Published 2005-07-04 11:37:57
Every year PHP has two or three major conferences, as someone who knows a little bit about PHP, I often put in a proposal on the call for submissions. However, after presenting at a few, the whole process does seem a little odd.
PHP conferences are primarily commercial ventures, where the organizers costs (location, airfares, advertising etc.) are recouped by the attendance fees. However, the idea behind call for submissions, is something I would more often associate with academic type conference. The organizers tend to rely on the (usually very good) judgement of the reviewers of these submissions to decide what might prove interesting and attractive..
The conferences also have a secondary purpose of getting the PHP developers together, and frequently try and sort out some of the more interesting direction issues that some of the PHP projects are taking. (but this is almost never the primary goal of the conference for obvious financial reasons..)
What I end up wondering is what would the attendees actually like to hear about... What would make the costs associated with going to these conferences make them better value for money?
Interesting technical things like GTK, language internals etc. or more how to use a specific library, extension, a forum on where PHP is going... Or what was very succesfull at the PHP cruise a few years ago, a more interactive discussion about how to develop in PHP..
Feel free to comment away..
Comments
My suggestions
A good question :)
I have not been to a PHP conference, but this year was definitely my firt interest in going to one. Unfortunatly so far the location hastn't worked out with my schedule but I am pretty sure by the end of the year it will and I will have been to one. Its something I am definitely looking forward to.
For me, part of the point would be to meet other PHP developers. Its not just about the topics themselves but meeting people in the field, discussing ideas, networking etc.
As for specific topics. I make a distributale PHP app so that is what determines my interest. Topics on a certain PEAR module that could be used in my app are thus interesting, as would anything be that directly affects my work on that application. Discussions on better ways to do something, database independance etc all help and open up ideas. One of the most interesting topics I have heard about coming up is for language/local independance, another one was for dealing with timezones. These are the sort of nitty gritting things that affect most full PHP apps, and also the sort of thing that save a lot of time/effort if someone who has done the research teaches you about.
I think sometimes the commerical aspects of the use of PHP could be discussed more. For example a session on how to pick a PHP employee would be incredibly useful to me, how to market PHP to companies that have never used it etc. The more business aspect. Sometimes the conferences have an open source bent that may hinder these sorts of sessions - which often may be useful to some of us in the industry.
Anyway, those are my ideas :)
