If you're in or near the Dublin, Ireland area and are interested at all in developing web applications on Microsoft's Azure platform, you really should check out a new post on the EchoLibre blog with details on a presentation from Josh Holmes (of Microsoft) that'll be happening On February 21st.

As part of their drive to let developers know about Azure, Microsoft have been reaching out to development communities that would traditionally be non-Microsoft centric - in particular PHP and Ruby. [...] So, this month Microsoft are bringing Josh Holmes to Dublin to talk directly to Irish developers about building and deploying web apps on the Azure platform.

It's a free event and all who are interested are welcome to come. It'll start February 21st at 7:30pm (19:30) at the Radisson Hotel on Golden Lane. There's no charge for the event, but you still need to register to reserve a spot - there's only so much room, after all.

On the Ibuildings blog, Soila Patajoki has posted about two upcoming events in the UK and Irish PHP communities.

Following the success of our two PHP seminars in London, we have decided to make it a tour and to visit other parts of the UK and Ireland as well. Next up are Leeds and Dublin - come and meet us in your city! Find out more about our events below.

The first is a talk on source control happening September 9th (as presented by Lorna Mitchell) and the second being a talk from Ivo Jansch in Dublin - "Enterprise PHP and Zend".

Check out the blog post for more information including how to register (do it before the Early Bird special ends and get a copy of CTO Ivo Jansch's book Guide to Enterprise PHP Development).

David Coallier has issued a challenge to all PHP developers in Ireland and in Europe to "stand up" and offer to share their knowledge with others in the local communities:

Now is the time to prove that we are all friends and Open Source Passionate after all. This is something I have been pondering on meeting all technological groups together instead of being divided, but I believe this push from Laura is exactly what Ireland needed in order to make it's outstanding Technological IQ even higher than it already is.

He's talking specifically about one opportunity - the Ireland Open Source Technology Conference 2008 happening in May, 2008.