Changes to Orchestra Blog and Twitter

[Update: Although we had the @eyorchestra name reserved to prepare for the switch, Twitter would not allow us to bypass the 30 day waiting period for newly deleted names, so we’ll have to wait a few weeks before this change can take effect.] 

Because of our continued consolidation with the Engine Yard folks, we will be migrating this blog over to the main one found at the Engine Yard site: http://engineyard.com/blog. If you’re interested in only the PHP type posts, you can find a PHP category there. This change will take place tomorrow, February 1, 2012.

February 1 will also bring a change in our Twitter name: we will be changing our name from @orchestra_io to @eyorchestra to better represent the fact that Orchestra is a part of the Engine Yard family. Of course, if you’re already following us, you’ll still be with us (and for that we’re really glad!)

Thanks for your continued support of the Orchestra product— we heart our users!

Helping Dallas PHP User Group Celebrate 100 Meetings!

We want to send a hearty congratulations to the Dallas PHP User Group for their upcoming 100th meeting celebration! Running a user group takes a lot of hard work and dedication, and it’s because of guys like Jake Smith, Chris Cornutt, and Daniel Cousineau that the group has continued to grow. 

To help them celebrate, we’re helping sponsor an after party at their 100th meeting, on Tuesday, January 10 at The Londoner. If you’re a PHP developer in the Dallas area, you should definitely take a look at this group, and feel free to join us!

Get more info or RSVP at the Dallas PHP Meetup site.

Sponsoring The Winter BBQ at PHPBenelux 2012

If you’ve not heard of the PHPBenelux conference then you should take a moment and give it a look. This is a fantastic community-run conference in Antwerp, Belgium, that brings PHP enthusiasts from all over the world together. They do an outstanding job every year, and it’s all because of the dedication of the user group volunteers.

That’s why we are thrilled to be sponsoring the event. This community works very hard to make this happen, and we’re so glad to be a part of it. This year we’re hosting an after party — an outdoor BBQ with our very own clubhouse! We hope this will be a great opportunity for attendees to come together, relax, have some food and drinks, and take time to get to know each other. As important as the talks are at a conference, the face-to-face interactions and discussions are often equally as important.

So if you are planning on being in the area on January 27-28, attending this conference should be high on your priority list.

Future of PHP Recordings Available

Bummed because you missed one of our “Future of” series of panel discussions? Fear not! We’ve saved them all and posted them just for you. 

• Future of PHP: CakePHP with Graham Weldon, Larry Masters, Jose Lorenzo, Mark Story
• Future of PHP: Lithium with Gwoo, Nate Abele, John Anderson
• Future of PHP: Zend Framework with Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Rob Allen, Ralph Schindler, Evan Coury
• Future of PHP: PEAR/Pyrus with Brett Bieber, David Coallier, Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson, and Till Klampäckel

After the first of the year we will be bringing you a few more, so stay tuned:

• Future of PHP: Symfony
• Future of PHP: Internals
• Future of PHP: Visions from Userland

We’d also love to hear more ideas on topics that affect the PHP landscape in general, so if you have something in mind let us know! We want to know what you think, and we want to talk about the future of PHP with you.

Cloud Out Loud Interview with Authors of PHP Master:Write Cutting-Edge Code

We’re glad to release this podcast we did with Davey Shafik, Lorna Mitchell, and Matthew Turland, the authors of a new book by Sitepoint called PHP Master: Write Cutting-Edge Code.

You can read more about the podcast, check out related links, and have a listen at the Engine Yard Developer Center.

Thanks much to the authors for participating. You guys rock!

OINK-PUG Holiday Meeting Tonight w/ Engine Yard

We are excited to be spending the holidays with OINK-PUG (Ohio, Indiana, Northern Kentucky PHP Users Group) and we hope you are able to come join us, and enjoy and adult beverage on our behalf. We will also have some goodies to hand out.

We are meeting tonight at 7pm at the Brazenhead Irish Pub in Cincinnati. A “White Elephant Gift Exchange” will be happening, so bring a small gift (up to $5) if you’ll be there and want to participate. No real white elephants, though. 

Please do us a favor and RSVP if you plan on attending, so we make sure to have enough room for everybody. Hope to see you there!

David Coallier Speaking at PHP Benelux User Group Tonight

Hey all you Belgian PHPers, we hope to see you tonight at the PHP Benelux user group meeting, where our very own David Coallier will be talking about Mobile Cloud Architectures. A little about this talk:

From iPhones, iPads, to Androids and Blackberries, everyone wants to build a mobile application. After having written their applications, many iOS and Java/Android developers find themselves in a pickle because they realise they need a way to gather, process, analyse, share, and distribute the data of their mobile-application users.

This talk provides the developers with alternatives to developing “native-apps” and more importantly suggests some cloud-related architectural concepts that can help companies and developers save time and money whilst keeping in mind the security implications and intricacies of mobile applications.

It’s not about “how” to develop mobile apps but rather some ideas, some little software for building HTML5, etc.

And importantly “THE API!”

For more information about this meeting, visit the PHP Benelux User Group website. Hope you can join us!

Future of PHP: CakePHP Panel Discussion

We hope you will join us on Monday, December 12 at 5:00 pm EST as we speak with CakePHP project leaders Larry Masters, Graham Weldon, Mark Story, and José Lorenzo. We will be discussing where the CakePHP project is going, and other topics such as the future of the PHP framework landscape in general. We’ll be taking your questions live.

Register for the event!

Hello CodeWorks!

We are very happy to be joining the CodeWorks crew in the Madison, Nashville and Orlando. If you’re not familiar with the CodeWorks conference, it is a traveling PHP conference, that could quite possibly be coming to a city near you (if you’re in the US, that is). At $100 for the one-day conference, it’s a great deal. For more information, go to the CodeWorks site.

If you’ll be attending any of these, we hope you will join us as we host the after parties at nearby locations. Come hang out with us!

php|architect’s Virtual Cloud Summit Today

If you haven’t heard about the Virtual Cloud Summit from php|architect, and you’re interested in learning more about what people are doing in the cloud, then we might suggest you take a look! 

With guest speakers like Sean Coates, Jeremy Johnstone, Kirsten Jones, Steve Francia and Marcus Whitney, it’s sure to be a great day of cloud goodness. 

From the php|architect site, the high points to be covered are:

• Learn how cloud computing can help you today from those who actually use it—not from those who want to sell it to you
• See how the cloud makes it possible for small companies to be successful in big ways
• Get valuable tips on how you can get started right away
• Find out how you can “cloud proof” your development even if you are not in the cloud today
• Discover where the cloud is going, and why you can’t afford to ignore it

It’s from 12:00-4:30 Eastern Time today, and you can buy your ticket at the php|architect site. We’re proud to be sponsoring this event and we know it’s going to be a good one.