If you've ever attended a conference (or are planning on it in the near future) you may have heard of something called an "unconference". If you're not 100% clear on what it is, check out this new interview with Michelangelo van Dam.

Have you been to an unconference aka uncon? I have not unfortunately (at least not yet)! But I was curious of what it actually is, the benefit you can reap from it, the responsibilities that it presents and how it’s different from a conference. I started looking around of a possible interview (with uncon organizers around) about it since last year. But this year, 2014, I was adamant of getting it rolling.

To concretise this wish, the perfect man for it was Michelangelo! Perfect because he never turns down an opportunity to share his knowledge and wisdom with The PHP Community and also mainly because he has organized and participated at so many different uncons. Besides, he’s the founder and co-leader of the PHP-BENELUX user-group – the level of insight and advice that you get from him is invaluable and of high quality.

They start off with a bit of talk about Michelangelo's background as a developer and his involvement in the PHP community. There's also a bit about the Zend Certification Exam and the PHPWomen group. Finally, they get into the unconference - what it is, what kind of content you can expect and how you can get involved in one at your next conference.