In this episode I'm interviewing Cal Evans (https://twitter.com/calevans) at PHPBenelux Conference 2016.

Check out the video footage on Youtube: https://youtu.be/pGJ6nN_otaw

Cal was invited as the keynote speaker which he was very excited about. He had keynoted our very first edition back in 2010 and now he was back.

The central theme of the 2016 edition was "Welcome To The Jungle". We went all-out and decorated the expo hall like an actual jungle. This explains the setting of the interview.

Cal is a true community animal and has been involved in open source community work for more than a decade. He has become the go-to guy for all things community in the PHP scene.

He currently runs the Training and Certification program at Zend Technologies (http://zend.com) and has an outstanding track record as a developer advocate. 

Cal also runs his own company (http://www.eicc.com) with his lovely wife Kathy (https://twitter.com/kateva). The so-called Evans Internet Construction Company is the company behind well-known community initiatives such as: Nomad PHP (http://nomadphp.com/), Day Camp 4 Developers (http://daycamp4developers.com/), The CFP Report (https://thecfpreport.com) and Voices Of The ElePHPant (http://voicesoftheelephpant.com/)

In this interview we talk about developer advocacy and community relations. We focus primarily on the personal branding and marketing side of things. As a developer advocate/evangelist it takes quite some effort to build up your brand and to maintain it. We explain how we do it and how we measure success.

We ask Cal to name the motto by which he operates. The answer is not a suprise: Community Works. 


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Cal Evans - Personal branding, developer advocacy & community

I had a nice chat with Derick Rethans (https://twitter.com/derickr) at PHPBenelux Conference 2016 (http://conference.phpbenelux.eu).

We talked about how he became a British citizen, how Michael Schumacher encouraged him to learn PHP and a bunch of other random things.

We also talked about Derick's career and open source contributions. Derick works at MongoDB (https://www.mongodb.com/) where he focuses on the PHP driver and library.

Derick Rethans is the author and maintainer of Xdebug (https://xdebug.org), the well-known debugging extension in PHP.  He is also a well-respected PHP core contributor and release manager.

The video footage of the interview can be found on Youtube: https://youtu.be/APZF9YDRknI

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Derick Rethans - MongoDB, Xdebug & PHP

Juozas "Joe" Kaziukėnas (http://juokaz.com) is a tech entrepreneur and digital nomad, currently living in New York. Joe is Lithuanian and moved to Edinburgh (Scotland) for his studies.

During his time at university, he also got involved in open source communities. He traveled to conferences and eventually became an international conference speaker.

After graduating, he decided he wanted to move to New York to start a career as a tech entrepreneur.  Being young and somewhat naive, he sold his stuff, canceled the lease on his apartment and just went back and forth on a tourist visa while waiting for an actual work visa.

He figured the process would take a month, but in reality it took him 18 months to get the paperwork sorted out. During those 18 months, Joe lived like a digital nomad, basically being homeless.

He explains how this changed his life and his thought process.

Now he lives in New York, enjoying life and work there. But that doesn't mean he is no longer a digital nomad. Joe spends a lot of time abroad and he shares his experiences blending in with the locals.

An inspiring story!

Apologies for not including any real video footage, we did record video, but there was an issue with the SD-card and I lost the data. Joe agreed to a part 2 where we will discuss other topics. We will surely have video footage of part 2.

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Juozas "Joe" Kaziukėnas - Digital nomad, being homeless & living in New York

Peter Maynard (https://twitter.com/lilepeeps) is a Senior Audience Evangelism Manager at Microsoft. He focusses on Emerging Audiences and is part of the Developer Experience team in Belgium & Luxembourg (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/belux/).

This episode also has video, it's up on Youtube: https://youtu.be/iia3FaW30_I

Peter is an Englishman, hailing from the North West of England. He now lives in Belgium. We talk about what it's like living in Belgium as a "foreigner".

The majority of the episode is dedicated to his work at Microsoft. He talks about Microsoft as a company that is in flux. Peter explains what the strategy is behind their change towards a subscription-base model and what the role of the typical Microsoft partner is in that situation.

We also focus on developers and how Microsoft targets them, as well as emerging audiences that don't necessarily have a technical background.

In the end there's a bit of talk about his other passion: football and more specifically Liverpool FC.

The entire talk was very informative, but above all funny too. Let's say there was a fair share of banter involved.

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Peter Maynard - An Englishman in Belgium, Microsoft, Liverpool & banter

This episode features Victor Welling (https://twitter.com/victorwelling). Victor is a so-called "Technical Pathfinder" at Coolblue (https://coolblue.nl).

Coolblue is one of the hottest e-commerce companies in the Benelux area. They primarily focus on consumer electronics, but as Victor puts it: "We sell anything that fits into a box".

The video of this interview is up on Youtube: https://youtu.be/7keuTckfhIM

In this interview we talk about the magical formule for which Coolblue is so famous. We talk about their logistical process, their customer service and their marketing and brand awareness.

We also talk tech: the Coolblue technology stack, what's their approach to developing their platform and the role of Victor as a Technical Pathfinder in this process. Victor mentions the challenges that lie ahead and the recruiting that is required the match the ambitions of the company.

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Victor Welling of Coolblue - e-commerce & tech at Coolblue

Peter Gasston (https://twitter.com/stopsatgreen) is a front-end developer and web technologist that works for +rehabstudio (https://www.rehabstudio.com) in London.

Read the blog post about this interview: https://blog.feryn.eu/peter-gasston-commoditization-of-artificial-intelligence. The video is up on Youtube: https://youtu.be/_qremcORl9A

This interview was recorded in Rome at Codemotion 2016 (http://www.codemotionworld.com) where Peter presented his "OK Computer" presentation (https://speakerdeck.com/stopsatgreen/ok-computer-codemotion-rome) about the Commoditization of Artificial Intelligence.

We talk about how improved algorithms and the availability of massive computing power due to maturity of Cloud Computing has boosted Artificial Intelligence in a very profound way.

Both major players (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM) and smaller startups can leverage the Cloud for machine learning and offer added value through easy-to-use customer-facing APIs.

Most implementations focus on natural language understanding and computer vision. Here's a list of tools, services and APIs that were mentioned in the interview and/or Peter's presentation.

https://wit.ai
https://cloud.google.com/vision/
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/what-is-watson.html
https://cognitoys.com
http://clarif.ai
https://www.metamind.io
http://www.skymind.io
https://www.projectoxford.ai

Thanks to machine learning and massive data processing, artificial intelligence is now a commodity: recognizing objects, locations and people on pictures. Or even understanding the meaning of a conversation. 

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Peter Gasston - Commoditization of Artificial Intelligence

This episode features Ruben Romero (https://twitter.com/ruben_varnish). Ruben is director of community engagement at Varnish Software (https://varnish-software.com) in Oslo Norway.

The video interview is up on Youtube: http://feryn.link/1pFxvs4

Varnish Software is the company behind Varnish Cache (https://varnish-cache.org), the popular open source HTTP accelerator.

In this interview, we obviously focus on Varnish. We talk about the origin story, we talk about the role of Ruben in both the project and the company. We learn about the relationship between the open source project and its community members and the affiliation with Varnish Software.

We also look at the future of Varnish and learn about the upcoming version 5.

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Ruben Romero from Varnish Software

Jenny Wong (https://twitter.com/miss_jwo) is a community engineer at Human Made (http://hmn.md). The interview was recorded at the very first WordCamp Antwerp in Belgium (https://2016.antwerp.wordcamp.org).

The video footage of this interview is available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/fsdYyA6SeC8. Read the blog post: https://blog.feryn.eu/jenny-wong-php-wordpress/

In this interview we talk about how Jenny and I met. We also talk about Jenny's background, her involvement with PHP and her transition to the WordPress community.

We also discuss the hash tag #HMGOES. Jenny and her colleagues use it every time they travel to WordPress events. 

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Jenny Wong - From PHP to WordPress

Joe is back! The previous time a sat down with Juozas "Joe" Kaziukėnas (https://twitter.com/juokaz) was back in 2016. There was a video malfunction, but the audio was intact: https://soundcloud.com/thijsferyn/juozas-kaziukenas

In this interview we have video (https://youtu.be/sQpQUjB-UX4) and we focus on everything that happened after his time as a digital nomad and his relocation to New York City.

Fast-forward: Joe is tech entrepreneur who founded a company called Marketplace Pulse (https://www.marketplacepulse.com/). He provides E-commerce marketplace insight. He was featured in a Wall Street Journal article (https://twitter.com/juokaz/status/846390805472382977), which has had a really positive effect on him and his brand.

In this interview we talk about E-commerce, about marketplaces, about insights related to those marketplaces and content marketing.

There's also a lighter touch to the interview: we discuss Joe's passion for cycling and cars. Joe is a member of Classic Car Club Manhattan (https://classiccarclubmanhattan.com/), an exclusive club for petrol heads.

It was a very enjoyable conversation.  I hope you agree and enjoy it yourself.

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Juozas Kaziukėnas - E-commerce marketplaces, cars & cycling

Tech evangelist at Combell. PHPBenelux board member. PHP community member. International conference speaker. Travel hacker. Code, systems & automation.

Thijs Feryn

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