There are lots of active, vibrant developer groups in the DC area: DC PHP, Baltimore PHP, and the Frederick Web Tech group. The DC PHP Beverage Subgroup meets monthly in Northern Virginia. But in the middle between all these groups lies Montgomery County, Maryland. In that area live hundreds of developers who struggle to reach any of the developer groups in the area on a weeknight. It's time to build them something of their own.

His focus is the Montgomery County area so as not to directly take away from any of the other groups in the area people already attend. If you're interested in a group in that area, leave him a comment or hit him up on Twitter.

A fast-growing web development company in downtown Frederick, MD is looking for a self-motivated web application developer to join the team and help take the company to the next level of growth. We are a customer-focused company, so we need talented people who have good communication skills and can work closely with our clients. We develop high quality custom web sites and web applications and take great pride in our work. Our primary development environment is the "LAMP" (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) platform, but we also work on Windows servers and ASP applications. We use the latest web application technologies such as AJAX.

Responsibilities:
We're still a small company, so each team member must be able to wear many hats, often at the same time. The primarily responsibility is to take web sites and web application projects through the complete life cycle, from initial requirements development and design through development and then on to customer support. Working closely with other team members to complete all aspects of a project to the customer's satisfaction is critical. The ideal candidate is a problem solver who can find and fix small problems before they can become large problems. The individual will be comfortable taking direction from other members of the team, but also be willing to take the ball and run with it on their own when needed. The position will involve constantly developing new projects, often several at a time, but also will be responsible for maintaining existing client web sites and applications.

Minimum Skills:

• Programming experience in HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, and JavaScript.
• Graphics editing in Photoshop
• Experience working on Linux and Windows servers
• Experience developing on Apache and IIS web servers
• Designing and Optimizing MySQL databases
• Problem Solving and Trouble-shooting
• Ability to work against very tight deadlines
• Ability to work on several projects at the same time
• Good verbal and written communication
• Analyzing project requirements to produce a solid application design
• Motivated to provide good customer service
• Web Application User Interface design
• Producing project schedule estimates that you are able to meet

Preferred Skills:

• Programming experience in ASP, XML, ColdFusion
• Graphic Design and Photo editing
• Proficient user of Dreamweaver MX, Fireworks MX, basic knowledge of Flash is a plus
• Administering Linux and Windows servers
• Designing and Optimizing MS SQL and Access databases
• Experience developing e-commerce applications

Languages: Fluent in English

Education: Computer Science Degree - BS

I just created the Columbia PHP Meetup Group, something we have been wanting to do for a while. The inaugural meeting is going to be held at our headquarters on Mon, 05 Mar 2007.

The plan for the first meeting, according to Chris, is to give lightening talks on whatever subject the attendees decide on. Other OmniTI-ers might show as well (Wez Furlong, George Schlossnagle, etc).