For the past 8 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux OSX, and when necessary, Windows. He has built 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.”

Cal is currently based in Utrecht, Netherlands. He is a professional member of the PHP community and attends more conferences in a year than most people get to go to in a lifetime. He fills his spare time as the Director of the PCE for Ibuildings. Cal is responsible for coordinating the awesome Dutch PHP Conference in Amsterdam. In Cal’s past life, he was the Editor in Chief of Zend’s DevZone, host of the podcast PHP Abstract and responsible for coordinating ZendCon. Cal is the author of php|architect’s Guide to Programming with Zend Framework. Cal is happily married to wife 1.25, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 kids. A few other interesting facts about Cal:

• In 2001, he wrote his own PHP framework.
• He didn’t have to take English 101 because he wrote a perfect paper (which will be surprising to you if you followed Zend’s DevZone closely, or if Cal has ever written your name.)
• He wants a tattoo that says “Property of Kathy” written in Tengwar.
• He has produced over 40 live concert videos.
• He met The Lovely and Talented Kathy while they were both working as teenagers at Walt Disney World.

There are so many things that people have said about Cal, we couldn’t begin to list them all here. But here is a testament to his awesomeness:

Cal was great to work with, highly technical, talented, and a great listener. Cal was a joy to work with, and was always personalble with his clients no matter what level of the organization they where in. Cal’s Great! — Danny McGowan, PMP, Project Manager, Christian Broadcasting
Network

During my time blogging about PHP and building fav.or.it Cal has been an extremely useful resource within the PHP community. He has a great depth of technical knowledge and has a great understanding of the requirements of the development community and how to reach out to them. — Nicholas Halstead, CEO & Founder, fav.or.it

Cal’s talks will be “5 Things I wish they had told me before I started programming in PHP” (A raucous romp through PHP, covering not only mistakes that programmers make but skills they need to make sure they master) and Design Patterns in PHP. You won’t want to miss them!