schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff
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:Author: 		Tobias Schlitt
:Date:			Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:33:55 +0100
:Revision: 		1
:Copyright:		CC by-nc-sa


==============================================
FrOSCon 2008: Review of a marvelous conference
==============================================

:Description:
    To make it short: FrOSCon 2008 was as expected - **fantastic**. :)

To make it short: `FrOSCon 2008`__ was as expected - **fantastic**. :)

.. __: http://froscon.de

I'll try to summarize the best things during the last weekend in following.

The `PHP Usergroup Dortmund`__ arrived on Friday evening at Thomas' place, who
invited us for `Papaya`__ ;) Cocktails. We had a quite funny evening and
stayed at Thomas' and Bastians home to be at FrOSCon early on Saturday
morning. Thanks for the cocktails and accommodation, guys!

.. __: http://phpugdo.de
.. __: http://www.papaya-cms.com/

The start of FrOSCon was absolutely fluent and problem less. We reveived our
auditorium through the VIP entrance and got started with our talks
immediately. `The room`__ even had a rear exit to the courtyard, where the
drinking fountain was placed later that day. All talks on that day were well
crowded. Sebastians OOP talk and Johannes' (PHP 5.3) were even so packed, that
several people stood in the gangway.

.. __: http://froscon.phpugdo.de

The Saturday highlight for me personally was the keynote by Andrew S.
Tanenbaum. I bet every computer science student in the world has heard about
this guy and most open source people probably have, too. Andrew wrote some of
the most famous books on operating systems: `Modern Operating Systems`__,
`Operating System Design and Implementation`__, `Distributed Systems.
Principles and Paradims`__. Andrew presented the new version 3 of his
educational, micro kernel, operating system Minix. I felt a bit like honored
to listen to that talk and did not expect him to be such a great speaker. If
the FrOSCon people put it online, I'd definitely recommend watching the
recording.

.. __: http://www.amazon.de/Modern-Operating-Systems/dp/0138134596/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8
.. __: http://www.amazon.de/Operating-Systems-Implementation-Prentice-Software/dp/0131429388/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8
.. __: http://www.amazon.de/Distributed-Systems-Principles-and-Paradigms/dp/0132392275/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8

|image_1|

.. |image_1| image:: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/2799511070_106872a6c5.jpg?v=0
   :target: http://flickr.com/photos/dc7590/2799512118/

A nice side effect of seeing Andrew was, that my copy of Modern Operating
Systems now has a personal signature. :)

Saturday evening was extremly funny, but the Kölsch-Flatrate was extremly
dangerous. ;) Therefore I was quite a bit borked on Sunday, but since I did
not have to give any sessions, that was ok.

|image_2|

.. |image_2| image:: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3260/2799512118_06e54941b2.jpg?v=0
   :target: http://flickr.com/photos/dc7590/2799512118/

The second day keynote was held by Rasmus, who bashed on all kinds of PHP
frameworks in terms of performance (no, `he did not say PHP is slow`__, rather
he said it's amazingly fast by default!). I do not completely share his
attitude direction raw speed, but learned quite a bit from his performance
analysis. The talks in the PHP track were again crowded, although people tent
to leave early so that Garvin did not have the attention he deserved for his
Serendipity talk. Sorry for that, Garv! As expected, the most packed sessions
was Dericks *7 (or more) PHP Myths defused*. Most interesting for myself, I
found Dominik Bonschs talk on model driven development. If our recorded talks
come online, don't miss to watch this one.

.. __: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/08/29/rasmus-lerdorf-php-frameworks-think-again/

All in all one can say it was a usual FrOSCon: A perfectly organized, highly
technical, large but also cosy conference. We all enjoyed the weekend so much
and are really sad that it is already over for this year. But there's already
a light on the horizon: The next FrOSCon will be in August 2009. :)

So long, a large bucket of thanks to the `FrOSCon`__ organizers, all the
voluntary helpers (there were soooo many), the project exhibitors and
speakers!

.. __: http://froscon.de

P.S. Thanks to Darren for flickring his photos!


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