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.