A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of meeting Lorna Mitchell, at ZendCon in Santa Clara, California. We first met at the Sun booth (yes, Sun has products to support PHP). We struck up a brief conversation as I tried to get her to join the Sun Developer Network. I learned she belonged to PHPWomen.org which is a very influential group in the PHP community. [...] In this podcast, you'll learn more about Lorna herself and the PHPWomen.org. Please enjoy and stay tuned as I will try to have more members of this group in to talk with me.

You can grab the mp3 directly from the SDN Channel website.

While at ZendCon I stole some time from the schedule of Lise Driggers, one of the female attendees I met there, to ask her a bit about herself and how she got to where she is today. Lise works for Timptech in Vancouver, migrating their existing i-series applications (also known as AS400 or "green screen") to flex, using PHP to communicate between PHP and the database.

They talk about how she got started with PHP, career paths, interaction with the PHP community and some other hobbies she has.

Check out the interviews category on the phpwomen.org website for more interviews with members and the founders of the group.

At ZendCon this year, Juliette Reinders-Folmer of phpwomen.org ran a session in the unconference entitled "Women in IT". In this session she invited the attendees (a fairly even mix of the genders) to discuss various aspects of women working in the male-dominated IT industry, and specifically in PHP. We were lucky enough (thanks Paul Reinheimer of php|architect!) to get the session recorded.

You can download the audio from the phpwomen.org website and check out the forum entry to continue the discussion. Their post also includes several talking points concerning women in the IT industry and how PHP Women can help.

• Representation at conferences
• Continued success with our Big Sis Mentorship Program
• Growth in our IRC channel
• Formalizing our non-profit status
• Encouraging women to submit CfPs and to be published

So stop by wish them a happy birthday and see what they're all about!

I made a few posts to the PHPWomen.org Article Competition and felt I should share them here.

His three submissions are:

• Flash Your Errors: It's Illegal In 28 States! on combining flash messages and error reporting
• David Copperfield Wasn't This __magical: __autoload() is Awesome! on using the __autoload functions and PEAR style namespacing
• Path Secrets Of The Most Awesome on making your path operations indestructible across operating systems.

There's still (a little) time to get your own submission in to the contest to get over and submit your article for your chance to win a copy of Zend Studio and maybe get your article featured in Linux Pro Magazine.

Not sure what the contest is about? Here's the rundown - to enter all you need to do is write up a best practices type of article and post it to the forum. That's it! You'll be entered to win fabulous prizes. The best two entries (as judged by the PHP Women themselves) will be awarded licenses for their very own copies of Zend Studio for Eclipse as well as one year subscriptions to Linux Pro Magazine. One of these two winners will also get a bonus prize - to have their submission featured on the Linux Pro Magazine's website.

So what are you waiting for? Write up your article and submit it - time is running out!

The topic is "Best Practices" and all you have to do to enter is submit an article - long, short, good or bad - over in the Best Practices forum on their site. Want an example? Check this one out.

Now for the good part - there'll be two winners: the best two entries will get the top of the line prizes, licenses for Zend Studio for Eclipse) and, of those two, one will get inclusion of their article into a future issue of Linux Pro Magazine. The other will be gifted with a one year subscription to the same publication.

Others have already posted their articles - why haven't you? You don't have to be female or an expert in your field to contribute, just get out there and write something up for your chance to get in on the goods.

The article contest running on PHPWomen.org through July just got more exciting. We have asked people to post entries to our Best Practices forum. The authors of the best two entries will win copies of Zend Studio for Eclipse.

Besides the possibility of winning one of these licenses, entrants will also be entered into the running (two winners) to get a 1 year subscription to Linux Pro Magazine and have the opportunity for their article to be featured on the magazine's website.

To enter the competition all you have to do is submit a short article to our Best Practices forum before the end of July 2008. This area of the site is dedicated to little tips and pointers of how to improve your PHP coding - here is a good example which covers using constants. The competition is open to everyone, regardless of gender, age, location, or any other criteria I haven't thought of.

At the end of July, they'll take their two favorites out of the articles that've been submitted and hand out perpetual licenses for the Zend Studio for Eclipse software to the winners. Remember, you don't have to be female to participate - they're happy to take in content from anyone and everyone. Just sign up and add your topic to the Best Practices forum to submit - it's that easy!

Cal Evans from the Zend DevZone - being the awesome guy that he is - has graciously offered to mail out to the first 10 people who donate to PHPWomen $50 or more, a PHP elePHPant. Yep - you get one of the hard to find and much sought after plushy PHP elePHPants.

You can find out more about the goals for their fund raising in this other post to the PHPWomen.org blog as well as information on submitting whatever you feel like donating (time or money).