PHP North West Conference 2008
PHP owes much of its success and popularity to the highly-involved and active user community. Conferences and user group meetings are being organised across the globe, and in the UK, the annual phplondon conference has gathered together around 300 developers and managers for three years now. However, other parts of the UK have not had a local event until now, except for the monthly user group meetings in some larger cities. PHPNW, with its user group meetings and the conference, is determined to fill the void in the North of England.
The background
PHPNW08 started as an idea about three years ago, when the main organiser, Jeremy Coates, visited the first phplondon conference. "I attended the first London conference and mused to myself that we needed something like this in the North. Little did I know then that I'd be the one kick-starting it", says Jeremy. "I then attended this years London conference and was reminded of my original idea. Following on from then, I floated the idea with a few colleagues and people I knew in the industry and received a resounding 'yes' to the idea. A small number of people got together in July to have the inaugural meeting and to plan for the conference, things have just grown and grown since then - we've got an amazing schedule of speakers, some from the regulars on the circuit and lots from local talent, which was high on the original agenda from the outset."
One of the key drivers for the organisers is the desire to help people become the best PHP developers they can be. Through the new PHPNW user group and the conference, developers in the North of England will now have a forum to share experiences and to find a mentor, and to grow their knowledge and experience (all over a drink or few, of course).
PHP community in the North West
The think tank behind PHPNW08 has also launched the PHPNW user group. "To date, the community in the North has been reasonably isolated, with pockets of interaction, Drupal group meetings, etc. With the advent of the user group, there is now a central rallying point for PHP developers", Jeremy describes.
The desire to share and belong to something of this nature has been demonstrated through regularly having 20 to 30 attendees at the monthly meetings, and the group's Google Group mailing list has over 140 people on it. However, there is still space for many new faces. "We'd love for more people to be involved. Come along to the conference, get some great talks from industry leaders with brilliant technical content, interact with your peers, improve your skills and knowledge, have some fun social time and get a free 12 months subscription to php|architect magazine (worth £20 in itself)!" There are also a number of prizes to give away at the event, including tickets to the London conference next year, several books from publishers in the industry, and plenty of other swag. Plenty to make it a really great event!
Ibuildings gets involved
Ibuildings is proud to be the premier sponsor of PHPNW08. We always try to be around in the different PHP events around the country, and with an expected attendance of 300 PHPers, we just could not have missed the Manchester conference. A few of our experts are lined up as speakers (Stefan Koopmanschap on The Power of Refactoring and Arpad Ray on Exploiting PHP with PHP, plus Ivo Jansch participating in the State of the Community panel discussion) and some of us will also be around just to learn and to meet new people. To celebrate our new Zend Framework training course, we will also offer a chance to win a free one-day Zend Framework training.