Now, I'm in Nashville. A few months ago, I moved here to pursue a job with a local web start-up. I never had any intention of running the local PHP user group, but Will Fitch, the former Nashville PHP organizer, contacted me to see if I would be interested in taking over the reins. He had moved out of the area and was no longer able to devote the time necessary to keep the group growing. I humbly accepted the torch, and that's why I'm now the Nashville PHP organizer.

He issues a challenge to the Nashville PHPers to help him in his efforts to build up a good, solid group that developers can enjoy being a part of and help contribute to in their own ways. The group will be holding meetings once a month with June 8th being the first on this new schedule. A new googel group has been formed and the NashvillePHP twitter account will be more heavily used as well as a #nashvillephp channel on the Freenode IRC network.

Forget what you thought you knew about REST. In this talk, Ben Ramsey reintroduces REST, placing it under a microscope, uncovering each constraint that forms REST's crucial principles. Ramsey explains how REST is a style for network-based software applications, emphasizing scalability and efficiency through separation of concerns and taking advantage of the Web as a platform for rich Internet applications.

You can listen via the in-page player (complete with the slides) or you can download the mp3 directly to listen to whenever you'd like.

Microsoft has invited us to their main campus in an effort to reach out to the PHP community to solicit opinions and feedback on various technologies, including IIS, Silverlight, their Ajax library, Expression Web, etc.