Editor of DevZone for Zend Technologies, Inc.
Many moons ago, at the tender age of 14, Cal touched his first computer. (We're using the term "computer" loosely here, it was a TRS-80 Model 1) Since then his life has never been the same. He graduated from TRS-80s to Commodores and eventually to IBM PC's.For the past 8 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux OSX, and when necessary, Windows. He has built on a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications. When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, he enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of "management by wandering around".
These days, Cal's hobby is photography. As a photographer, Cal is a pretty good programmer. He continually tries, none-the-less, to improve his skills.
Cal is currently based in Nashville, TN where is the full-time father of two and fills the rest of his day as the Editor of DevZone, for Zend Technologies.
Cal is happily married to wife 1.23, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 kids who are infinitely more intelligent but not nearly as entertaining as his two dogs, Sparky and Linus.
Cal blogs at http://blog.calevans.com.
Presentations by Cal Evans
PHP Coding For RIA using the Zend Framework
I will discuss the techniques necessary to build web services that can be consumed by traditional web based consumers such as an Ajax page as well newer technologies such as Flex.My First Ajax Mashup (PHP)
A simple, step by step session on building a mashup. We will mash up 2 services to create a page. Then look at the differences in building it in a traditional server side model and an AJAX model.Postcards From My Life
PHP, SQL, JavaScript, AJAX and a little bit about me.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Dear Reader,
Ok, you are lost on a desert island and you can only follow 5 people on twitter. (Don’t think about it too hard, it’s just a freakin’ game) Who do you choose and why?
Here are my 5.
5: @andigutmans
Ok, so I work for Andi. (Actually, I work for @markdevisser) Andi is new to twitter but has already begun to see the potential. He’s started monitoring Zend’s footprint on twitter and I’ve seen him answer people’s questions or gripes about Zend, even when they are not addressed to him.
4: @lizziekeiper
I only met Lizzy a few month ago but she’s fun and every few days she asks her “Question of the day”. I like people that make me stop and think for a minute during my day.
3: @weierophinney
I work with Matthew and we usually talk every day or so. Matthew only tweets when he has something to say. (and that’s rare on twitter) so if Matthew says something, I stop and read it and if he posts a URL, I almost always visit it.
2: @mtabini
Marco is a good friend and a really bright guy. I follow him because his posts are almost always funny or insightful.
1: @everysandwich
Fred Leo is the funniest man I’ve never met. (No offense @SoupySales) We’ve been on-line friends for about 3 years now. I help him with his blogs from time to time and in return he makes me laugh almost every day. Before twitter, Fred and I would talk on AIM every day. Talking with Fred on AIM is difficult, not because he’s hard to understand but because I hated to just blather. Since the things he said made me laugh out loud, I felt I had to be funny too. Which was fine, we had some awesome discussions but it’s taxing on my brain. With twitter now, I can get my Fredisms without feeing the pressure to be funny back. (We still talk on AIM though, just not as much) If you’ve got time, go visit his blog and listen to PETA Girl or root around till you find the story of Aunt Mary. It’s worth it, I promise.
Until Next Time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=
Related posts
Friday, June 13, 2008
Dear Reader,
For the first time in five years, the lovely and talented Kathy and I took a much needed vacation. This time, we decided to drag along our two best friends, Rick and Kim.
As with our last vacation, we decided to cruise, at least for part of it. Unlike last time though, we chose to cruise to Mexico instead of Alaska. To Thursday afternoon, after a nice flight, we boarded the Royal Caribbean ship, “Enchantment of the Seas” in Ft. Lauderdale and set sail. The boat was nice but not as nice as the “Radiance of the Seas” that we sailed on in Alaska. Still it was a nice boat and we soon found our sea legs and started relaxing.
The first meme of the trip came during dinner the first evening. Rick opened the butter dish to find that the gr in “grassland butter” was obscured leaving only “assland butter”. Those of you who know us know that it went downhill quickly from there.
Key West was our first port of call. We visited the Hemmingway house, did all the touristy things and then headed back to the ship because it was hot! The Hemmingway house was awesome, we had a great tour guide named Loren who made the tour very interesting.
That evening was the formal dining night on the ship so we all got dressed up and pretended we were adults for the evening. When it’s all said and done, I think we clean up pretty good. :)
The next port of call was Cozumel. For our excursion there we chose to see the Mayan ruins. Well, we thought that was the point of the excursion, it turned out to be an hour at the ruins, and a few sales pitches along the way. It was fun and entertaining though.
Since Cozumel is on an island, we had to take a ferry to the mainland to see the ruins. The ride over was a bit hairy because we sat inside, the water was real choppy and the guy one isle over lost his lunch. Luckily, they had passed out plastic baggies just for that purpose. The ride back was much better, we sat on the back deck and enjoyed the sun and spray. By the time we got back though, we were salt crusted. :)
The next day was our only full day at sea. we mainly just wandered around and did a lot of nothing. We did play TV Tune Trivia and if Rick and Kim had bothered to show up on-time we would have actually won. We were one point away from winning and they knew the first tune. Alas, they opted to take a nap and got carried away.
That evening was probably the most fun evening of the cruise. We saw the “farewell” show in the theater, played the scavenger hunt game on the opposite end of the ship and then went back to the theater for some late-night comedy. Our bartender from dinner just happened to show up at each location to make sure that we were “enjoying ourselves”. We kinda “over enjoyed” ourselves that night.
That was it for the cruise. I don’t have pictures for the dive portion yet so I’ll save that for another day. No cruise is complete without towel animals though so here are the pictures of ours.
Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=
Related posts
Monday, May 12, 2008
Dear Reader,
There are several companies, I love to hate, Microsoft, AT&T, Comcast, Sprint and Firestone to name a few. There are also companies I absolutely adore, Skype, Southwest Airlines, php|architect are all in that category. So it really chaps my ass when I have to say nice things about a company from the first list and it’s even worse when I have to say bad things about a company from the second list. However, I am always willing to give credit where credit is due.
Recently, I got tweets from two different companies. These were not twitterspam because they were in direct response to tweets I had made. However their approaches were totally opposite and honestly, opposite of what I would expect from each of the companies.
Comcast
My buddy Fred Leo and I were discussing Comcast. Comcast, if you’ve been following closely, is in the first list, "Love to Hate". They are usually a pretty easy target. This time however, they caught me off guard. First, when I griped about their (now defunct) P2P Bill of rights, ComcastCares responded as he/she normally does with any mention of Comcast (and he/she posts a LOT) with a simple "We are working on it…". Kinda what you would expect and honestly, I was ready to just move on because I was just venting. However, they they surprised me. I got this tweet from Scott Westerman, a VP at Comcast asking me to email him.
So I did and to my great surprise (and consternation, see the part about the two lists above) he emailed me back! He actually encouraged me to keep talking to him. (Scott, I’m gonna write back, I swear, just gotta get over the shock) See, up to this point, my interaction with Comcast has been mainly through their technical support personnel. (Let’s just say it was less than stellar and move on.) But now they not only have someone who is monitoring twitter on a regular basis but someone in upper management has a real clue. (Scott, I hope I’m not killing our friendship by calling you out here) It’s really unusual for a company to have clueful upper management but to be clueful and be on my "Love To Hate" list is unheard of. So it is with great chagrin that I move Comcast off my "Love to hate" list, at least temporarily. Let’s see how things go. (oh and just so you know, it’s not Scott’s job to monitor twitter, he’s one of the rare breed of "upper management who loves technology". I wish more companies would hire/foster these types.)
ComcastCares offers sympathy and help. Scott, offered dialog. He didn’t offer to fix anything but honestly, I would have been suspicious if he had. However he did offer to listen. When was the last time you got an email from a company on your "love to hate" list offering to listen to your grievances?
Southwest Airlines
I love SWA, seriously. I fly a lot and when they go where I’m going, I always fly SWA. I even like the new boarding procedures. SWA has long been on my "Love to Love" list. So I was pleasantly surprised when I got this tweet from them when me and my buddy Eli White (you know, the guy from digg.com?) were discussing airlines. It’s nice and polite, kind of like Comcastcares. However, if start reading tweets from ComcastCares and from SouthwestAir you quickly notice a pattern. ComcastCares, more often than not offers to help, offers information, offers insight into the company SouthwestAir offers pleasantries. "Hope you give us another chance" is about as deep and helpful as it gets. Honestly, with a free week and a case of RedBull, I could probably write a bot that could do this. (I have no idea if this is a bot or not. I don’t even know if this is an "official" representative of SWA.)
This, IMHO, is the absolute wrong way to use twitter. You may make people feel better for a second but after they realize that your not really listening, your just talking at them, people will begin to understand. SWA, if you really want to get Eli to switch over, give him a reason to switch. Actually talk to him, find out why he doesn’t fly LUV and figure out what you can do to solve the problem. You guys/gals are so creative in other areas, it’s hard for me to believe that this is your best effort on twitter. And don’t just do it for A-List bloggers, do it for everyone! (Not that I’m an A-List blogger, I’m sure that’s not why Scott contacted me…I’m so far down the long tail that they ran out of letters and had to switch to numbers to describe me.)
I won’t be removing SWA from my "Love to Love" list any time soon because they do a lot of things right. However, we can all learn from their (bad) example. If you are going to try to engage the twitter market, talk to them, not just at them.
Conclusion
I talk about how companies should and should not use twitter in my report "Twitter for Marketers" and I’m going to have to update it now to include this case study. Comcast, get it because they have ComcastCares and you get they idea that they might actually care. They get bonus points for having at least one VP who understands that twitter is just a conversation starter, its not the conversation. SWA does not get it because even though they are monitoring twitter, they are not actually using it to make a difference. They are just handing out "I’m Sorry", "Hope you’ll give us another chance" or "Hey! That’s Great" on a good blog post. They are not engaging their customers in a conversation. As Joe Jaffe is quick to point out, marketing is now a conversation and they need to "join the conversation".
Until Next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=
Related posts
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Dear Reader,
Regular readers know that I am ecstatically married to wife 1.24, the lovely and talented Kathy. (She is the inspiration for all the love poems at Cyrano’s Apprentice…and even one of the Burma Shave poems there!) "the lovely and talented Kathy" is a phrase that I started using a year or so ago and always link it back to her web site. Originally, there was no particular reason other than I thought it was cute. However, of late I’ve been reading a lot about SEO. (trying to find anything that makes me think it’s anything other than horse crap) and for fun, I started sprinkling it liberally throughout my posts to see if I could "Google bomb" the term. Now Google is supposed to watch for this kind of thing and stop it. They do a pretty good job of that but every now and then they slip up, as they have today!
Here is a screen shot proving that, for at least a brief second, I p0wned the phrase "the lovely and talented Kathy". The very first link is her web site!
Just so you don’t think it’s only because I enclosed it in quotes, here’s the same phrase without quotes.
It’s probably gone by the time I get this post up, it happened once before but I didn’t get a screen shot and it only lasted like an hour.
Anyhow, Happy Mothers Day my angel! I can’t think of a more geeky present to give you than a #1 ranking on Google. :)
Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=
Related posts
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Dear Reader,
Most of you who know me know that I spend way too much time on twitter.com. During all that time, I’ve learned a lot about twitter and the twitter community. I’ve seen companies succeed using it to talk to their customers and seen companies fall flat on their face. I even recorded an episode of Sixty Second Tech on the subject and even wrote a blog post about it.
Recently I started wrapping everything I’ve learned up into a single document. By the time I finished, it was 20 pages long. I sent it off to several reviewers, marketers and others, took their feedback and refined it over time and am really happy with the results.
So if you’ve ever wondered what works and what doesn’t when marketing on twitter, “Twitter for Marketers” is for you.
Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=