If you've considered starting up a technical conference and wanted to get an inside look at what it takes, check out this recent post from Thijs Feryn about what it takes for the PHPBenelux organization to make the PHPBenelux Conference happen each year.

The PHPBenelux Conference edition 2016 took place last week in Antwerpen (Belgium). As an organizer, I’m really happy with the end result. I like to think that our attendees, speakers and sponsors also enjoyed it. It’s the 7th time we organize the PHPBenelux Conference and every year we try to introduce something new. Although the 7 years of experience and the well-organized crew have made it a lot easier to organize, it’s still a lot of work.

This post gives you a behind the scenes look at what it takes to organize the PHPBenelux Conference. It will reflect our passion, our strengths and our weaknesses.

The article covers what the conference is all about and what the name (PHPBenelux) represents. They also talk about some of the things that are important to them as an organization, the venus they've used for the past several years and some of the things that annoy them a bit about it. The article goes on to mention each of "the crew" behind the event, volunteers they have helping out and more about this year's event including the theme, how they handled sponsors and spending funds to make the event happen. They also cover one of the more fun things from this year's conference: the bumper cars from the speakers dinner.

Finally they end with a list of "lessons learned" and things they see they can do to help improve the event for years to come.

On the Zend Developer Zone there's a reminder about PHPBelenux - the conference is coming soon, so be sure to get your tickets now!

The second annual PHPBenelux Conference is taking place on January 28 and 29 at the same location as last year: Hotel Ter Elst in Edegem (Antwerp, Belgium). We were able to secure an awesome schedule with three tracks, 1.5 days of conference and a tutorial morning. The schedule has been announced for most part of it and also the ticket sales are well underway.

They've included the schedule for this year's event in the post too. There's a wide range of topics this year including:

• MySQL preformance tuning
• Geolocation
• Zeta components
• mobile development with PHP
• Doctrine
• PHP's namespace support
• caching with Varnish

If you haven't picked up your ticket yet, there's still some left. Head over to the PHPBenelux online order form and get yours today!

On the IBuildings blog there's a new post by Soila Patajoki taking a brief look at TestFest events around the world.

The PHP TestFest is a gathering by PHP enthusiasts that get together to write automated test cases for PHP. These test cases help prevent future incompatibilities and bugs in PHP. The event has grown global over the course of the years, with user groups everywhere in the world participating.

She points out some of the European TestFest events that Ibuildings is helping out with including ones in London, Manchester and Belgium. You can find out more about TestFest-ing and see if there's a group in your area participating on the TestFest page off the main PHP QA site.

Derick Rethans will again be organizing the PHPVikinger event for this year, but it has a new home.

It will not be in Norway, but instead we'll be moving to Leuven in Belgium. It will be held on May 30th, very close to Leuven's central station at Café Sport (known from the PHP Belgium meetings). For the full invitation, see the website.

This year's event will be held May 30th and the registration is already open if you want to reserve your spot. It's a free conference and those attending are the ones selecting the topics, unconference style. The deadline for the registration process is May 15th, so get your name in before then to get a seat.

This past weekend the Belgian PHP usergroup gathered together for a "bug hunt day" to find and fix as many problems as they could in the Zend Framework. Stefan Koopmanschap was there and has posted about his experiences.

Yesterday was the first BugHuntDay that our dutch PHP usergroup organized together with the Belgian usergroup. Somewhere between 25 and 30 people (I forgot to do an actual headcount) came together in Roosendaal to work on fixing bugs in Zend Framework.

He recounts their arrival (he and their speaker Jurrien), his talk on the structure of the framework and how to test it and some of the bugs that he worked on. Everyone that attended also received an elePHPant for their contributions. Other "goodies" like Zend t-shirts and a coupon for a free Zend Certification Exam we're passed out too.