Why spend your free time contributing to open source, especially in the PHP community? Don’t you find it boring to spend hours every week, or sometimes hours every day devoting time to a project or community work? My answer is no! There are an infinite number of reasons why it’s so fun to be part of a community and how we enjoy each other to keep sparks in the open source community.
As for being part of the PHP community, I make many community-related contributions, such as organizing the Seattle PHP Meetup, the organizer of the Pacific Conference Northwest PHP, and being a frequent speaker and participant in PHP conferences. Last year I also appeared in several PHP-related conversations. You will find a list of my press and speaking stuff on my personal website.
Social media
That must be the biggest. Everything happens on Twitter and Facebook. If it wasn’t for Twitter, I probably wouldn’t be part of the PHP community.
It all started when I attended the Seattle PHP Meetup many years ago, and then-organizer Jeremy Lindblom recommended that I follow the list of leading members of the PHP community and become more involved in the community. He even advised me to go to a PHP conference, but I was like “nahhh.” After watching these members for a while, I realized how much fun the community was. They work together daily, share funnies, updated technology-related material, all types of software versions, and ideas for different programming concepts. Soon after, I decided that I wanted to meet a lot of these people that I followed on Twitter (I think I waited a year), finally I decided to go to my first conference in Utah called SkiPHP. Let me tell you, I would highly recommend it as a first conference. It’s always a little nervous – at first it’s hard to join the community, but the people were so friendly to the newcomers that I immediately felt part of the crowd.
Fast forward many years later, my Twitter now consists of software engineers and web developers from around the world, with whom I am in touch every day. They’re such a fun crowd, I couldn’t trade it for anything. You can try it on @phpc, who has been played and liked by many PHP members.
Chat tools
Different open source communities use different tools to keep in touch. Since Twitter isn’t the best place for private messaging, and not everyone adds developers and software engineers to their private Facebook friends list, we had to find a chat tool that anyone can easily access and use. Wait, everyone knows what IRC is. And it’s been here more than ten years. Why not IRC? Yes, that’s where PHP people meet and chat.
You can use a browser-based Freenode or any kind of IRC client: #phpc and #phpwomen (which is open to anyone) to connect to channels.
“Follow community members on Twitter and IRC to see what great projects they’re working on or what new technology they’re using with PHP.” —Matthew Turland
As you can see, these are the best ways to stay in touch with our community, and I hope that more people will join over time.
Moving things forward
“I have to say that I’m more and more interested in people who want to move things forward. PHP developers want to do things, but they are not happy with the current state. The language itself is still evolving, the main practices are evolving and there are a lot of people who are actively trying to move the community forward. PHP never stagnates. – Larry Garfield
When community leaders have so much faith and ambition to push software forward, you tend to build trust in the community that PHP will only improve and keep improving. Because these leaders are some of the greatest programmers, and some represent developers from leading technology companies, I have great respect for them. It is always exciting to watch what new news it has to bring, especially on social media.
Continuous learning
“I think my biggest reward is to see happy members eager to start what they have learned. Getting positive feedback on what we do forces us to do it more often. And by doing more, we also improve by giving our colleagues a better experience that results in even better vibrations. It is a cycle of self-improvement, where we only bring talent to others. But because we take this step, we lead the community. “—Michelangelo Van Dam
When you keep up with the PHP community, learning has no end. Everyone is excited to hone their personal development skills to help them with their projects and business. How can I stay on top of current trending or emerging technologies? Thanks to the PHP community, make sure we are all informed of important information. I found myself addicted to reading tweets and soaking my brain like a sponge. If you don’t learn something new in web development every day, you need to rethink your career. Web development is evolving at such a high pace that you have to keep up with speed. And why not do it in a fun way using social media to learn?
People from PHP
People in every community have nicknames. Joomlers for the Joomla community and PHPers or PHPeople for the PHP community. Yes! What do we enjoy in open source? People of course.
“This community is full of very different personalities, but I feel like we have an amazing sense of humor. It’s nice to make fun of ourselves and generally not take ourselves too seriously. I think that’s part of why PHP events feel like family reunions more than conferences. ”—Samantha Quiñones
Because they are all so different, we seem to understand each other as much as possible and understand each other for humor. It feels like one big second family to me. All anyone has to say is “I love PHP” and they are in the crowd automatically. Never hesitate to be part of this community. We are all open arms, especially me. Follow me on @tessameroI will be happy to introduce you to the people who will follow you, which will significantly affect your career, whether it is knowledge, motivation or encouragement.
