I managed to rope everyone in, Priscilla, Emma, Mat & Phil along with Bridget on the day and David keeping the dogs happy while we were in conference mode, thanks to all for playing their parts. All in all as a company we’re very proud of what we’ve managed to pull off, all the hard work and planning has paid off, almost universally the feedback has been excellent with many people saying, to us directly, it was the best organised community conference they’d been to for years.

Sitting in the first session, K.I.S.S from Derick Rethans, I was aware of a very surreal feeling – the conference was actually happening, after months of planning, a little heartache and juggling some of the risky elements, it was actually happening right here, right now!

One of the main drivers behind PHPNW08 was to encourage junior developers to take an active path to their continuing professional development, with speakers sessions covering topics like MySQL EXPLAIN Explained and Regular Expression Basics being warmly received by many I think we achieved that objective!

My personal favourite session was Zoe Slattery’s ‘Index and Search, options for PHP programmers’ which was a really interesting comparison of the Lucene search implementations in PHP and Java – not what the title suggested but a well delivered, complex subject delivered in an easy confident manner.

It was also good to have some fun at the socials on the Friday and Saturday night, even if I didn’t quite manage to find any time to play on Mario Kart – with the open bar and food on the Saturday event it seemed to be a great way to round off the event.

While we still have to deal with some of the wrap up elements of the conference, videos, slides, handing out the last remaining prizes – the general aftermath of a very satisfying weekend, we’re already looking forward to early planning for next years’ event, PHPNW09 everyone?!

phpnw08 is a one day conference for developers, designers, managers and anyone else with an interest in the PHP programming language. The conference will have a range of well known and local speakers with the aim of highlighting current best practice and emerging topics within the sphere of PHP and web development.

The event offers an opportunity for developers and those involved with PHP across the North-of-England to come together to discuss developments, innovations, techniques and the challenges faced in PHP and internet development.

The conference will feature high profile speakers within the PHP community, workshops and networking opportunities. Some of the key areas of focus this year are: Enterprise PHP, What’s new in PHP 5.3 and innovative solutions for a commercial world.

In addition to organising the event, Solution Perspective Media has worked in partnership with a number of sponsors including iBuildings, nti Leeds, Allegis Group, Pale Purple and Plusnet to provide an exciting program of speakers, networking and social activities.

The conference takes place on 22^nd November 2008 at Manchester Central (formerly GMex) – http://www.manchestercentral.co.uk

Those involved in PHP are invited to connect and network with other PHP professionals on the following groups:

Google Groups – http://groups.google.com/group/phpnw
Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17897252075
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/112906/3FCE41597A1B
Twitter - http://twitter.com/PHPNW

For more information or to attend the conference visit http://conference.phpnw.org.uk/phpnw08/

The morning sessions in the main track seemed a little basic over all, however you have to pitch at a wide audience level so that’s to be expected. Fortunately, Marcus Bointon after lunch (which was really quite nice for a conference) talked about mail() and all the things that go with that, handling bounces, VERP and a few other niceties. It was unfortunate that he ran out of time towards the end as it turned out to be informative and quite in depth without getting to the point of boredom – I’ve found his slides on-line which should help finish the learning.

My only problem now is deciding which track to follow on the day – choice is sometimes not a good thing! Perhaps the sessions will be videoed and I can see all of it.

While I’m in PHP geek mode (I am every day but that’s what I get paid for), I’ve just discovered the PHP Podcasts web site – I’ve got that linked in the feed reader and am already starting to enjoy the aggregated content.