shorter that I'd like.

So on the official Conference Day 1, I saw two keynotes and went to four talks:

• Keynote: A Year with the U.S. Digital Service by Andrew Nacin. I believe Andrew gave a keynote last year. Maybe not. Regardless, he was a good speaker. He shared about his experiences with the U.S. Digital Service and how they're trying to get U.S. Government web sites and other IT into a better operational state. I found it amazing how much money is spent on things that just don't work. He mentioned the U.S. Digital Services Playbook and how it is a useful document for all organizations, not just government. A quick glace confirms that it has content that will certainly be useful in many cases.¹

• Adventures in Advanced Git by Lorna Mitchell. Lorna gave an interactive presentation, Choose Your Own Adventure®-style. It worked really well and, even though I know quite a bit about git, I learned some things. The most interesting to me was git bisect visualize, which provides a more visual indication of the progress through the bisect process. If you don't know what I'm talking about, trust me, it's cool. ☺

• Single-Page Apps with Angular and Apigility by Chuck Reeves. Although I didn't mention it before, Chuck is a phenomenal speaker. This talk was no exception. While I don't have an immediate need for a single page app, this may be the way I do it when the need does arise. Chuck didn't talk much about Apigility, I know it's a pretty easy way to put together an API. The main point of the talk was the trouble spots and fixes Chuck dealt with in his own, real-life single-page app. He included his configuration files for connecting Apigility and Angular, as well as demonstrations of the app in motion.

• Keynote: Leading an Open Source Project | video by Tessa Mero. While I think this was a good talk, it was a little less powerful than the other keynotes. Tessa seems a very smart and nice person but is not as charismatic a speaker as the other keynote presenters. That said, it was a very good and useful talk, especially if you are at all active in the open source world and more so if you enter a leadership position there. Definitely worth watching.

• Hacking the Human Interface by Samantha Quiñones. Wow. What a powerful and moving talk. Samantha has had to deal with a lot in her career, including her own self-importance early on. In this talk she described, in detail, how she has dealt with the social problems she's had, including very personal experiences. I will most likely make it a point to watch any talk Samantha gives that I am able to see in the future.

• Error Messages in PHP 7 by Damien Seguy. Damien provided a deep-dive into the new and obscure error messages coming with PHP 7. These are the messages that most people won't ever see, but some will see a lot. Good stuff.

The first day was followed by a reception and game night. I played Settlers of Catan with a few others. My apologies as I don't remember your names. Maybe next time I'll be annoying and scan everyone's tag...