2008 Highlights

• Fri, 09 Jan 2009 at 03:30:45 GMT
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2008 is gone, and following tradition, I'm posting my personal highlights from the previous year. It's hard to believe that this is the 6th time I've done this, but I like the tradition, and I enjoy being able to review highlights from previous years (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007).

A brief recap of this year:

• In February, I was privileged to attend Kiwi Foo Camp for a 2nd time.
• In March, we launched a new OmniTI web site, complete with a new logo and beautiful URLs. I was pleasantly surprised by all the attention and praise. Thanks to everyone who noticed. :-)
• Also in March, I spoke at PHP Québec for a 4th time. I've never seen that much snow.
• In April, I participated in CSS Naked Day for the 2nd time. I also convinced a few others in the PHP community to participate. (Accessibility guru Jon Gibbins was busy answering questions on IRC that day.)
• In May, I spoke at php|tek for the 4th time. As I wrote in my blog, "I got to celebrate my birthday at Shoeless Joe's while watching the Champions League final, and I ended the day with a brief stint as a rock star."
• In June, I spoke at the DC PHP Conference for the 3rd time. (This was also my 3rd keynote.) I missed seeing the Indigo Girls that night at Radio City Music Hall due to a train delay, but I did arrive in time to see Regina Spektor.
• In July, I spoke at OSCON for the 6th time. The talk I gave with Jon Tan was an entirely new topic for me, and it's something we have continued to explore at OmniTI. We're always trying to perfect our craft.
• In August, PHP 4 died.
• Also in August, I spoke at OINK-PUG, my 5th PHP user group talk.
• In September, I spoke at ZendCon for the 4th time. I gave a new talk that explored the human behavior side of security. It was a little rough around the edges, but it sparked some interesting hallway conversations, and I hope to continue exploring this topic at conferences in 2009.
• In October, I attended PHP Appalachia in my home state of Tennessee. I gained widespread praise and thanks for introducing the PHP community to the world's most delicious Reuben.
• In November, I spoke at php|works for the 5th time. I suited up.
• Also in November, I finally attended the MS Web Dev Summit. I enjoyed this experience and regret not blogging about it.
• In December, I organized PHP Advent again, this time with its own domain. Sean emailed me shortly before it started, offering to help. It wouldn't have happened without him. Jon Tan and Jon Gibbins helped as well, providing a quick design, valid markup, and even some help editing when Sean and I were struggling. We all agreed to plan better next year, but we managed to pull it off. :-)

Writing this recap has made me realize that I did not blog nearly as much as I would have liked, but I did manage to speak at fewer conferences, and I traveled much less as a result. I love to travel, but everything is best in moderation. :-)

One more thing. In 2008, the biggest highlight is something I've yet to acknowledge or discuss on my blog (but will), which is that Jon Tan and Jon Gibbins have joined OmniTI!

In 2009, I hope to write more. More blogging, more articles, and maybe even another book. :-)

I hope you have a wonderful 2009.