The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted its latest episode in its series of community interviews. In this new episode host Cal Evans talks with Rafael Dohms, well-known PHP community speaker and founder of the Amsterdam PHP User Group.

They talk about his work with the user group, how it's currently going and the new things they're doing to draw more people into the group. They also talk about the Netherlands region and the up-and-coming speakers and talent coming up in the area. They also talk some about Rafael's "Object Calisthenics" talks and the ideas behind it.

You can listen to the full interview either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3. If you enjoy the interview be sure to subscribe to their feed.

In this recent post to his site, Rafael Dohms presents an interesting idea for leaders of groups to consider as a role for themselves (or people maybe wanting to move into something like that) - being an "enabler" instead of just a "leader".

This was discussed in our PHPSP UG and we tried to think of different structures to get past these issues, some ideas came and went but I also left and moved to Amsterdam. As it happens my community-drive did not stop and I started to feel that old itch, and ended up causing the start of AmsterdamPHP. [...] So we do not have leaders, we just have a group of enablers, people who want to help, or do, or have great ideas or contacts, and that seems to be a great title and description for what we are doing. It removes those misconceptions and it opens space for anyone to be an enabler, all the time, some of the time, whenever they want. It still gives credit where credit is due and it allows the people who deserve to help the group find a direction do exactly that.

He notes that by not trying to fill the traditional conceptions of a "leader" role and being more of the "guiding people" kind of person, you can sometimes do more to help others find their passion.

I have really come to love the title and all the “meaning” it holds, maybe it even takes the pressure off the usual labels and let’s us focus on breaking down barriers.

There's a quick post over on Stefan Koopmanschap's blog about the recently wrapped Dutch PHP TestFest that happened in conjunction with the PFZ.nl and AmsterdamPHP user groups.

The PHP TestFest that Dutch usergroups PFZ.nl and AmsterdamPHP organized last saturday was a huge success. About 15 people made their way to the office of WEBclusive to collaborate with three key figures from the PHP-world, who travelled to Amsterdam to be a mentor, to write tests for PHP.

He mentions some of the work that was done including updates to tests on the Gearman extension, the MongoDB extension and others worked on the tests for PHP's core. Fifty-four new tests were written during the event and testers even continued writing after they left - win all around!