In this edition I talked with Lineke Kerckhoffs-Willems who is the Co-Founder Of ProTalk. @the_linie is the third #phpwomen I'm hosting on 7php.com after Lorna and Ligaya. Lineke is a very active member of and promoting the purpose of PHPwomen.org. She is indulged in a lot of stuffs; she attends a lot of conferences, speaks at conferences and is also an organizer of a conference as you will read along this interview. She focuses a lot on Quality Assurance and I have taken this opportunity to ask her a few questions about it.

They talk about a wide range of topics in the interview including:

• Het background as a developer, open source project lead, author and conference organizer
• Her opinions (good and bad) about the PHP language
• Her development tools of choice
• Some of her thoughts on quality assurance
• Details about ProTalk's goals and the technology that powers it

You can read the answers to these and the rest of the questions in the full interview.

In this edition I talked with the full time Goddess, Ligaya Turmelle who is the Co-Founder Of PHPwomen.org - The PHP Women User Group. [Ligaya @lig] is also the Principal MySQL Technical Support Engineer at Oracle. She has been speaking at so many conferences namely ZendCon, PHP|tek, Day Camp for Developers, Zend PHP Conference; and she will soon speak at the incoming hot SunshinePHP Conference (organized by Adam Culp) scheduled for February 8-9 2013 where she will talk about 'Replication with MySQL'.

Her answers mention a few things like:

• her relationship with the PHP community
• recommendations she has for people wanting to learn more about PHP
• how small decisions have effected her life
• her picks for best conferences
• her "good" and "bad" list for things that happen at conferences

You can read the full interview here.

Over a year ago I first heard about the Ada Initiative, an organisation to support women in open technology and culture. This is exactly why PHPWomen was founded, only we narrow it down to women within the PHP community, because that is our level of expertise. However, we are an organisation based on volunteers and therefore, we often struggle with finding the time to do more. Luckily, The Ada Initiative isn't based on volunteers, but on people working full time to reach their goal, our goal. We share their vision: "a world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open source software, open data, and open culture" and therefore we support the organisation.

As they are a non-profit, they can use all of the financial support they get to help further their cause. There's one catch to donating - the campaign ends tomorrow, October 31st. If you want to contribute to the cause (they've already collected over $73,000) you can do it here.

We know you care about women in the PHP community, and technology as a whole, as much as we do. Donating to the Ada Initiative is an easy way to help and our community is based around helping others. Will you donate too?

CodeConnexx is a two-day, one track conference that aims to bring together men and women of all ages, races, backgrounds, and skillsets interested in talking about code. As we know, choosing a career as a coder comes with its own sets of life challenges, and we want to talk about those too. In short, this conference is a different kind of conference, as it connects those two pieces of the puzzle together in one event.

It's a two-day event happening November 8th and 9th and registration is now open - tickets can be purchased for $99 USD. There's lots of great topics being covered over the two days including:

• "Getting Started Contributing to Open Source"
• "Mentoring Developers"
• "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Deployment but Were Afraid to Ask"
• "Grokking REST"

Additionally, they're doing something interesting for those that have children and want to attend - childcare will be provided on site.

I bring this up *not just* because it will be a great conference on a subject that is "the holy grail for many developers" - Telecommuting, but also because it will again have 2 of our members in the 5 speaker lineup - Ligaya Turmelle and Lorna Jane Mitchell.

Ligaya will bespeaking on keeping the work and life balance intact despite working from home and Lorna offers a few suggestions for you to answer the question "Could You Telecommute?". The Day Camp 4 Developers even happens Saturday, March 5th and lasts all day. There's a few different ticket options ranging from just the event out to an "Office Party" for more than one attendee.

As quoted from the information page about the partnerships:

PHPWomen has launched a partnership program for open source projects that are committed to embracing diversity and providing a welcoming and friendly atmosphere for contributors. We work closely with project leaders to identify specific areas of need, and will actively encourage our members to participate by promoting those needs through various channels. In return, the project leaders will ensure that newcomers to their projects will be welcomed and their contributions appreciated. This includes fostering an open and friendly environment for all newcomers, not just females.

The goal of the project is to encourage inviting environments for open source projects where developers feel like they're given a chance to contribute equally and to provide something more specific than "here's a project that needs help - go for it".

There's already several projects that are on the list including Spaz and the PHP Documentation team. You can find out more specifics on what they're looking for in contributions on the Opportunities page.

The PHP UK Conference is now in its fifth year and is bigger and better than ever. Friday's event has 16 different hour-long talks covering a plethora of topics from some of the world's best PHP speakers. [...] PHPWomen is a community partner of the event and will have a stand in the exhibition hall amongst a variety of other exhibitors.

Two members will be speaking at the event - Juliette Folmer and Lorna Mitchell - and there's a special offer for PHPWomen members that still haven't purchased their tickets. If you register through this link, you can get an automatic £20 discount off the normal ticket price (now going for £120). You can get more information about the conference from the main PHP UK Conference website.

Some of the happenings she mentions are the inclusion of a new member, Remi Woler, into their core advisory group, the over 600 members in their forums, ideas for raising money to contribute towards charities and an effort to create and maintain a calendar of events happening in the PHP community.

If you're interested in helping out, drop Elizabeth an email (elizabeth .at. naramore .dot. net) or you can contact any of the other members of the group via their forums or their blogs.

The rumours have been flying around for a while, and we even dropped some hints; since its December it is time for us to confirm that there is a PHPWomen Calendar available for 2010, and it is now on sale. It features our charter members dressed as the beautiful women they are, with a guest appearance by our booth babes.

You can check out the calendar over on Zazzle and pick up a copy of your own for prices between $24 and $30 USD (depending on the size ordered). Ten percent of each purchase goes directly back to the PHP Women organization where it will be used for their many programs (like mentoring and other programs to help out women in the PHP community).

Our existing channel #phpwomen remains open to all but we're adding a little space for the women to get together without the men if they want to. This channel has a password - pop in to #phpwomen on freenode, introduce yourself and request access details if you want to join in!

If you've never gotten in on IRC but want to find out more about it (and connecting to the Freenode network) check out the About section on the Freenode website. Come join in the discussion on both this new channel and on the current everyone's-invited #phpwomen channel!