Tony Bibbs

Preparing to Wade Iowa's Interior Streams

2009-06-23T06:54:22-05:00

My first try at a short podcast. Basically a video with zilch in the way of editing. That's next:

Preparing to Fish Iowa's Interior Streams from Tony BIbbs on Vimeo.

Stop Follow Friday Insanity

2009-05-29T07:00:25-05:00

I hate this phenomenon on Twitter called Follow Friday (referred to via the #ff and #followfriday hashtags). Get ready for a big dose of hater-ade because I've endured this crap for the past few Friday's, filling up my Twitter stream and it's gone beyond the point of ridiculous. So why am I hatin'?

Conceptually Follow Friday is cool. It's a day to try and expand your Twitter network by taking recommendations from your followers on other people worth following. Simple enough. But the whole damn thing is missing the target. That said, here's my Follow Friday *censormode*-list:

My first gripe with Follow Friday is some people will recommend far too many people. Some people even have multiple tweets giving a half dozen or more suggestions. Seriously, you can't give this whole thing a bit more thought and recommend just a few worthwhile suggestions?
All you get in a Follow Friday tweet is the Twitter username. Follow Friday tweets don't bother telling me why someone is being suggested. That is sort of pointless because now I have to dig into their Twitter timeline and fine out if they are truly follow-worthy which is an exercise in futility especially if you are guilty of the first bullet.
Why Friday? Sure, Follow Friday sounds cute but aren't people follow-worthy the other six days fo the week?
Oh, and my biggest *censormode* about the whole Follow Friday phenomenon is the follow-up tweet where the person being recommended in a Follow Friday tweet thanks the person who suggested them. No, the thought is fine but make it a direct message and don't further clog my Friday timeline even more Follow Friday crap

Ok, so I've got that off my chest. Now let's go a step further and turn this into constructive criticism by suggesting better ways you can implement Follow Friday:

Limit the number of suggestions you make. Give that limited number of suggestions some thought.
Give a reason your followers should follow the person you are recommending someone. Consider going a step further by writing up a short blog entry why someone should be followed. This has added benefits of not being lost on search.twitter.com after a few weeks) and it acts as a place your followers can go to get more recommendations by you.
Try making recommendations on days other than Friday. Sure, then you can't call it Follow Friday anymore but I think your followers will appreciate getting one recommendation a few days per week than a dozen all at once all without a stated reason

Ok, I know all this probably came off negative and I know there are a lot of Friday Follow lovers out there. Keep doing what you do, but please, consider taking some of this advice to make it more meaningful to all your followers.

Webinar on Propel sponsored by php|architect

2009-03-24T08:33:35-05:00

This is just a friendly reminder that this Friday, March 27th from 12pm-1pm CST I will be giving a webinar on using Propel, an object relational mapper (ORM). This webinar is just one of a series being sponsored by php|architect. The webinar will focus on the basics of installing and using Propel as well as one or two more advanced topics. If you are interested why not register now!

MVCnPHP

2009-03-13T07:19:51-05:00

I will start this blog entry by saying I like Zend Framework. I really do. However, the part of ZF I don't use is the MVC implementation. No, it's not bad. Actually it's a good implementation that is the product of a lot of hard work by Zenders and non-Zenders alike. I use bits and pieces of ZF in my PHP projects and, admittedly, Zend's MVC implementation never made the cut. Why?

I started using my first MVC implementation, Phrame, back around 2002 long before ZF. I was quickly turned off by Phrame's Stuts-ish familiarity (no, I don't hate on Struts either). The crux of my problem was the need to edit a bunch of files just to implement one page in my web application. So started MVCnPHP. That need to itch a scratch produced an MVC implementation that made it's way into my 9-to-5. Over the next 7 years or so I did attempt to release MVCnPHP into the wild but never really polished it off. Today I'm happy to announce that has changed.

Before I get into MVCnPHP let me circle back around to ZF. Why didn't I adopt it's MVC implementation when it was released? I considered it but the issue simply came down to my biased view of the design differences. In fact, I was motivated to release MVCnPHP because of a project I recently inherited that uses the Zend MVC implementation. The biggest difference between the ZF MVC implementation and MVCnPHP is MVCnPHP is meant to allow you to isolate views and commands into their own files and simply drop them into a directory then having your controller immediately aware of them. I admit this quality of MVCnPHP isn't unique in the world of MVC implementations but this whole experience motivated me to really start working on polishing the code and documenting how to use it. Today I'm happy to announce my first release of those efforts.

So to cut the fluff, here's a few things to get you started on MVCnPHP:

I know learning a new MVC implementation may appear time so to help you evaluate it you can see it in action with this sample application that not only excersizes most the features of MVCnPHP, it gives you quick access to the code behind the scenes.
After that why not download MVCnPHP. We have versions that support PHP 5.2.x and well as a release that support PHP 5.3 namespaces.
Once installed all you need to do use read the MVCnPHP User Guide. The guide is still a work in progress but it does cover most of what you need to get started.

I can barely contain my personal excitement for getting this out. MVCnPHP represents a library that brings the benefits of a model-view-controller implementation in a package that is small, yet packed full of features with no limits for being extended. I hope you all agree.

The Pragmatic Side of Twitter

2009-02-25T10:33:19-06:00

It never fails. Once in a while (today being one of them) I get questions from friends about Twitter an why they should use it. I use to point them to one of my blog posts on the subject. That might be enough to get people to sign up but many still don't get it. Truth be told, Twitter is ironically hard to describe in just 140 characters so maybe instead of trying to focus so much on the social aspects of the site I should simply give clear examples of good things that have happened since I joined Twitter.

Most recently a reciprocal follower @sweatje posted this: "Have some part time telecomuting PHP/Data Modeling work for a client I am unable to take on. Message me if you are interested." A few weeks later I was tabbed to take on this part time work for the client he mentioned. Now over a month into it I can add that not only is the opportunity fun, but the client is great to work with.

A customer of mine informed me her husband was laid off from Principal Financial Group (http://www.principal.com). I suggested that he join Twitter as I knew there were a few local recruiters on the site. Just over a month ago I learned that that same person got a job through @sfedd's company via an introduction I made to them both on Twitter.

@CalEvans announced he was leaving Zend as the Editor of DevZone and community evangelist. Over a series of months I was offered the job to replace him. It didn't pan out but without Twitter the opportunity would have never found me, a software guy tucked away in Urbandale, Iowa. In a bit of a twist, I blogged about the events then posted it to Twitter and eventually this all made it's way to @EliW who is now working hard at that post for Zend.

I love my family and my job. However they are competing influences. I've met great people like @markwarnke who emphasis the need for balance (I haven't taken his ONO thing hook-line-and-sinker but the guy is a must-follow) and not too long ago my wife, @kbibbs, joined Twitter along with my dad, @mdbibbs and his love interest @TeresaBrent. For me that means I get regular updates on my kids, what my wife is doing, how my retired father is enjoying himself and what he and @TeresaBrent are up to. I get all that as it happens...not by waiting to make long overdue phone calls to my dad or getting middle of the day phone calls from my wife.

Now toss in the typical uses of Twitter, meeting new people, sharing thoughts with people with like interests, answering questions from people in need and then you really begin to see the power of it as a medium. I'd love to hear how others have used Twitter to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others.

PHP 5.2, Mac OS X Leopard and Oracle

2009-01-16T10:30:58-06:00

I wanted to give a heads-up to all the PHP, Mac and Oracle fans that I just had an article published on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). It's been in the works for months but has only just recently been published. I have to give Christopher Jones a lot of credit for being patient wtih me. The end result was an article that was fairly easy to write but was a bit of a pain. What you see in the final version is how to setup PHP, Apache and the Oracle Instant Client on a Macbook running Leopard. The most unfortunate part of all this is I was unable to get all the moving parts working on stock version of Apache. Instead I had to roll with a version of Apache I compiled from source. For those of you interested in using Oracle the article walks you through the installation process pretty well. It should also be noted I did confirm the same instructions worked flawlessly using the last PHP 5.3 alpha release. To the skilled people in the PHP Community, if someone does figure out how to get this working with the stock version of Apache I would love to hear how you did it because that'd be ideal for most of us Mac users. Comments aren't possible on the OTN version so feel free to add comments here.

Tagged By Nobody

2008-12-29T11:57:48-06:00

I've never been tagged before in any sort of blog meme thing but after seeing Marcus Whitney post one on his blog I figured I might as well give it a try for myself.

I've been with my wife, Kate, for over 17 years. We started dating in high school in November of '91 and got married in June of 1998 and now have three daughters.
I have a sister, Tina, who use to wrestle. Yes, wrestle. Her sophomore year at Davenport Central she wrestled varsity and finished over .500. Despite rumors, no, she never did beat her older brother. She tried out for Team USA finishing first at 125lbs when she was in high school. This earned her a trip down to Caracas, Venezuela for an international meet before "retiring". For all you bachelors out there, don't let all this intimidate you. She's smart, cute and available (idiots and jackholes need not apply).
During my sophomore year in high school I went nearly the entire year without talking to my father. The bad blood was over my parents divorce and fact I wrestled at a high school (Davenport North) other than the one he taught and coached at (Davenport Central). It was stupid and I am ashamed I was so hard headed. I'm glad he and I have worked hard to make up for that lost time.
I used to carry a brief case I won at a regional science and engineering fair with me to class back in high school.
I was arrested once in college in Iowa City for public intoxication. I was at a local bar when I started feeling ill and I couldn't bring myself to puke in a clean bathroom stall so I went around back and puked in the dumpster. I should have puked in the bathroom.
In 1997 I was introduced to Linux and shortly after I married my love for the outdoors with my love for technology by starting Iowa Outdoors. I used technologies available under Linux most notably Apache, MySQL and PHP. I sold it in April of 2007 to Heartland Communications.
My middle name is LaMar. Yes. LaMar.

Unfortunately many people in my address book simply don't have blogs. However, here are a few that do I'd like to hear from:

Here are the rules for my fellow bloggers:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Will the Real Government IT Community Please Stand Up?

2008-12-02T11:51:42-06:00

Before any of what I am about to say can make any sense first know that the motivation for all this comes in light of a decision I've recently made to continue on in government a bit longer. Secondly, before I can begin to answer the question posed in the title of the blog entry let's first define what I mean by community. Here are a few definitions I dug up:

Group of people sharing a common understanding who reveal themselves by using the same language, manners, tradition and law.Wictionary.org

A specific group of people, often living in a defined geographic area, who share a common culture, values, and norms and who are arranged in a social structure according to relationships the community has developed over a period of timecdc.gov.

So if I had to craft my own definition of a community it'd be more of a list of requirements:

A group of people who share a common culture
A group of people who willing participate in building relationships in the community
An unselfish group collaborating to achieve a common set of goals

You don't have to search too hard for great examples of communities. Examples I can name are Iowa Outdoors, a community I founded that is dedicated to hunting and fishing in Iowa. There is also the PHP community...for those not in the know PHP is a popular programming language for building websites (including this blog). In fact, open source software such as PHP are some of the best online communities (Apache, Ubuntu, etc).

Notably missing from that list is anything catering to government technology workers. Google doesn't seem to reveal anything. Probing IRC for related channels gave the same. If there were a segment of people who could benefit most from our community it is government. So why doesn't one exist? I think major reason is cultural. Government culture is very much top-down which stands in contrast stark contrast to the successful communities I participate in which are all grassroots efforts. Need a great example of that? Take the now defunct Government Open Code Consortium (site is still up but clearly not in use). While the notion of the group was admirable, one of the reasons it failed the community they were trying to cater to didn't exist yet. Couple that with the fact that single goal of sharing source code involves all sorts of very frustrating hurdles (government lawyers, contracts, etc). It was simply too much to bite off.

Another cultural hurdle is that most online communities use things like instant messaging, IRC and a bunch of social networks like Twitter and Facebook....things that are often blocked by most web filters deployed by many government entities. Why? I believe that public perception is that all those things are simply time drains and while they certainly can be just that, the benefits that can be reaped from these communities far outweighs the abuse of that privilege by a few government workers.

I can only speak for state government where I've dedicated the past 6+ years of my life by saying that the problems that face state agencies are usually not unique within that state. More so, you can rest assured that when you add in other states all tasked with similar responsibilities you know there are a number of initiatives to solve problems all happening in their individual silos. Lumping in the federal government only exasperates the problem. All that collective knowledge working independent of one another without collaboration only to guarantee government will keep its perception of being inefficient and rigid. That has to change. The Government IT culture has to change.

Fortunately I've been put in a situation where I can actually try to address this lack of community by focusing first here on Iowa where I guess we have in the neighborhood of 150 developers and likely three times that when you include the other IT disciplines (networking, infrastructure, security, data management, etc). That's just state government. Now lump in all the cities and counties in Iowa . Then toss in the other 49 states with their counties and cities. Finish it all off by adding the federal government to the mix and I think you begin to feel the potential that community can has.

By focusing on the community and building relationships across the boundaries the top-down style government puts in place it will eventually become an entity of it's own and it is only when that community fits our earlier definition that we can begin to do really creative things like sharing knowledge, source code and resources (people, hardware, etc). I hope you'll follow me on this trek and that you recruit people you know in government IT to participate and be a part of something exciting. After all, without the people there is no community.

Big Career Decision

2008-11-26T13:14:19-06:00

This past Sunday I received a verbal offer from Zend to be the Editor-in-Chief of DevZone and to play an active part in the PHP Community. The job is near perfect as it involved writing, podcasting, some coding, organizing the content for ZendCon and being a member of the "press" at various PHP conferences throughout the world. All that and I could stay right here in Iowa. So why not take it? Well, because life can be complicated.

There are a few defining moments in life and this has been a huge one for my career. The past few weeks have required me to think about where I want to take my career and at one point during the interview process I was asked where I want to be in 5 years. Believe it or not I had no answer. I knew before I could make this decision I had to get that ironed out....and I have. I can rehash the decision but here's just a snippet of the note I sent to Zend (note: I did call to tell them all this verbally first which is PC);

My decision has come down to three things. First, there is my family. My wife, Kate, is the single pillar in my life that keeps my world in balance and makes any successes in other parts of my life possible. She made it very clear to me she'd support me in any decision I make. That said, she never really nudged me in the direction of Zend which gave me immediate cause for concern. Secondly, my manager has agreed to work on structuring my current job to include some of the things that makes the opportunity with Zend so attractive. Sure, it won't be on a global scale but it is a real effort on their part to keep me.

The biggest motivation, though, is where I take my career in the long term. One thing I don't want to have come out of this is for me to feel that by staying in my current job that I'm somehow "settling" and be perceived as adverse to risk. Please know that simply isn't true. During my trip to Cupertino I was asked where I see myself in 5 years. I babbled awkwardly trying to search for the answer. In fact that question was left unanswered until recently. At heart I have a real entrepreneurial spirit and now I believe strongly that happiness in my career means owning my own software business and I feel the past 11 years have set me up with both the technical know-how and the soft skills to make it work. I have to chase that dream. I have to do it now.

So no need to ask me what's next for Tony Bibbs. It is all right there...I'm staying put. In the meantime I will take my duties with the State serious but I have some very clear objectives for myself moving forward and that's an exhilarating feeling!

Video from Ignite Des Moines

2008-11-17T15:30:04-06:00

This just in! So you've maybe seen the slides from my Ignite Des Moines talk. Thought that sucked? Now you get the video where I give the talk while drinking!

Click To Play