KnpUniversity.com >>> SymfonyCasts.com

Today Edgar sits with Leanna − cofounder and voice of KnpUniversity.com, a KNP Labs spin-off − to discuss the recent brand name change, its implications and her favorite hobby.

About KnpUniversity / SymfonyCasts

Edgar − Welcome Leanna. So first, say I've lived on the moon for the past few years and it's the first time I've heard about you. What are you guys doing, and what is KnpUniversity / SymfonyCasts about?

Leanna − Yo Edgar! It’s an honor to be sitting down with you to discuss this. Ryan, Victor, Diego and I have been working on this fantastic app: SymfonyCasts, formerly known as KnpUniversity, that provides PHP Developers with a huge library of video tutorials, code downloads and challenges to speed up the PHP/Symfony learning curve. For a monthly or yearly subscription you get access to over 92 hours of the best PHP and Symfony video tutorial content. We are all about making it easier and faster for you to learn PHP and Symfony so you can get to what’s important - launching your site or new feature.

KnpUniversity changes its name but keeps the same owners and spirit

Edgar − We've been hearing about KnpUniversity becoming SymfonyCasts. What exactly is happening and what is all that about? What's the goal here?

Leanna − Yes, we’ve just gone through a rebranding to SymfonyCasts. But not to worry, it’s the same fun team (Victor, Diego, Ryan & Leanna) and the same awesome, high quality PHP and Symfony video tutorials. The name change came about from a new partnership we’ve begun with the Symfony company to be the *official* Symfony video tutorial resource. We’re making it easier for people trying to learn Symfony to find our content through the documentation and Symfony website.

Fear of changes

Edgar − Should I fear for any major change or a drop in quality? Will you stay on board or are you leaving the project?

Leanna − Fear not! Creating these tutorials for the wonderful community we have is way too much fun for us to ever consider anything else! The only change you’ll experience is a new logo and more access points to our content through Symfony.com. Seriously though, we have the friendliest user base. Everyone on the team loves getting into our help-ticket list, because there’s always a kind word or an interesting question in there.

SymfonyCasts future

Edgar − What can we expect from SymfonyCasts in the future? Any secret plan you can tell us about?

Leanna − We’ll we’re getting back to that matter transporter we mentioned in our first tweet. Jk jk! You can expect us to keep churning out awesome PHP, Javascript and Symfony content. And new features as well. If you haven’t been there in a while you should check out:

• Click the script to jump to that part of the video (woh!)
• Captions for new tutorials
• Code blocks in the scripts below the video that expand to give you context on what we’re doing in the tutorial.
• And bookmarking of full courses or individual chapters.

KNP Labs

Edgar − If I'm not mistaken, KnpUniversity was cofounded by you, Ryan and the KNP Labs agency. Now that your name is changing, what does that mean for KNP Labs and their development and training services? Are they still a thing?

Leanna − Nope, KNP Labs is not going away! And a good thing too because KNP Labs Agency is a FANTASTIC group of developers. I have yet to find another development agency that offers a great service from administrative to development. It’s just a unique place because of how much they value the friendly internal culture. Not something you find often with web agencies. So if you’re looking for training on Symfony or related technologies they’d be the first group I’d recommend.

Laetitia − As KNP Labs founder and managing partner, I can confirm that SymfonyCasts / KnpUnivertsity remains in the KNP Group - otherwise I would miss our daily chats! As for KNP Labs we're definitely here for the long run, mostly in France (Paris + Nantes + Caen), mostly with Symfony and JS frameworks.

We have big projects coming up but our values will always stay the same: we are passionate web developers who care for each other and for our clients − sincerely and actively, no bullshit. If that's something you can relate to as a company or as a developer, you should say hello at hello@knplabs.com and we'll see how we could work together!

Drupal / JS. Are we still friends?

Edgar − KnpUniversity was full of Symfony tutorials, but it was also very much full of Javascript and Drupal tutorials. Now that you've got a "symfony" in your name, will SymfonyCasts continue to offer and develop those tutorials?

Leanna − Absolutely! And most certainly more. The incredible communities behind Drupal and Symfony are very linked now that Drupal 8 is out there. So if you’re wanting to get a look under the hood of Drupal 8 then it pays to get an understanding of Symfony. And as for JS we’re continue to be committed to offering video tutorials of modern coding tools. This is an excellent example of that. Our most recent ReactJS tutorial is aimed at PHP developers who want to do more than just create a single page app. It’s awesome and packed with just over 5 hours of content.

Behind the scene

Edgar − Well Leanna, this really is an exciting change for KnpUniversity. But when you’re not busy with that what kinds of things do you spend your time on?

Leanna − Ha! Well, SymfonyCasts/KnpUniversity does take up a lot of my time and fortunately it is a really fun thing to work on! But when I have a chance I LOVE to embroider. I just had a trip with some friends of mine and I embroidered matching ’oh hey vacay” hats for all of us. That actually gives me an idea to do a code block tea towel! Ha, I’m going to go work on that now!

Conclusion

Edgar − Leanna, thank you so much for having answered all my questions. I hope it did not feel weird in any way to be interviewed by a talking cat mascot. We wish you great success with SymfonyCasts!

Leanna − Bye Edgar!