“San Francisco, CA Last years successful addition to the PHP conference circuit heads to New York City this week with an expanded program that includes a third day of tutorials and several new and returning PHP gurus. PHPCon East 2003, the first of two regional, PHP-centric shows scheduled in 2003, runs April 23 to 25, 2003 at the Park Central Hotel in New York City, NY.
PHPCons aim is deceptively simple, said Bryan Richard, PHPCon Conference Director, bring people together and discuss PHP. We have a very PHP-savvy audience who lets us know immediately if something isnt up to spec. Theres a lot of energy and excitement in this community and we work very hard to make sure PHPCons program hosts outstanding sessions and encourages active participation from attendees.
Now in its sophomore year, PHPCon continues to be a tightly-focused, community driven event that attracts PHP professionals from all over the world as well as the top companies in PHP development including Zend Technologies, Sams Publishing, ActiveState, Macromedia, and MySQL.com. PHPCons increasing popularity as a community event makes it a natural partner with several of the top online discussion and networking sites such as PHP.net, OReilly & Associates, and web-zine php|architect.
PHPCon has also become the stage for community changing announcements. Yahoos Michael Radwin announced at last years PHPCon 2002 that Yahoo was switching to PHP as the scripting language of choice for its back-end programming. Yahoos announcement, a huge boost for open source programming, is yet another indication of the languages flexibility and strength in producing interactive web pages. PHP, an open source scripting language for the web, has been steadily gaining a foothold in commercial usage. According to PHP.net, PHP scripts can be found in over one million IP addresses and over 9 million domain names.
After sponsoring PHPCon 2002 last year, Sams Publishing chose this year’s PHPCon East 2003 to launch its new Developer’s Library series of books.
“When we were looking for a high-profile event where we could announce and publicize Developer’s Library,” said Mark Taber, associate publisher with Sams Publishing, “PHPCon was an obvious choice. All the key PHP players are there as presenters, and the attendees are the key opinion-leaders for our target market of open-source programmers.”
PHPCon Easts program boasts an impressive array of experts including PHP Inventor Rasmus Lerdorf, Zend Technologies Co-Founder Zeev Suraski, OmniTis George Schlossnagle, MySQL.coms Zak Greant, and popular PHP authors Sterling Hughes, Christian Wenz, Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.
The speakers and sessions precisely targeted my interests in making my own PHP projects work better and more efficiently, potentially for a much larger scale of users. The heavy-hitting personalities in the program such as (Dirk) Elmendorf, (Rasmus) Lerdorf, and (Shane) Caraveo were attractions in their own rights, said PHPCon 2002 attendee George Web, Web Programmer for The Vermont Teddy Bear Company in New England. I am the only person in my company who has any experience with Open Source and non-commercial software such as PHP, so it is a job in and of itself for me to introduce the concept of PHP to my associates.
The decision to offer two regional shows and take the first PHPCon of 2003 to the East Coast also reflects the PHP communitys wishes. Nearly half the events registrants hail from local counties while other registrants commute from other US States, Europe, and Latin America. With both 2003 shows offering strong technical programs and notable speakers, aficionados with budget and travel restrictions have more opportunities to attend PHPCon. PHPCon West 2003 is scheduled for late October in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Seeing as many people, as we have, turn out for a US conference in this down economy says that the PHP community has the drive and desire to support both PHPCon and PHPs growth. Having an event like PHPCon, which helps focus the PHP community, will only serve to strengthen PHP, said Richard. We are able to create an event thats comfortable and fosters learning. Were going to be around for a while.
More information about PHPCon East 2003 can be found on the conference web site: http://www.php-con.com. Session abstracts and speaker biographies are also available on the web site.
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Members of the press are eligible for complementary passes to PHPCon East 2003. Please see our web site for registration details: http://www.php-con.com/2003/east/press.php
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Link: php-con.com
