Well, the party’s over – the booths have been packed up, the X-Boxes put away and most of the attendees have already scattered back towards which ever of the four corners of the world they arrived from. Happily, things seemed to go really well this year and overall, I feel like it was a better conference than the previous years.

Things seemed to flow well – the sessions were easy to find and were usually full up with eager developers wanting to glean what they could from the talk. A great range of topics was presented – here’s just a small list:

• API Development
• PayPal’s developer offerings
• memcached
• PHP Security
• mobile application development with PHP
• High performance MySQL tips
• Unicode (because, after all, what PHP conference these days would be complete without a talk on this)
• DateTime
• Agile development

And that’s not even the half of it – there were around fifty-five talks in all presented over three days (including the tutorials on the first day). Thankfully, for those that weren’t able to attend, the folks over at the Zend Developer Zone will have podcast recordings (and slides too, I think) of each of them posted soon.

I also want to make mention of someone who played a big part in helping make sure things came together both before and during the conference this year – Cal Evans. His daily duties included not only being the MC for the event, but also more behind the scenes magic that helped the whole event come off so well. The best part about it all was that, despite the Zend duties that he always had to attend to, he always had the time to stop and work with the people in the community – even if it was just to stop off and connect two people (“you gotta meet this guy…”).

The hotel was nice and the events in the evenings were a nice chance to mingle with ther developers in a bit more informal setting (oh, and Yahoo – maybe not so much with the comedian and magician next time around). There were a few things that I imagine couldn’t be helped too much (the quality of the service at the hotel, the coordination of the vegetarian meals), but they didn’t distract too much from the overall feel of the conference.

Here’s hoping to see you all next year (and hoping I get to come! heh)

I wonder how hard it would be to create a service, targeted at smaller groups (like the PHP Women) to make the distribution of their t-shirts easier.

I know there’s sites like CafePress and Zazzle out there that let you set up custom stores with custom shirts on them, but a more community-centric site might be nice too. The shirts could even be tagged with the conference they were given out at so people could “collect them all” if they wanted. php.communityshirts.com anyone?

Any comments/suggestions/flames on the topic? Would this even be something that would be used?

So it’s two days in to this year’s ZendCon and things are already better than ever. It just feels like there was that little bit of extra effort put into things this year and it shows. There’s tons of great talks and lots of cool people around to meet – but official (like those from Zend) and the more unofficial – like the members of the PHP Women group.

It’s day three now (I’ve been slacking on writing my posts this time) and I’ve already had more knowledge crammed into my head than I’ll ever remember, but I’m enjoying it. It’s nice to balance talks like “Extending PHP” talk from Sara/Wez/Marcus with things like Terry’s talk “The Internet is an Ogre: Finding Art in the Software Architecture”. Everything’s been good so far, and I’m looking forward to today’s talks. I’m planning on hitting up a few more than yesterday (sleep does wonders for the attention span), so we’ll see how things are at the end of today.

I know I mentioned in it a previous post, but one of the coolest things about coming to a conference like this – really any PHP conference that’s out there – is the chance to meet people. The trading cards this year are an effort to jump-start this kind of networking. Honestly, I can’t day I’ve seen a group of people at a table at lunch (or breakfast for that matter) just sitting around and not talking all that much. That is, of course, unless they’re laptops open and on IRC (*cough*). It’s wonderful to see this kind of participation – people talking about anything and everything: where they’re from, what they do, something fun their working on, etc. There’s even some out there arguing the finer parts of certain PHP-related projects.

It’s wonderful to see such a thriving, vibrant community surrounding this great “little” language of ours. It’s a great mix of both those experienced, beginner and everyone in between and it comes out the other side a nice, rounded whole.

So, if you’re here at the conference and you’ve been a little timid up until now, be bold – step out and meet people. Talk to anyone, pass out business cards or come grab a free t-shirt from the PHP Women. I’ll have my PHPDeveloper.org t-shirt on today and some extras floating around with me, so if you spot me and want a shirt, just let me know!

One of the nice things about conferences is getting to meet people that you’ve only talked to online and meeting those you’ve never talked to before. No matter what, though – at a PHP conference – you’re just about guaranteed to meet someone you’ve heard of or read something online by.

A few of us were sitting around at the hotel bar tonight and the comment was thrown out (thanks Elizabeth) about how small the PHP community is. Not in the number of people in it, but in how it feels. Several other communities have their divisions and factions all around the world, but it seems like the PHP community has bridged those gaps and seen its way to making more of a unified whole. A little while back (on Ben Ramsey’s blog I think) there was a mention of another conference attendee that found it amazing that he was sitting at the same table with “the cool kids” of the PHP community and that they were just like any other developer.

In my opinion, it’s things like this that make the PHP community one of the best out there. It’s just as large as any of the other language groups on the web, but it still manages to keep that feeling of closeness that others have lost. The community pulls together to help with projects on the language (like the upcoming PHP 5.3) and with pushing their own applications to their limits. People offer help and, sure there are times of disagreement and code gets tossed out, but overall, the PHP community is a pretty friendly place.

It’s a place where the people you read about in daily blogs (like Chris Shiflett, Wez Furlong, Sara Golemon, etc) aren’t these “higher developers” off doing their own thing away from the rest of the community. They’re right there with the rest of us, hacking at code and fixing those bugs to help make PHP’s slice of the web an even happier place to be.

If you happen to be at this year’s ZendCon (going on now) don’t be afraid to jump right into the conversations. As the speakers questions – trust me, they love ’em – and get to know others in the group here for the week. Not only could you make connections with other developers that live all over the world, but you could make some good friends in the process.

The Eclipse Foundation, in cooperation with Zend, have officially launched the first stable (1.0) version of a project that’s been in development for a few years now – the PDT (PHP Development Tools) project.

The PDT project is based around the already wildly popular Eclipse platform, making it not only one of the most powerful development platforms for PHP developers, but also one of the most flexible. If there’s something you see lacking in what PDT has to offer, fixing it is as simple as one of two steps – you can either go out to the wide repository of Eclipse projects out there and find the components you might need or step up to the plate and create your own component and share it with the rest of the community. With a list of around 1,400 Eclipse plugins, though, you probably won’t be hurting for any bit of functionality you might need.

I had a chance to talk on a conference call the other day to discuss the project and what sort of impact they (Eclipse and Zend) thought it would have on not just the PHP community but the entire Open Source community as whole. The reasoning is pretty simple – the PDT project was created with one goal in mind – to take the foundation that the Eclipse project already has and make it into something that PHP developers all over the world can look to as a strong, flexible IDE option wen they’re packing their editor of choice.

Even if you’ve already become set in your ways, you should definitely check out the features that this new version of PDT has to offer. It takes bits and pieces from other IDEs out there and packages them all together into an easy to use package including:

• Handy code editing features like syntax highlighting, code folding (a personal favorite) and little hints to remind you the details of a function you’re adding
• the addition of both a Project and PHP Explorer views that work with introspection to update dynamically as things are added to the project (add a class to your file and it’s reflexed in the Explorer)
• Debugging support – this includes support for their debugger (Zend’s) and XDebug support
• and, of course, the Eclipse framework itself allowing developers to make, well, whatever they want to sit on top of PDT

That’s where a lot of the real power of this project comes in – the extensibility. Other IDEs (with the exception of things like Komodo) don’t have much in the way of user-defined plugins, at least not to this level. The Eclipse platform was created to be as flexible as possible. As a result anything about the project can be changed, added, removed, duplicated…well, you get the idea.

According to their latest press release, the PDT project has already seen over 300,000 downloads – and that’s not counting what they’ll get when the announcement of this stable version hits the web.

Check it out and grab the download of this latest version. It might not be exactly what you’re looking for but that’s the beauty of it – you have the power to mold it into just the right tool for you.

Just thought I’d drop a note to all that’ll be attending this year’s Zend/PHP Conference & Expo – the t-shirts that I made up last year (see here for what they look like) will be making an appearance this year as well.

I’m not sure exactly how many of the shirts I have left (I’ll update this post later on with the numbers) but I’ll be bringing them along and will have them with me during the conference. I think they’re mostly mediums and extra-larges.

So, if you’re attending and would like a free t-shirt (yes, that’s right – free! woo!) from PHPDeveloper.org, be sure to track me down and harass me. I’ll be wearing one the first day so I should be pretty easy to spot.

UPDATE: I checked out the t-shirt supply I have left – 8 mediums, 5 larges and 7 extra-larges. If you’d like me to save one (like Wez has already posted his preference) add a comment here and I’ll set one aside. It’ll be first come first serve after that, though – so if you’re wanting one, add a note or find me fast 🙂

Well, I’m back from this year’s Zend/PHP Conference & Expo out in San Jose, California and can honestly say I had a blast. I’ve talked to people in the past that have gone to other conferences and have had fun, but this experience was more than that for me. Not only did I get to listen to some great talks, but I also got to meet up with some of the people I write about every day on PHPDeveloper.org and have never gotten a chance to shake hands with – including Aaron Wormus, Chris Shiflett, Ben Ramsey, the attending #phpc gang, and various others (as I forced my t-shirts upon them).

As mentioned, the talks were great, and the conference planners did a pretty good job keeping dupes out of the schedule. There were some that overlapped a bit, but I think that just happened because of the wide range of some of the talks. Here’s some of the ones I attended:

• Robert Richards – Advanced XML and Web Services
• Chris Shiflett – Essential PHP Security
• Eli White – High Volume PHP & MySQL Scaling Techniques (standing room only)
• Chris Jones – The Experience: Faster PHP with Oracle
• Aaron Wormus – Moving to PHP5 with Style
• Jaisen Mathai – Efficient development Using PHP, JSON and AJAX
• Ilia Alshanetsky – Caching Systems
• Andrei Zmievski – Unicoding with PHP6
• Sebastian Bergmann – Testing PHP Applications with PHPUnit
• John Coggeshall – Create a Sophisticated Web Application in 45 minutes – Using the Zend Framework

Definitely a busy week, but all of the talks I went to were great. I even learned a few helpful hints from them. 😉 Overall, though, it almost made me feel back for still being stuck in PHP4 Land where I work. There’s so much more that PHP5 has to offer, and making a move to it wouldn’t be that bad *crosses fingers*. I already had a PHP5 install on the test side to work with – now it’s just a matter of really getting in and making the changes.

My wife came along with me for the week and we managed to get out and do a few things during the day and evenings. We managed to get out to a local attraction, the Winchester Mystery House to get the tour (we’d wanted to do the flashlight tour on the 31st, but it was all sold out) and, post-conference, went up to San Francisco for what was, quite possibly, the rainiest day of the whole week. It turned out good, though, and we ate at a wonderful little place off the main strip – Scoma’s – with some of the best lobster bisque I’d ever had.

Needless, to say, it was a great week, and here’s to hoping I get to make the trip back out there next year. I’d be good to see the familiar faces again, and to get to catch up on all of the latest developments in the PHP world. Thanks to Zend for a fun week, and thanks to the DoubleTree for the nice facilities, and, most important of all, thanks to Axis Open Source for the free WiFi. There’s nothing more frustrating than a internet-related conference without an internet connection…

Update: if anyone happens to know if a cheap way to get things overseas from the US, please let me know. I want to send these shirts out, but I can’t seem to find a cost-effective solution.

So, I’m back from this year’s Zend/PHP Conference & Expo and am looking over the damage done to the PHPDeveloper.org shirt population (my wrapup of the conference will come in another post). From the looks of things, I apparently underestimated the correct size of the average PHP conference goer. I started off with 50 shirts of varying sizes (M/L/XL) divided up into mostly XL shirts. It seems, though, that most of the people that were given a shirt by the end of the week ended up with a Large size (not the XL like I had figured – no offense meant to the other coders out there).

So, as a result, here’s the tally of what I have left – out of the 50 t-shirts, there’s 23-ish (I owe one or two to different people) of them left to be up for grabs for anyone out there. It’s first come, first serve, so if you want one, get while the gettin’s good:

(I’ll try to keep this post updated as the shirts are dropped from the list)

All you need to do to get your hands on one of these shirts is to drop me a line and let me know your shipping information. There’ll only be a $7 charge on top of the shipping to help pay for the shirts. Donations of more are always welcome and will go to help the site directly.

If you’d like to see some “action shots” of the shirts and where they were showing up at the conference, check out these great photos:

• Ben Ramsey donning it at the con
• Myself and two developers from Indeed.com hanging out at the ‘Pirate Party’
• C’est moi as taken by Cal
• Ben Ramsey and Aaron Wormus finding out info from one of the vendors
• Aaron and I showing our PHPDev pride during the happy hour the first night

And, of course, my personal favorite shot – when Cal got up and plugged the shirts as part of his announcements one morning (no, I didn’t ask him to – as much of a surprise to me as anyone).

So, if you’re interested in grabbing one of these shirts (see this other entry for some more detailed photos), email me and let me know.

Wandering around through the parking lot at the lunch break today, the plate in the photo was spotted. So, who wants to place money who this plate belongs to? 😉