Lineup

Boyd Hemphill

Keynote Speaker

Boyd is the CTO at VictoryCTO where he helps customers win in their respective markets by realizing the potential of their technology.

Boyd is a DevOps raconteur and thought leader in the silicon hills of Austin, Texas. Boyd founded Austin DevOps and plays a role in the organization of DevOps Days Austin – the largest of its kind in North America. Boyd organized the first ever Container Days conference in Austin, Texas.

In his professional life, Boyd has been a developer (PL/SQL, PHP), DBA (Oracle and MySQL), and system engineer/architect.

Sessions:

• Stop Doing it Wrong Keynote

Cal Evans

Keynote Speaker

Many moons ago, at the tender age of 14, Cal touched his first computer. (We’re using the term “computer” loosely here, it was a TRS-80 Model 1) Since then his life has never been the same. He graduated from TRS-80s to Commodores and eventually to IBM PC’s. For the past 13 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux, OSX, and Windows. He has built a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications.

More…

Sessions:

• Uncle Cal's Career Advice for Developers Keynote

Eryn O'Neil

Keynote Speaker

Eryn 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.

Sessions:

• Using Our Superpowers for Good Keynote

Stephanie Evans

Keynote Speaker

Stephanie is the Content Manager for Back-end Web Development at Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning and the former Commodore of Cal Sailing Club in Berkeley, CA. She competed in the 15/16 Clipper Round the World Race, sailing non-stop from China to San Francisco with her team, setting a new Pacific crossing record for the race. She is passionate about education, sailing, and figuring out how to make things work better (and sail faster).

Sessions:

• Extreme Team Building: Surviving an Ocean Crossing Keynote

Andrew Cassell

Andrew is a full-stack web application developer in Herndon, Virginia. Andrew is an employee of the non-profit Marine Spill Response Corporation, the largest dedicated oil spill and emergency response organization. He works on their website and internal web applications.

Sessions:

• Immutability to Save an Ever-Changing World Talk

Ben Marks

Ben began his career in PHP building commercial sites in 2003, focusing on Magento since 2008 and joining the ranks of Magento as their sole evangelist in 2014. He believes that the boundless requirements of commerce provide some of the best fodder for development (and for conference discussions). Always a learner, frequently a teacher, his approach to speaking and attending conferences is to find the story, enjoyment, and (often) humor in every situation.

Sessions:

• Open Source Commerce Melee Talk

Chris Cornutt

Chris has been involved in the PHP community for over 13 years now in one way or another. These days he’s the Senior Editor of PHPDeveloper.org and lead author for Websec.io and for the Securing PHP ebook series. He’s written for several PHP publications and has spoken at conferences in both the U.S. and Europe. He’s also an organizer of the Dallas PHP User Group and works as an Application Security Engineer at Duo Security.

Sessions:

• Pentesting for Developers Tutorial
• Securing Legacy Applications Talk

Chris Holland

Chris leads a small Software Engineering Team at an HR company. Throughout a career spanning more than 20 years, Chris has held Sr. Engineering and Leadership roles for small and large successful publicly-traded companies such as EarthLink and Internet Brands, serving business models across Content, Commerce, Travel & Finance on a wide variety of technology stacks including PHP/LAMP, Java/J2EE and C#/.Net, catering to audiences over 100 million monthly visitors.

Sessions:

• Better and Faster: TDD-ing a Ride-Hailing Application w/ PHPUnit, Symfony and Doctrine Tutorial

Dave Stokes

Dave is a MySQL Community Manager for Oracle and lives in Justin, TX.

Sessions:

• MySQL Without The SQL -- Oh My! Talk

Derick Rethans

Derick is a PHP internals expert, author of Xdebug and an OpenStreetMap and mapping enthusiast.

He has contributed in a number of ways to the PHP project, including the Xdebug debugging tool, and various extensions and additions. He’s a frequent lecturer at conferences, the author of php|architect’s Guide to Date and Time Programming, and the co-author of PHP 5 Power Programming. He is now working at MongoDB, where he works on the PHP, C, and C++ drivers for MongoDB, and date/time related server features.

Sessions:

• Time Zones and Calendars are a PITA Talk
• Introduction to PHP Extensions Talk

Edward Barnard

Ed 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. You can find him at “Education Station” in php[architect] Magazine.

Sessions:

• Go Fast with PHP Prepared Statements Talk
• The Basics with a Side of Crypto: Shifting and Masking in PHP Talk

Emily Stamey

Emily is a Software Engineer and works at InQuest, which offers on-premise network-based security solutions. Her experience includes supporting and modernizing legacy applications, DDD, CQRS, and Event Sourcing practices. She is a Director for Women Who Code Raleigh-Durham and a Co-Organizer of Triangle PHP. In 2016 she began speaking at conferences to share what she’s learned working with legacy applications. She enjoys talking with others who are maintaining large, legacy applications and finding creative ways to improve them.

Sessions:

• Event Sourcing a Small Library Talk

Grant Shipley

Grant Shipley is a Director at Red Hat focused on containers, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. He is the author of several books including “OpenShift for Developers” and “Learning OpenShift”. Prior to that, Grant was a Manager of Software Development with responsibilities over the www.redhat.com website and supporting infrastructure. Grant has over 20 years of software development experience focusing on Java and PHP. In his free time, he contributes to several open source projects as well as developing mobile applications. Grant has been using Linux on a daily basis since 1994 and is active in the FOSS community.

Sessions:

• Hands-on Kubernetes with OpenShift Talk

Hunter Skrasek

Hunter has been a PHP developer for the last five years, and coordinates the Laravel Austin meetup. He leverages PHP and Laravel to build well designed and simple to use APIs.

Sessions:

• Papers, Please! Authentication with Laravel Passport Talk

Jason McCreary

Jason, or JMac, has been writing code for over two decades. He shares his experiences through speaking, coaching, and organizing local meetups. He’s the creator of Laravel Shift. JMac considers himself an “active geek” – with a passion for programming & the great outdoors.

Sessions:

• Start Testing Your PHP Code Tutorial
• Writing Code That Lasts… Talk

Jessica Mauerhan

Jessica is a software engineer who has been working with PHP and related technologies for over a decade. She enjoys mentoring fellow engineers in automated testing, test driven development, and quality code design. She lives in McKinney Texas with her family and loves coffee, comedy and podcasts.

Sessions:

• Understanding Docker for Development Talk

Jordi Boggiano

Jordi is the author of a few open source apps/libs (Composer, Monolog, php-console, ..), and co-founder of Private Packagist. He has been involved in web development for over 10 years, working mostly with PHP and JavaScript. He is currently maintaining Composer/Packagist while working on Private Packagist and Teamup.com. Find out more at https://seld.be/about

Sessions:

• Lessons Learned Building the Composer Internals Talk

Josh Butts

Josh is the VP of Engineering at Ziff Davis, an old publishing house that has “gone digital”. In addition to over a decade in the trenches of e-commerce at Offers.com, Josh also oversees engineering for other internet brands such as PCMag and Geek.com. Josh is also an organizer of Austin PHP, one of the largest PHP user groups in the US. Josh has taught several classes in PHP and enjoys the opportunity to share his experiences with the PHP community.

Sessions:

• I Didn’t Know Laravel Could Do That! Talk

Keith Casey

Keith currently serves on the Platform Team at Okta working on Identity and Authentication APIs. Previously, he served as an early Developer Evangelist at Twilio and before that worked on the Ultimate Geek Question at the Library of Congress. His underlying goal is to get good technology into the hands of good people to do great things. In his spare time, he helps build and support the Austin tech community, blogs at CaseySoftware.com and is fascinated by monkeys. He is also a co-author of “A Practical Approach to API Design” from Leanpub.

Sessions:

• The Many Layers of OAuth Talk
• (Mis)using and Abusing APIs Talk

Larry Garfield

Larry has been building websites since he was a sophomore in high school, which is longer ago than he’d like to admit. Larry was an active Drupal contributor and consultant for over a decade, and led the Drupal 8 Web Services initiative that helped transform Drupal into a modern PHP platform.

Larry is Director of Developer Experience at Platform.sh, a leading continuous deployment cloud hosting company. He is also a member of the PHP-FIG Core Committee.

Larry holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from DePaul University. He blogs at both http://platform.sh/ and http://www.garfieldtech.com/.

Sessions:

• The Container is a Lie! Talk

Margaret Staples

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.

Sessions:

• Simplified Continuous Deployment with Laravel and Jenkins Talk

Michael Bodnarchuk

Michael is a passionate PHP/Ruby/JS web developer from Kyiv, Ukraine. The author of Codeception testing framework. Michael maintains various popular opensource projects and aims to popularize testing. “Testing should be fun” – is his motto.

Sessions:

• Deep Dive into Codeception Testing Tutorial
• Designing Test Architecture That Does Not Suck Talk

Michael Heap

Michael is a polyglot software engineer, committed to reducing complexity in systems and making them more predictable. Working with a variety of languages and tools, he shares his technical expertise with audiences all around the world at user groups and conferences.

Day to day, Michael is a fixer. He works on whatever needs an extra pair of hands both at his day job and in open source projects. When not immersed in technology, you’ll find him either playing various board games or hiking through the countryside.

Sessions:

• Meet Terraform Talk
• Move Over Graphite, Prometheus is Here Talk

Michael Moussa

Michael has over 17 years experience with all aspects of building and maintaining PHP applications. He is currently a Solutions Architect on Rackspace’s Fanatical Support for AWS team helping customers migrate their applications to the AWS cloud. In his spare time, he enjoys homebrewing his award-winning beer.

Sessions:

• CI/CD for PHP on AWS Talk
• Essential AWS for PHP Applications Talk

Nara Kasbergen

Nara is a full-stack developer in NPR (National Public Radio)’s Digital Media group, where she’s worked on a variety of projects, most notably the third-party developer platform for NPR One. She recently joined the tech conference speaking circuit because of her interest in Developer Experience (DX), community-building, the intersection of humans and code, and her volunteer work for Open Sourcing Mental Illness, a non-profit organization raising awareness about mental health in the tech industry.

Though she has no noticeable accent, she hails from The Netherlands and lived in Munich, Houston, Pittsburgh, Tokyo, and New York City prior to settling down in Washington, DC. In her spare time, she satisfies her foodie habits by trying out all of the best restaurants in the city, collects board games, and watches too much Netflix.

Sessions:

• Empathy as a Service: Supporting Mental Health in the Tech Workplace Talk

Nicolas Steenhout

Nicolas Steenhout offers real-world insight into everyday accessibility issues.

His work began in the mid-’90s. As a developer, he was approached by clients facing challenges not yet part of the public consciousness. On the emerging web, accessibility hurdles were keeping people with disabilities from engaging with a technological revolution.

As Nic began championing web accessibility, he transitioned into the non-profit sector where he collaborated with people with a wide variety of impairments.

Today, Nic continues his accessibility work as an independent consultant for private businesses and non-profits. Having worked on three continents, he’s engaged with thousands of individuals with disabilities.

Sessions:

• Practical Hands-On Accessibility Testing Tutorial
• Listen to the Difference: Using a Screenreader to Compare Before/After Code of 5 Top a11y Barriers Talk

Patrick Guevara

Patrick is a software engineer at GoMedigap (now an eHealth company), the leading Medicare Supplement insurance agency in the country. Previously, he founded and led engineering at Metric Loop (now defunct), and before that he was an engineer at International Studies Abroad (ISA). In his day-to-day, he approaches software as a solution to a business problem that exists in the larger corporation. Rarely are the decisions we make and the solutions we provide not going to have an effect on the whole ecosystem.

Sessions:

• Making a Sports Car From a Horse-Drawn Carriage Talk

Paul Czarkowski

Paul is a recovering Systems Administrator who has run infrastructure for longer than he cares to admit. After cutting his teeth in the ISP and Gaming industries Paul changed his focus to using (and contributing to) Open Source Software to improve the Operability of complex distributed systems such as Kubernetes and OpenStack. Oh, and he makes the best Queso in Texas.

Sessions:

• Kubernetes for PHP Practitioners Talk

Rebekah Post

Rebekah Post is a developer at the University of Texas at Austin in the Office of Institutional Research, Reporting and Information Studies. Her team takes vast amounts of operational university data and turns them into information that can be used for analysis and decision making. Prior to finding an interesting job where she can be paid a decent salary to figure out puzzles all day, she taught French and Arabic for 6 years while completing a PhD (also at UT Austin.) She enjoys teaching, learning, and connecting her previous work experience to being a developer.

Sessions:

• Becoming a Polyglot: Lessons from Natural Language Learning Talk

Stefany Newman

In my spare time I love to read history, ride bikes, and play Go. I also love programming. I think it is the best thing in the world to do and to be. I love the freedom that being a programmer gives me. I live by the maxim “If you stop being better, you stop being good” so I try to better myself every day, in the programming field. I live in Arkansas with my lovely husband whom I like to annoy with constant web development chatter (he isn’t annoyed, he just doesn’t understand). I am currently reading The Fountainhead.

www.StefanyWebDesign.info

Sessions:

• Succeeding as a Freelance Programmer Talk

Terrence Ryan

Terry is a Developer Advocate for the Google Cloud Platform team. He has 15 years of experience working with the web – both front end and back. He is passionate about web standards and wants to bring web developers to the Google Cloud Platform. Before Google, he worked for Adobe and the Wharton School of Business.
He also wrote Driving Technical Change for Pragmatic Bookshelf, a book that arms technology professionals with the tools to convince reluctant co-workers to adopt new tools and technology.

Sessions:

• Go for PHP Developers Talk

Terry Matula

Terry is Director of Engineering at Perk.com in Austin, TX, working on apis used by the company’s mobile apps. He has been a professional developer for 15 years. He is the author of the “Laravel Application Development Cookbook” and founded the Laravel Austin Meetup group. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring the city with his wife and 8 year old son.

Sessions:

• Testing Your APIs with Postman Talk

Tim Lytle

Tim likes making things, is a lover of well built APIs, and hates the top reply. A former mercenary developer, he’s built numerous applications specializing in API consumption and creation. He tweets sporadically from @tjlytle.

Sessions:

• Hands On API Design Tutorial
• Yak Free API Tip & Tricks You Can Use Right Now Talk