2008 was a great year for the PHP community - lots of growth, enhancements and improvements have lead us to where we are today. The language is stronger than ever and attracting more developers than it ever has. Let's take a look at just some of the things that made 2008 what it was:
Plenty of criticism and comparisons of PHP
The rise in popularity of the elePHPants
Growth in the PHP Women group (like the article contest and their 2nd brithday)
2008 - the Year of the Framework
PEAR Bug Traige event
Zend Framework's Dojo and AMF integration
A growing emphasis on unit testing and debugging
The last release in the PHP 4 series
Ibuildings launches their Center for Expertise (and Cal Evans is appointed Director)
Several major companies - like Microsoft and Adobe - show more interest in the PHP community
Lukas Smith launched his emPHPower iniative
php|architect launched their C7Y community website
this site made the move to the Solar Framework
PHPers participated once again in Google's Summer of Code
PEAR elctions were held
The Great Namespace Debate of 2008
Plenty of podcasts were released - PHP Abstract and the P3 Podcast
php|architect got a major overhaul of the site, the magazine and the structure of the company
Zend launched a new certification - Zend Framework Certified Engineer
Zend buyout rumors (no, it didn't happen)
the elePHPant World Tour
Continuing development on PHP 5.3
Conferences
CakeFest
PHP Brasil
PHP London
Dutch PHP Conference
Zend/PHP Conference & Expo
php|tek
php|works/PyWorks
PHP Quebec
PHP Appalachia
FrOSCon
International PHP Conference
PHP Camp
OpenExpo
PHP North West
SymfonyCamp
PHP Barcelona
PHP Security Camp
Our own job postings
Included companies like: CNet Networks, Ibuildings, Ning, InvestorGuide.com, Yahoo! and Schematic
In places like: Paris, UK, Nashville, Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Dallas and Chicago
Keith Casey has been named the one in charge of the unconference at the upcoming php|tek conference. In his new post he talks about how it'll be organized and what you can do to help.
So here's your mission: If you have ideas for an unconference session - whether you'd like to do it or not - write it down and start warming people up on it. We'll work to allow conference attendees to vote in sessions which are the most interesting to them.
The unconference sessions will start promptly after the normal day's sessions (around 4 or 5pm) and will happen in threes (for a total of 18 sessions). These sessions will be given by attendees and won't be subject to quite the same criteria as the normal conference talks. The sessions will be announced in two groupings - one 60 days before and the other 30 days out.
Just a quick note for the south american baker's and friends of cerveza: Some of the folks in Chile are having another CakePHP conference on Friday, Dec 19th(this week!). So if you want to check it out, the event is free and from my rough understanding of the schedule it looks interesting.
Speakers include Fabian Ramirez, David Riveros, Pablo Viojo and Julio Contreras M. and is happening down at the University of Chile. Check out the conference site for complete information.
Chris Jones (of Oracle) has posted his trip report from this year's PHP Brasil conference he attended:
Last week's PHP Brasil '08 conference was held at the "UNIFIEO" University in Osasco, a region of Sao Paulo. [...] The conference was organized under the leadership of Er Galvao Abbott with community input, and in conjunction with a logistics team from "Tempo Real Eventos". The conference was very interesting and successful.
He mentions the training sessions, talks and the exhibition hall that was "arranged around a basket ball court with a life-size PHP ElePHPant dominating one end". Lots of Oracle elePHPants were given away and the social events were enjoyed, accomidations were nice and plenty of networking was going on throughout the days.
The PHP Women site has a new post today - "Experiences of a Conference Virgin", a piece written up by Tess Barnes on her attendance at this year's PHP Northwest conference.
Up until November 2008 I was a conference virgin: no jollies, no hotel booking panic and no development talks. As I've been self employed as a website developer for three years I decided it was about time to break the mould, invest the profits and head up to Manchester.
She talks about the parts of the process - getting there, her concerns and her experiences there. She talks a bit about the conference and some of the talks and events and even sums it up with a few assumptions (like "Women can get exactly where they want to in the industry with hard work and determination").
php|tek is back! The 2009 edition of our extremely popular PHP conference will take place in Chicago between May 19 and 22nd. We are once again looking forward to a great event and are hard at work on some great new initiatives.
You can signup online to reserve your spot today and if you register before January 16th, 2009 you can get in on the Early Bird pricing (anywhere from $100 to $200 CAD depending on the type of attendee). You can find out more about the Call for Papers on this page on the conference site.
The first annual PHP North West conference happened this past Saturday (Nov 22, 2008) and was a great success. Over 150 attendees made it for the day long event, large groups of which came to the social events as well. Here's some of the slides and wrapups posted by speakers and attendees alike:
The PHP Quebec conference has posted the official schedule for this year's conference (happening March 4-6th, 2009 in Montreal, Canada).
Speakers include Matthew Weier O'Phinney, Derick Rethans, Sara Golemon, Sebastian Bergmann and many more. Topics include software lifecycles, unit testing, extensions and PHP in the enterprise. Talks will be given in English and in French.
You can still register to save your spot for the event. Early Bird pricing comes in around $500 CAD and a regular ticket after that it's bumped up to $600.
The SaniSoft group has announced a new event happening in the first part of December 2008 (in Buenos Aires, Argentina) - CakeFest.
Conferences are the forefronts of modern communications, more so when they are related to the FOSS world. Conferences and Open Source Fests are platforms where the developers meet, discuss, share and carry their work forward. [...]
SaniSoft is a sponsor for this year's event. CakeFest is a four day conference that gathers together the CakePHP community for networking and talks from speakers like Nate Abele, Garret Woodworth, Mariano Iglesias and Felix Geisendorfer. You can find out more information (as well as reserve your spot) on the main conference site. The Early Bird pricing of 50% off ends tomorrow, so hurry!
Stuart Herbert has asked for some suggestions for the "conference virgin" to know about before heading (and/or speaking) at their first conference.
I'm speaking at the PHPNW '08 conference in November, and I've just been contacted for advice by someone understandably excited at going to her very first conference. Thing is, I've never been a conference newbie (I've always been either speaking or running a conference) so I'm not the best person to offer advice on this.
His suggestions include meeting up with friends also attending, keeping an eye out for social groups to be a part of and to bring a laptop along with you ("a lot of the conversation at the conference happens online"). The comments have some suggestions too like "don't eat alone" and "hang out in the hall if there's no talks that interested you. it's a great way to meet others."
