In his latest entry, Jason Sweat looks at conferences in general and mentions two of the PHP-specific ones happening this year.

If you have never been to a PHP Conference, you owe it to yourself to make 2006 a year to attend one. There are of course the obvious benefits of attending the presentations and being able to see these presentations first hand as well as being able to interact with the presenters, ask questions, etc.

A more subtle benefit is the networking which happens at these conferences. People whom you recognize from email addresses on mailing lists, pseudonyms on forums or names on the covers of PHP books are actually living breathing people (and usually fine, upstanding people at that). PHP conferences are a great opportunity to interact with both the presenters, conference organizers and the other attendees, who likely share many common interests with you, chiefly a passion for PHP and web development.

He talks about two conferences that are coming up pretty soon, one on either side of the world. In the U.S., there's php|tek put on by phparch.com, and over in the UK, there's the new PHP UK 2006 conference being held in London...