I attended conferences in 3 nations in 2015. From PHP UK in February to PHP Madison in November, I saw speakers live at six different events. Here are a handful of talks that stood out to me. I’m only including speakers I hadn’t seen before, since it’s easy for me to identify Helen, Nacin and a few others year after year.

Derick Rethans: Debugging past, present, and future PHP UK 2015

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mKnBKkE9G2s

Derick’s presentation identified many pieces of Xdebug that I didn’t know about and also helped me better understand (and better communicate) debugging strategies. This was added to my list of talks that I send to developers getting started wtih PHP and WordPress.

Lauren Pittenger: Intro to the Command Line for Designers

I love the command line and love that Lauren introduced it to designers. Her slides comparing commands to GUI that users are used to make a lot of sense and she also does a great job demonstrating a practical example.

Mirabai Knight: The Three Prongs of Steno Accessibility

Mirabai gave a great look into an area of accessibility that I love: making events more accessible. I love seeing live captioning at conferences (though i’ve learned I should warn my captioner if I am going to speak Klingon) and understanding how it all works is really exciting and eye opening.

Those are 3 of my favorites.  Of all the conferences you attended in 2015, what stood out to you?