September 21, 2008
Posted in News at 10:49 am by lornajane
This is a follow-on to the earlier ZendCon 08 article, covering days 2 and 3 of the conference. Day 3 might have only been half a day but these two days were jam-packed with sessions and things to do – not to mention the exhibition halls and social events! The days started early since the conference included breakfast – I really approved of this, it was a great central point to meet up with people at the start of the day and I really like food in general 
Exhibitors
There were lots of good exhibitors there, and as is common at these conferences, they had lots to say and some stuff to give away. I had really good chats with the people from SugarCRM, Oracle, Yahoo and OpenSolaris and gained a USB key, a calculator, a book, a collapsible frisbee, a water bottle, some CDs and a cuddly monkey. There were plenty of other interesting exhibitors, Zend had a cool stand in the middle of it all and this served as a central point for many gatherings.
Day 2/3 sessions
The schedule at ZendCon is completely packed, and on the Wednesday there were 4 parallel conference sessions plus two tracks of unconference. Since I can’t be in more than one place at once I didn’t see everything I wanted to but I saw some excellent sessions. I also gave a session myself in the uncon jointly with Matthew Weier O’Phinney called “Subversion Tips and Tricks” which despite being a rather last-minute effort was well received.
Parties
Wednesday (day 2) saw an exhibitor event in the evening, with competitions, followed by an opportunity to meet the Zend Teams – they formed a panel and we could ask them questions. Later on (these are long days!) there was a party thrown by Yahoo! featuring “Yahootinis” which I didn’t drink but they had cool ice cubes in which lit up!
PHPWomen
Despite not having a booth this year, the phpwomen were high profile – and we loved how many people brought along and wore their PHPWomen and/or booth babe shirts from previous years, it was so nice to see!! There were quite a few women speakers over the course of the event – Elizabeth Smith, Sara Golemon and Laura Thomson all gave talks. I spoke in the uncon and we also had a “Women in IT/PHP” uncon session which was really excellent, organised and chaired by Juliette Reinders-Folmer. It was also a lot of fun to meet the women we didn’t know already, they’re a good bunch and it was interesting to hear their stories. I have a interview from one of those sessions that I hope to post here soon. I’ll also have more about the uncon session and what was discussed there but for now I’ll leave you with a photo:
Conclusion
ZendCon is one of the biggest events of the year, and brings some excellent opportunities to attend the technical talks and the networking sessions alike. For me it was my first trip to the US and also the first time I had been to a conference this size, so it was rather daunting, but I had a great time, learned a lot, and met new friends that I will continue to stay in touch with. The conference ran very smoothly throughout and I think it can be considered a great success.
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September 16, 2008
Posted in News at 7:52 pm by lornajane
I’m at ZendCon in Santa Clara, California, and so far the conference is going really well – even the wifi works! In common with quite a few conferences, the day before the main conference begins is tutorial day here. With 4 parallel tracks (at least) right throughout the conference, there is plenty to choose from. There was a crash certification course, and there are exams available to take during the event – they are wildly oversubscribed which I think indicates how popular this is! I attended the Best Practices session followed by the SQL Query Tuning session – both were really informative and well-paced (critical if anyone is going to stay awake in a 3 hour session!) although I definitely started to lose my way during the second session.
Since I’m ZCE I was also able to attend the evening event for ZCEs and speakers, which was very good – I spend a lot of time in various IRC channels and so I was able to meet a lot of people in real life whom I “know” already. There was also some drinking later in the evening …
Today is the first day of the main conference. There are 5 tracks plus the unconference and the exhibition space so really there is way too much to fit into one day! I’ve been to sessions on search, PECL, extensions, and more. This morning Juliette Reinders-Folmer had a session in the unconference entitled “Women in IT”, which was an opportunity for interested parties to get together and discuss the issues around this topic. We think we have the audio recorded from this session – in which case we hope to be able to publish it here. Both genders were equally represented in the session and there were some interesting debates. I came away from it ready to support the cause of women in IT some more.
The social side of the conference is a big factor – there are parties every night and I’m learning as much from the conversations I have at these events as I am in the official sessions! I think it helps that I already have online relationships with quite a few people – but I’ve also met other attendees who aren’t part of that community and had some really great experiences. Tonight there is an exhibitor reception – there are some good booths here, I wandered round earlier and picked up the usual collection of freebies, and had really good chats with the people at the sugarcrm and oracle booths particularly.
So far, its a good experience and I have stacks of notes I’ve taken in the sessions of things to try out or look into in more depth when I get some time. There’s two more days to go and lots more fun to be had. I’ll leave you with a pic of a few of the PHPWomen:
(left to right: Juliette Reinders-Folmer, Lorna Mitchell and Elizabeth Smith)
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September 10, 2008
Posted in News at 1:10 pm by lornajane
Next week sees the PHP Community descend on Santa Clara, California for ZendCon. This is one of the bigger conferences of the year and has everything you’d expect from an event put together by Zend. There are some great speakers, in the main track and in the “unconference” and it sounds like there will be some great parties too. The PHPWomen will be there, we’ll have a booth so if you are attending this conference, drop by and say hi!
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