As a last minute plan (we all know how i love those), I signed up for the very first PHP Community Conference (phpcomcon) in Nashville TN. Now the plan was to enjoy the ride up there with Joey, Shawn and Chris, check out some of the spots Ben keeps talking about and have a generally good geeky time. easy plan right??. WRONG!!

Ambiance

Chris is such a cool driver I napped 80% of the time on the way there and back. Accommodation did not disappoint and come to find out, Nashville is a wonderful destination any day of the week. The conference happened to be during the NHL playoffs and yes: where there is a Predator you find a dedicated fan/atic/s.  After hours we got to enjoy some of the best spots “Nashvegas” has to offer.

Content

The presentations I attended were well timed – long enough to be detailed and specific, yet broad enough to cater for the diverse audience.

• Lorna’s workshop on web services proved to be more than just a well prepped talk. She dived right into the grit of the whys and how-tos of various types of web services. Her slides and tutorial code have come in handy since .
• Helgi decided to go above and beyond with his Frontend Cashing workshop. I am sure I was not the only attendee who felt a descent dose of performance inducing intel injected painlessly.
• Rasmus‘ presence underlined the  need for participation in the community, his pointers on performance were great.
• Brian’s brilliantly told tale about Phorum  immersed one into the history of php, providing a clear path of how the language has evolved to what it is today. Nothing could be more fitting for a community gathering.
• The story of spaz hit home for me as Ed went through the ropes narrating his experience(s) developing and maintaining an open source app.  His “pick your own topic” style kept the audience entertained and engaged.
• Laura Beth brought out the colors and a toolbox worth of great stuff to efficiently manage and deploy your code.
• Andrei enlightened all of us with what happened to Unicode/PHP6,  ugly juicy bits included.
• Terry Chay wrapped it all up in neat bundle of serious humor, well done and delivered.

Takeaway

Apart from the great wealth of information I acquired from listening to the presenters, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and will definitely be in attendance next year.

Some of my personal highlights include :-

• Getting to interact with other attendees
• Rocking the mic with best of them (you know yourselves) at karaoke
• Ridding the bull literally!
• Scoring 3rd place at pechakucha (should be called “to hell and back every 20sec”).
• And of course, collecting all that sponsor shwag.

Thank you Ben, Lisa, Nick and all the sponsors for the ultimate community experience.

For a peek at the conference, check out Jeremy’s awesome shots on flickr :http://flic.kr/s/aHsjuziJsb