Tobias Schlitt - a passion for php

I've just put the slides from our PHP Weekender event online. You can find them on the PHP Weekender website for download.

The second day of the PHP Weekender is over now, too. We are happily looking back on a great event and I want to thank Benjamin Schwertfeger and Dave Kliczbor form the Computer Sience faculty of the University of Dortmund for their engagement. Beside that, we want to thank all the attendees and my fellows form the PHP Usergroup Dortmund for coming and making this event such a great success!

Today at 9:30 Kore and me started the day with a 3 hour session about "PHP best practices". We enhanced our slides from FrOSCon this year with a section about debugging and one on OOP in PHP. Right in time for lunch, we finished the talk with about 60 satisfied and quite "knowledge filled up" attendees.

After lunch, we again splitted in 2 tracks. Tobias Struckmeier (most of the time assisted by someone else) handled the 2nd introduction workshop, which was actually the rest of the first workshop, since we had much too much stuff for the attendees. In parallel, Kore and me stepped up again and gave an overview on PHP 5s advanced OO features (like ArrayAccess and Iterator, overloading and ObjectStorage). After that, Kore took over the stage on his own and visualized his view on the topic "Enterprise PHP", which was a really intressting talk. Last but not least, Jakob Westhoff introduced into database abstraction and ORM. All talks went really well (thanks to factors like really good equipment and absolutly brilliant preperation of all PHP UG Dortmund members).

We finally had a small closing key note, where we asked the attendees for feedback. It was positive all over, although we had 2 small drawbacks: 1st we did not have coffee for sale, which is actually a big no-no for any geek event - I know. 2nd we started already at 9:00 a.m., which was quite early for a) a weekend and b) for (mostly) students. We promise amendment for the next event! ;) After the offical part ended, we had a small key-signing party, where 15 people attended and I issued my first CACert.org assurances.

So, all in all I can say: We never expected the event to become such a great success. Our first assumptions were around 20 attendees. After we saw the registrations, we guessed to have around 50 attendees overall, which was already suprising. In the end we had around 90 attendants on Saturday and about 80 on Sunday. I hope the interesst in PHP in Dortmund stays at this level and that some of the attendants will join our usergroup.

So long, 'till next time... :)

^{P.S. Slides and examples will follow on the PHP Weekender website}

The first day of the PHP Weekender (the free-of-charge, 2-day PHP event organized by the PHP Usergroup Dortmund) just comes to an end and we are heading out for the social event. All in all, I have to say, it is a fantastic event and we are really happy about its success.

In the moring we had a 3 hour introductional session, where Jakob Westhoff and Peter Koch introduced pure PHP newbes to the concepts of web application development (requests, GET/POST variable handling,...), the PHP syntax, basic database and file handling and some more. They had about 50 attendees, which equals more or less the number of registered attendees for that session. Both had a very good feeling about their talk and the attendees were absolutly satisfied.

After a great Pizza lunch (which was generously sponsored by an anonymous sponsor), the second track started. While Jakob Westhoff created a simple to-do application with about 25 attendees in track 1, Jörg Sprung started of with an introduction to PHPs XML handling functions with above 50 attendees. Both groups stayed at this rate during the whole evening, where the workshop ended up in the first stage of a working application. The second track was continued by myself, with a track about SOA (basically SOAP, XML-RPC and REST in PHP) and a session about console scripting by Tobias Struckmeier.

We are looking back on a very successful first day of the PHP Weekender and we are looking forward to the second day, where we will continue with 2 other great tracks:

Track 1:

• PHP best practices (OOP, debugging, security, performance)
• PHP advanced workshop

Track 2:

• The PHP OO Candy Store (cool OO development in PHP)
• Enterprise PHP (NCC-1701-A)
• Database abstraction (Handler-, SQL-, Object-Abstraction)

So, if you did not register, yet: The University of Dortmund gracefully sponsored large rooms and you can just turn around. :)

I just returned from vacation and realized, that the PHP Weekender (the free-of-charge workshop weekend for PHP enthusiasts, organized by the [http//phpugdo.de PHP Usergroup Dortmund]) has 90 verified, registered attendees so far. This is really cool, we never expected such a huge number of signups! Anyway, the PHP Weekender starts on upcoming Saturday, October 7th. If you did not register, yet, you should take your heels and run to our website, since we will only accept registrations until tomorrow 12:00 CET.

Aynway, we are looking forward to a really cool event and hope everything works weel! :)

Today the PHP Weekender (our 2-day, 2-track, free-of-charge, PHP event in Dortmund) reached the 50 attendee mark (we only count attendees who verified their email address, yet, else we have almost 60 now). It is a great feeling for us to see how many people are interested. Since we are at the university, we have enough space left to get some more attendees in, but beware, space is already getting rare... So take your heels and sign up for a place at the PHP Weekender, because Dortmund is on PHP! :)

It's been a good month, since the PHP Usergroup Dortmund asked for feedback on the idea of a PHP introduction workshop in Dortmund. Because of the huge masses of interessted people, we expanded the idea and are now going to make a 2 day, 2 track PHP introduction weekend, including 2 workshops and a lot of interessting sessions about topics like "XML handling", "Enterprise PHP", "SOA" and "Shell scripting.

Since the event is in German Language, I'm posting the German announcement here.

PHP Usergroup Dortmund proudly presents: The PHP Weekender!

Gut einen Monat nach der ersten Umfrage auf der Informatik-Mailingliste der
Uni-Dortmund, ob Interesse an einem PHP-Einsteiger-Workshop bestehe, ist es
soweit: Der PHP Weekender erblickt offiziell das Licht der Welt. An 2 Tagen
haben PHP-Einsteiger und -Fortgeschrittene die Möglichkeit, ihre
PHP-Kenntnisse auszubauen. In 2 parallel laufenden Tracks werden erfahrene
PHP-Spezialisten ihr Wissen in praxisnahen Vorträgen und Workshops zur
Verfügung stellen.

Facts

Wann: 7./8.10.2006

Wo: Universität Dortmund
Fachbereich Informatik
Otto-Hahn-Str. 14
44227 Dortmund
Raum E04 and E23

Wer: Alle PHP-Interessenten

Kosten: NIX!

Infos: http://weekender.phpugdo.de

Sessions

Neben einem reinen Einsteiger-Track, der jeweils aus einem seminar-ähnlichen
Vortrag und nachmittags aus einem praktischen Workshop besteht, werden an
beiden Nachmittagen parallel Einzelvorträge zu Themen wie "XML Handling",
"Enterprise PHP", "SOA" und "PHP auf der Shell" stattfinden.

Abgerundet wird die Veranstalltung am Samstag mit einem Social-Event zur
Entspannung und einer kleinen Keysigning-Party am Sonntag.

Anmeldung

Zur besseren Planung bitten wir alle Teilnehmer, sich vorher verbindlich auf
unserer Website (http://weekender.phpugdo.de) anzumelden. Es wäre doch schade,
wenn der ganze Haufen Vorträge vorbereitet wird und nur 3 Leute dafür
erscheinen.

In der Hoffnung auf zahlreiche Teilname,
Eure PHP Usergroup Dortmund.

i.A. Tobias Schlitt

During our last usergroup meeting here in Dortmund (last Thursday), the idea came up to organize a "PHP introduction day", if there is enough interesst in the local area. The idea resulted from the success of Kores and my "PHP best practices talk" at FrOSCon. We generally thought about making a whole day event, where we will teach people PHP basics in the morning and some advanced stuff (like best practices, usage of components, etc.) in the afternoon. So I emailed the students mailinglist of our computer science faculty at university and our Linux AG mailinglist from university, if there is interesst. By now we have over 50 interessted people, which is really amazingly cool! The plans evolved further again and we think about making a 2 day event, where we provide PHP basisc on day 1 in the morning, then give people the chance to code a small application in the afternoon, where we give assistance (so a real "workshop"). On day 2 we will then teach the advanced section and let people also code a small app, using some advanced techniques, like OO patterns and component libraries.

This is all still in a very early planning stage, but maybe there are people in the Ruhrgebiet area, which I did not reach by email so far, who have interesst in such an event. If you do have interesst, please comment on this blog entry or email me, so we can estimate the number of attendees. The event will be free of charge and probably be held at the University of Dortmund.