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PHP MySQL Workshop at Hive 55

This evening I attended the PHP MySQL workshop at Hive 55, which is one of the growing number of shared workspaces in New York City.  For the unfamiliar, shared workspaces are locations where people from many different walks of life choose to work for anywhere from 1 to 30 days per month.  It’s a great way to network, meet people with complimentary skill sets, and avoid the temptations inherent in working from home.  These types of initiatives will no doubt catalyze the growth in Silicon Alley that everyone keeps talking about.

Plus, they host cool events like tonight’s PHP/MySQL workshop which covered some of the tools used to build basic dynamic web pages.  Tonight’s lecture was given by Hans from http://www.bootup.io/.  I think we were all a bit shy at first, but the discussion got very interactive and there was some great networking afterwards.  I was lucky enough to meet Ryan Clarke and Dave Tomback who shared some of the challenges they are currently facing in building their respective startups.  The underlying theme was that business people like us need a technologist co-founder, especially if you’re thinking of outsourcing development.  Easier said than done in NYC, but good advice nonetheless.

As far as PHP tutorials, I’d also like to recommend the PHP Academy page on Youtube.  These videos are short, sweet and very useful.  Alex is one of the very best developers that I’ve come across when it comes to being able to explain concepts in an easily understandable manner.  I was even more impressed to find out how young he is.

Also, if you’re wondering how I found out about tonight’s event – I receive the NYC Edition of the weekly Startup Digest.  If you live in NYC and have any interest in attending tech related meetups, job fairs, etc, I highly recommend signing up for this newsletter.  They have editions for about 25 other cities, so check them out.  Enjoy!

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Hello World

There is always a bit of awkwardness in a first interaction, so I will break the ice with an introduction.  My name is Phil.  I am 24, live in New York City, and work in finance which I was trained to do at the illustrious Stern school of business at NYU.  Beyond any formal training, finance, business, and the confluence of the two are subjects I’ve been interested in for quite some time now.

I recently built a site: www.wrestlingontv.com.  I was (and still am) a huge fan of amateur wrestling, but find it very hard to track when the world’s oldest (as in first sport in almost every culture known to man) and greatest sport will be on TV, or even streaming on the internet.  I’m guessing the same problem goes for a lot of fans of non revenue, tertiary sports.  So, I am trying to develop a scalable model to track all of the wonderful coverage that my sport deserves and make it easy for others to know when they can enjoy this coverage.

I started with close zero technical ability (unless you count building really long formulas in excel, or that one week in 8th grade I spent learning BASIC in the hills of Western Massachusetts).  Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to document some of the resources I used to learn a bit of PHP, Drupal, MySQL, etc.  Also, I have a much more ambitious and involved project which will hopefully develop over the next several weeks and months which will be a lot of fun to write about.

While I’m keeping the newer project a bit of a secret for now (something most VCs would probably frown upon and call me paranoid for), I think that a lot of what I’m learning about SEO, databases, etc will be worthwhile to post.

I also am excited to write about my thoughts on the economics behind everything from Night Life to Brooklyn Kickball.  Please stay tuned, and send me an email if you are so inclined.