This year I was abel to attended the 2009 php|tek conference in Chicago. This conference is hosted by MTACon, the company behind php|architect magazine, one of the most influent PHP publications in the world. php|tek is a unique event in its overall “feel” and purpose - for those that read my post on ZendCon’08 you may be able to pickup this difference yourselves. Tek is a community oriented event, as opposed to ZendCon which is much more aimed at companies. Is this good you ask? Yes, its perfect, it in no way falls short of the content in ZendCon, but on the plus side it gives one many more opportunities to mingle and meet the central PHP Core Developer Team, and most importantly, it inspires attendees to work with and give back to PHP.

Same as last year, the conference was held in Chicago, IL in the Unites States at the Sheraton Hotel, a wonderful venue that helps keep everyone close by during the conference and during “off-time”. The conference ran for three days plus a tutorial day - from May 19th to May 22nd. The day before the start one could already see many of the most well known PHP developers arriving - it appeared that the Core team was arriving early to host a PHP Dev meeting held at Microsoft. And the topic of the conference .. ? PHP 5.3.

The sessions were great, and tutorials day featured particularly interesting sessions, of which I attended a security talk to complement my PHP Security skills,as well as a Code Review Session. This session, held by Sebastian Bergamann, Stefan Priebsch and Arne Blankerts was extremely interesting, we dove deep into the code of some major frameworks and apps, like Magento, Wordpress, Habari and found some incredible (not in a good sense) pieces of code. This talk showed me a different side of things especially for certain areas of coding where I can certainly do better. It also gave me a new perspective on code reviews, which have today a much bigger importance then before.

The rest of the sessions during the event were really good, some were inspiring (Security Centered Design), some made you wish PHP 5.3 was out (PHP 5.3 - Hot or not?), some made incredible associations to drive home the importance of a good development environment (The Knight Rider Methodology to Software Development), some showcased the more obscure but very useful parts of PHP (SPL to the Rescue), some even tried to point you in a good direction (Untestable Code). There really were sessions for every kind of developer, from the “regular joe” to the php expert - at times I wished I had the method __clone implemented on myself, so I could get to all sessions. Also, alongside the event we had great UnCon Sessions and an Hackathon organized and led on by the community, with some simple but great sessions.

This leads me to the biggest feature of php|tek, and one most commonly overlooked by developers and managers alike, namely the community. This was by far the biggest difference from ZendCon, a total focus on the community and hence, a focus on geting everyone active. The PHP comunity has been in focus during the last few months. Since the news of PHP 5.3 was released we have seen an increase in activity inside the PHP community: BugHuntDays, TestFest09, documentation, patches, you name it the community has done it this year. User Groups keep growing and popping up everywhere. Just in Brazil we have had at least 5 groups started since last year. The conference fosters the

The recipe for success in this sense is not clear, was it the community oriented sessions (A guide to using and understanding the community, User Group Meetup)? The after-hour programming (PechaKucha night, Retro Gaming Night, Hackathon)? Maybe it was the breakfasts and lunches where you shared tables with all the active members of the community? The discussions around a cup of wine? I’m guessing it was a combination of all this, the sheer exposion to all this is enough to get you into the “giving back” mood. The ingredients are pretty simple, knowing where you can help, who to ask, where to read about it and a touch of “karma”. Many moments at tek were based on this, the interaction with great names of the community and a clear picture of what PHP needs. The whole experience shows you clearly that not Zend, ibuildings, IBM or Microsoft are in t

O primeiro dia em Chicago começou cedo, as 5h. Do aeroporto pro hotel foi uma viagem tranquila, após ligar para o excelente supporte da MTACon que prontamente me apontou pro transporte do hotel, sim.. o aeroporto é enorme!

Checkin sem problemas, internet fácil e dencente (fail no form, letras brancas/fundo branco), um banho e pé na estrada. Mas não antes de esbarrar com grandes nomes na porta do hotel, como Derick Rethans, Andrei Zmieski, Sara Golemon e mais uma meia duzia, a caminho da Microsoft, que cedeu uma sala para uma reunião interna do PHP (go Gates!). O resto da tarde foi o que é toda viagem de um brasileiro para os EUA… cara! Muitas compras, mas faz parte.

No retorno desci para o lobby onde pude conversar com muitas figuras, dentre elas Eli White, Keith Casey, Gregg, Sebastian, enfim, muitos. Após muita conversa vem, conversa vai o papo seguiu para o Shoeless Joe’s, ou era Shirtess Schmoe’s? Enfim, janta regada a muita cerveja e mais “celebridades”, como Ben Ramsey, Elizabeth Smith, Michalangelo Van Dam, e diversos. Por sinal, FAILS stickers brotavam de todo lado, sem dúvida a culpa é do Spoons.

Chegada no hotel ainda me surpreendeu com um encontro com Lorna Jane, Chris Jones .. são muitos nomes. Dentre todas estas conversas destaco uma com o Gregg sobre tecnologias e projetos de geolocation. Um execlente papo com o Michelangelo sobre comunidades e o que anda acontecendo pela Bélgica, esse papo merece mais atenção em breve. E um papo legal sobre conferencias e o que o Brasil tem a oferecer neste campo com o grupo de volta no hotel.

Dia pré-evento foi um sucesso, muitos contatos e amigos. O primeiro dia de conferência amanha promete.

Este ano estarei presente na php|tek, conferencia de PHP muito famosa que ocorre em Chicago nos Estados Unidos. A conferencia é organizada pela MTA, mesma empresa responsável pela PHP|architect renomada revista impressa e digital de PHP.

Fique atento ao meu twitter e neste blog (ou no blog em inglês) pois estarei postando novidades nele ao longo da viagem, que vai ocorrer de 18/05 a 22/05.