On the Symfony blog they've posted an update about their upcoming Symfony Live London event happening in just three weeks.

We’re almost there! Only 3 weeks until the SymfonyLive London conference! We’re getting more and more ready as the days go, what about you? It’s high time you got your ticket!

What’s in store for you?

The post goes on to talk about the different features of the conference including:

• Pre-conference workshops on September 15th
• A full day double-track conference
• The sponsor village
• The Social event with all the attendees

They also mention a raffle they're holding to give away Symfony elePHPants to a select few individuals. You must purchase your ticket during a certain time to be entered into the raffle but you could win an elePHPant or a full reimbursement of your ticket to the conference. Check out the full post for more details.

If you've been around the PHP community (or language) for any amount of time, you've noticed that the mascot for the language is an elephant. Back in the mid-2000s this mascot made a move into the real world and the first blue elePHPants were released as plush toys. Since then several different groups and companies have produced their own versions with their own colors and logos. There's several of them out there and the Field Guide to ElePHPants site lists them all.

The PHP elephpant, Elephpas hypertextus, was first sketched by Vincent Pontier in 1998. For ten years it was only seen in drawings. The plush elephpant was first sighted in 2007. Since that time a large number of variations have been observed in the wild.

The site covers fun facts about their overall appearance, identification of the generations, their "natural habitat" and how they're distributed. They then list each of the elePHPants including pictures, talking about the origins of each and several that are "coming soon" from other groups/conferences. Some of the elePHPants are more rare than others (like the Gold of which only one was produced) but more and more are coming on the scene all the time, usually as a part of Kickstarter campaigns.

The Symfony project has joined the ranks of several other groups in the PHP community and has created their own elePHPant, a Symfony branded version of the plush toy modeled after PHP's elephant mascot.

Conference after conference, we get endless requests from people longing to have their very own ElePHPant. And so, to mark the momentous occasion of Symfony’s 10th birthday we decided to take some serious action. You’ve seen personalised ElePHPants before, but you’ve never seen special edition Symfony ElePHPants!

[...] After having failed to rescue the ElePHPants from Customs, our manufacturers, already extremely busy with their Christmas orders, found a little window to resend us some precious mascots. Although much smaller in numbers than originally planned, we are happy to announce that the Symfony ElePHPants have finally touched down in Paris and are ready in time to celebrate 10 years at SymfonyCon Paris 2015!

You can get your hands on one at the [SymfonyCon Paris 2015 conference] happening next month but that's the only place so far. They're not being sold online (yet) and are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the conference for 20 Euro. If you've been planning to attend the conference, be sure to register now and get in on some great talks (and maybe an elePHPant while you're there).

Peter Meth and Chris Hartjes, organizers of the popular Canadian PHP conference True North PHP have created a kickstarter for the latest generation of ehePHPants they hope can join the family - the woolly mammoth (complete with tusks and a nice fuzzy coat).

There's no arguing that people in the PHP community love their elephpants. The announcement of a new elephpant being available in a new colour sends people reaching for their wallets or using their network of connections to try and get one (or often more) for themselves.

As the True North PHP conference moves towards it's 4th edition we wanted to create our own unique elephpant to give away to attendees and allow others to obtain as well. So of course we thought of a Woolly Mammoth.

The kickstarter is only running for three more days, so if you'd like a chance to pick up a woolly mammoth elePHPant to call your own, be sure to head over and pledge for your package of choice. There's just a few days remaining and it's getting down to the wire. They won't get made unless the goal is met, so grab yours now!

If you've been around the PHP community for any length of time, there's a pretty good chance you've seen the language's "mascot" floating around - the elePHPant. This mascot has even been made into a stuffed toy in various colors - blue, red, yellow and now thanks to [php]architect, orange.

Ready to add, or start, your collection of elePHPants? We started a KickStarter campaign to produce a run of Orange elephants. [...] There’s much more information over at our Kickstarter project. The campaign is set to a short timeframe and ends on February 3rd as we need to get our production order placed as soon as possible. So get over there and claim your orange elePHPant before time runs out!

The Kickstarter campaign, originally fully funded at $1,000 USD has now reached an amazing $16,000+ USD. There are still plenty of spots left open if you want to pledge and get in on this purchase. Options range from a simple $1 USD for support all the way out to a $250 USD option that gets you a "zoo" (ten small elePHPants and one large elePHPant).

On 7PHP.com today, they've posted an interview with Vincent Pontier about a few different things including how the elePHPant stuffed toys came about.

You cannot be a true fan of The PHP Community and a programmer with PHP in your heart, if you haven’t heard of the magical, mystical and elegant PHP mascot that is coined as and known famously and passionately as ele.. PHP.. wait for it!: The elePHPant! If you are part of The Community, you probably already knew how it was created since the creator of the elePHPant answered it in his movie. But! Do you actually know why it was created and where the idea of creating it came from? And do you actually know Elroubio himself?

While the original interview was in French, it's written up in English to reach a wider audience (it's also in its original French at the end of the post). They talk about some of Vincent's background, where the idea for the elePHPant originally came from, what he thinks of the current status of the elePHPants.

If you've been around the PHP community for any length of time, chances are you've seen the ElePHPant stuffed animals that have been floating around conferences and living on developers' desks. Well, the Zend Framework has decided to create some of their own - a more green variety. Pádraic Brady has posted about them.

Blue PHP ElePHPant plush toys are so yesterday. Ben Scholzen (you might know him as DASPRiD on IRC/Twitter) is now taking pre-orders for green Zend Framework ElePHPants. Yes, they are green. Yes, they have “ZF” printed on them. No, they are not a repository of Zend Framework knowledge. We tried really hard, but Intel insists that magical toys from the future are not real. Ben needs to reach a minimum production order of 1000 small ZF ElePHPants and is currently hovering at around 200 after the weekend. If you, your user group, or your pet poodle want one of these, visit Ben’s pre-order page for more information.

As of the time of this post, the orders for these elePHPants is at about 190 out of the 1000 needed, so if you'd like to pick some up, get over and put in your pre-order now!

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode - an interview with Laura Beth Denker of Etsy.

Cal's "three questions" for her were:

• What's your title, what it means and what do you do? ("Anthropologist of Developer Culture")
• Can you talk about the toolset Etsy uses for continuous integration?
• Can you discuss private methods and why you like them?

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 directly or by subscribing to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted their latest episode - an interview with Luke Stokes, a co-founder of FoxyCart.

Cal's "three questions" for Luke were:

• Why did you choose PHP to build the Foxycart platform?
• What did you learn in the process of becoming PCI certified?
• What lessons do you have for people looking to put together a platform and an API?

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode, an interview with Chris Shiflett (as recorded in 2011).

In the interview they talk about things like:

• Chris' security experience
• The PHP community's shifting focus on security
• What's the biggest security mistake PHP developers still make?
• Cross-site request forgeries
• Chris' current work with Mapalong

You can listen to this latest episode either by using the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. You can also subscribe to their feed to get the latest.