Meet Our Instructors

John Valance is a technical consultant specializing in database and web application development on the IBM i platform. He is also a trainer for Zend Technologies, teaching PHP Foundations for System i Programmers. John has been developing applications on IBM midrange systems since the 1980s, and web applications since 2000. He is well versed in a number of languages and technologies, including PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, Java, Struts, ILE RPG, ASP, SQL, Jasper Reports and Crystal Reports. John is a frequent presenter at IBM user groups, and has created presentations and labs on many of these subjects. He grew up in New York City, and currently lives in northern Vermont. John is also an accomplished musician, and plays several instruments in a variety of genres. John teaches PHP I: Foundations for IBM i.

Doug Bierer is a PHP 5.3 & Zend Framework Certified trainer and independent consultant. He is a technical trainer, writer and software developer with substantial experience in programming (PHP, PERL, Java, C, C++, and others), especially in the LAMP environment. With over 20 years experience in programming, database, course development and training, Doug teaches several technical training classes for Zend Technologies and is the co-founder of unlikelysource.com a web development company. He has authored or contributed to a dozen technical books. Doug teaches PHP II: Higher Structure, Quick Start: PHP for OO/Procedural Programmers, Building Security into your PHP Applications and the Zend Framework classes series.

Clark Everetts is a PHP Certified Engineer who began programming in 1982 at the age of 15, on a TRS-80 Color Computer with BASIC and PEEK and POKE commands. He continued with academic training in Computer Science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach FL and The University of Alabama in Huntsville, working as a Student Assistant and Graduate Research Assistant. For twelve years he was an Analyst, Programmer, and Software Engineer for Madison Research Corporation in Huntsville AL, developing systems for Army and NASA customers. Clark is currently teaching PHP I: Foundations, PHP II: Higher Structures and Zend Framework: Fundamentals on-line classes for Zend Technologies. Clark joined Zend technologies as a professional services consultant where he works with some of the biggest companies in North America conducting development and performance optimization contracts for various companies.

Michael Kimsal is a PHP Certified Engineer who has been working with the web since 1994, and with a variety of web technologies since 1996 - PHP, ASP, Perl, CF, Java, Grails and .Net. His main areas of expertise are in PHP and Grails these days. Michael runs GroovyMag and JSMag, monthly PDF magazines focused on Groovy and JavaScript, and also hosts the WebDevRadio podcast series. Michael teaches several of the on-line training classes that Zend offers including: Quick Start: PHP for Experienced Programmers, Test Prep: PHP 5 Certification, Building Security into your PHP Applications, Zend Server & Zend Studio.

Maurice Kherlakian has been using PHP for over 10 years. He has been a consultant for the past few years taking on development and performance optimization contracts for various companies. He recently joined Zend technologies as a professional services consultant where he consults for some of the biggest companies in North America. He lives in Montreal, Canada. Maurice teaches Zend Server and Zend Studio classes, Building Security into your PHP Applications and the Zend Framework classes series.

Mike Pavlak has been working with IBM midrange solutions since 1992 and IBM Mainframes before that. After years of developing applications using RPG, CL and PHP he managed IT development and IT for power protection manufacturer Tripp Lite. Mike joined Zend Technologies as a Solutions Consultant working with the i5 sales team in 2008 and enjoys helping IBM i customers explore PHP as a state of the art solution for application modernization. Mike lives in suburban Chicago with his wife, five kids, two dogs, three cats, a leopard spotted gecko, Russian tortoise, two rabbits, and a half dozen fish. Mike teaches PHP I: Foundations for IBM i.

Eric Ritchie is a PHP5.3, Zend Framework, MySQL Developer and MySQL DBA certified Senior Consultant at Zend Technologies - the PHP Company. The holder of a B-Eng honors degree in Electronic and Information Engineering from The Robert Gordon University (formerly The Robert Gordon Institute of Technology) - Aberdeen, Scotland; and benefiting from 23 years of software development experience (ten of which spent working with PHP and web technologies) and 16 years system administration experience. He is completely at home developing comprehensive architectural and software solutions for Zend's consulting customers. When not consulting or training, Eric can be found speaking at technical PHP conferences in and around Germany. On the rare occasion that time allows, he enjoys relaxing with a nice glass of fine single malt, as do all Scotsmen!

Elena M. Brambilla is a PHP Certified Engineer. She has been PHP developer for over 10 years. Her experience started as a Cobol developer on IBM environment for over 10 years. She has been a consultant for various companies over the years. One of her projects was leading was creation of the intranet for the Airports of Milan (Linate and Malpensa). Four years ago, she joined Zend as a Project and Training Manager. Elena teaches PHP I: Foundations, PHP II: Higher Structures, Quick Start: PHP for OO/Procedural Programmers, Building Security into your PHP Applications and the Zend Framework class series. Elena particularly likes to bring IBM users to a high level of PHP development using object-oriented programming: she finds that the results are very rewarding. She lives in a small village on the hills near Pavia, Italy with her two sons, one cat and two fishes. She loves gardening, skiing and reading books.

Slavey Karadzhov is Senior Consultant at Zend Technologies. He is PHP 5, PHP 5.3, Zend Framework Certified and MySQL Engineer. Proud owner of two master degrees - one in Computer Science from Sofia University, Bulgaria and one in Software Technologies from Stuttgart University of Applied Science, Germany. Backed up with good theoretical knowledge he has also solid experience. Interested in programming since his yearly years, he has more than 12 years of experience in PHP and many other programming languages - exotic (AGI, Basic, Pascal, Prolog) and not so exotic (Python, Java). He is also a strong open source supporter. Currently he is flying around the world and teaching courses like Zend Framework Fundamentals and Zend Framework Certification, Zend Studio, Zend Server, PHP for experienced users, Building security in PHP and others. You can also spot him on PHP conference like the International PHP Conference presenting the Zend products or his experience with new "buzz" technologies. During his free time he likes to travel in exotic places and enjoys the time with his family.

Gauthier Delamarre A software developer and PHP architect for over 10 years who is also a trainer and journalist. Gautheir has worked for years as an independent contractor for companies of various sizes. During his employment with Zend France from 2007 till 2009, he acquired an industrial vision of the development processes with PHP. Today, this experience makes Gauthier a recognized expert capable of taking on all of the milestones of a PHP software project, applying and transferring best practices at all times. Gauthier is also secretary of French AFUP since 2011 http://www.vaconsulting.lu/a-propos

Guillaume Poncon has been programming for 18+ years with 11 years experience with PHP. He also has experience in C, Java/J2EE, Shell, HTML/CSS/Javascript. He has contributed to several books including Best Practices PHP5 (Eyrolles) Zend Framework : bien programmer en PHP (Eyrolles) and Memento PHP/MySQL (Eyrolles). He has also written several articles and frequently speaks at conferences. Guillaume Poncon was the President of AFUP in 2007. He is PHPTV founder.

Xavier Gorse is the CEO and founder of the company ELAO, a French web agency dedicated to PHP and specializing in the Symfony PHP framework. He has been doing web development for 12 years and s very familiar with web project architecture. He has been using PHP for over 5 years now. Along with PHP he has prior experience with the J2EE stack in IBM Lotus DOMINO environment which includes Java and LotusScript, Javascript, CSS and Objective-C language. In 2009 he was President of the PHP User Group in France (AFUP)

Gabriele Santini PhD in Theoretical Computing at Ecole Normale Supérieure. Gabriele turned to "practical" computing in 2002. Gabriele works on projects ranging from application maintenance to managing a technical team.
He often contributes to improvement of OSS projects: PHP_Codesniffer to 1.3 version, release of Sonar plug-in for PHP and an improved version of phpUnderControl "PIC PHP SQLI". Gabrielle has presented at a large number of conferences as a speaker. He specializes in PHP industrialization processes.
He worked for SQLI, was a Senior Consultant for Zend Technologies and currently works as an independent consultant. Gabriele speaks Italian, French and English.

Daryl Wood is Chief Techincal Officer and principal at DataShuttle.net, a web development firm. He has had his own company for 13 years. He is a PHP 5.3 Zend Certified Engineer. He has been a technical trainer, writer and software developer for many years and has specialized in dynamic database-driven web development. His programming skills include PHP, MySQL, Javascript, Jquery, and various PHP frameworks. He graduated in aeronautical technical training at Westwood College of Technology. He loves software and is an avid reader of web development publications. He lives in the magnificent mountain region of North Idaho where he is an avid outdoorsman. He loves biking, and back country hiking treks with his wife, puppy, family and friends.

Daniel Cummings got his first computer in 1982 (the Timex Sinclair ZX81), his first Mac in 1985, and his first email address in 1992. In 1995, he completed his Master's degree at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University (NYU-ITP) creating a VR Surgical Simulator at NYU Medical School and subsequently worked at Interval Research in Palo Alto, CA; Zowie Toys; and LEGO Labs in San Mateo, CA building toy prototypes. Daniel has 10 years with PHP as a primary language developing image acquisition and client delivery solutions for the Pharmaceutical Marketing Tracking Service DBM/SCAN®. He teaches PHP I Foundations and PHP II Higher Structures at Zend Training. Daniel lives in New York with his wife and three children. He hosts monthly "Star Parties" at the local High School, writes songs for a funk band, and coaches two AYSO soccer teams.

Robyn Overstreet is a PHP 5.3 Certified Engineer who teaches PHP I: Foundations, PHP II: Higher Structures, Building Security into your PHP Applications and Test Prep: PHP 5.3 Certification classes for ZEND. She has been a PHP Developer for 7+ years. She specializes in custom Content Management Systems, has a Masters degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Prasant Kumar is a PHP5 Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE) and a Cloud University (CloudU) Certified Professional. He works as a Solution Engineer at Zend Technologies – the PHP Company. The holder of a Master’s Degree in Computer Applications from the Pondicherry University, India and benefiting from 6 years of software development experience (mostly working with PHP and web technologies). He is completely at home demonstrating and training Zend Products to customers and at field events such as conferences, seminars etc. He teaches Zend Server and Zend Studio Classes.

Dave Clark is a PHP 5.3 & Zend Framework ZCE who started working with PHP while building websites using various open source content management systems including Joomla! and MODx. Prior to relocating to Australia with his family in 2011, Dave ran his own web development company in Scotland while providing business technology training and consultancy services to UK based independent financial advisers and product providers. He now provides training services for Zend Technologies as a contract instructor while running his own Sydney based web development company DKC Web Development.

Evan Coury is a core contributor and long time Zend Framework user who is perhaps most well known in the community for authoring the robust module system in ZF2. In addition to being a PHP 5.3 and Zend Framework certified engineer, Evan is also a member of the Zend Framework Community Review Team and a regular speaker at developer conferences around the world. As an independent consultant, he has worked on and led many large-scale web application projects to success. When not in front of the computer, Evan has a passion for aviation and enjoys spending time with his two border collies.

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Customer Quote

I haven't done *any* online courses like this before, so I don't have much fodder for comparison, but I'm really enjoying the class so far. Compared to just buying a book, which is what I normally do, this is a far more engaging way to learn.

David WolfeAAA Northern California

Well done. The examples were to the point. Also, you helped us keep an eye on security and performance in php (something all too often overlooked).

Troy Wright,Information Technology Services, University of California, Santa Cruz

Thanks for making PHP look much easier then what it has.

Dale Looft

Zend - The PHP Company

Meet Our Instructors