Phil Sturgeon has a new post to his site introducing a group that you may have heard about but aren't exactly familiar with who makes it up - the members of the League of Extraordinary PHP Packages (or just "The League").

A few months ago I wrote What is The League of Extraordinary Packages?, and it was clearly written in a defensive tone. I wanted to explain a few things about the League because people were attacking it in weird ways. We sat down as a group and discussed a plan for 2015 to solve this. A lot of cool ideas came up, the first of which was to make a Leadership Group. These people have been doing amazing things in the PHP community at large, and have been doing awesome things in the League too. This is an introduction to them, and a thank you for everything they do.

He introduces five members of The League and talks about which project they're associated with:

• Alex Bible
• Ben Corlett
• Kayla Daniels
• Frank De Jonge
• Jonathan Reinink

There's several other packages besides those mentioned here that make up the League's offerings, so be sure to take a look at the list and see if there's anything that might benefit you or your application.

If you're a Code Igniter fan and happen to be going to this year's South By Southwest Conference, you'll hvave a chance to meet up with the core development team for the framework for a little social time.

For the upcoming 2008 South by Southwest, EllisLab has several exciting events planned; including an open panel discussion, a brunch event... and heck, let's just cut to it, the Party at the Moonshine Grill! (This WILL be the highlight of the conference for you - promise).

You can get more on the conference from its website and more about the EllisLab group from their homepage.

Those that didn't get a chance to check out this year's PHP UK Conference can get a little taste of what it was like from Rob Allen's perspective in his latest blog post today.

Included in the happenings he mentions were the talk that Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone gave on mashups, Kevin Henney's look at Object Orientation, and Rasmus Lerdorf's look at PHP5 performance/security. He also mentions meeting up with Dagfinn Reiersol (author of PHP in Action) to "talk shop" a bit about writing books.

You can check out all of the details about the conference that was over on their website including summaries of the talks that were given during this jam-packed one day event.

Those that didn't get a chance to check out this year's PHP UK Conference can get a little taste of what it was like from Rob Allen's perspective in his latest blog post today.

Included in the happenings he mentions were the talk that Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone gave on mashups, Kevin Henney's look at Object Orientation, and Rasmus Lerdorf's look at PHP5 performance/security. He also mentions meeting up with Dagfinn Reiersol (author of PHP in Action) to "talk shop" a bit about writing books.

You can check out all of the details about the conference that was over on their website including summaries of the talks that were given during this jam-packed one day event.

Chris Shiflett has posted his own recap of the (just passed) php|works conference up in Toronto over on his blog.

I've been traveling non-stop since php|works, so I haven't had a chance to reflect on the conference, what I learned, who I met, and things like that. (Zak has been doing a good job of this lately, and I'd like to follow his lead.) I've probably forgotten more than I remember, but this is my recap.

Included in the things he mentions are:

• The people he was able to meet (like Joshua Eichorn and Sebastian Bergmann)
• The talks he gave ("Truth about XSS" and "Agile PHP Testing")
• His interview with Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone
• The PHP 5 Certification
• and Wez Furlong's "Not PDO" talk

Chris Shiflett has posted his own recap of the (just passed) php|works conference up in Toronto over on his blog.

I've been traveling non-stop since php|works, so I haven't had a chance to reflect on the conference, what I learned, who I met, and things like that. (Zak has been doing a good job of this lately, and I'd like to follow his lead.) I've probably forgotten more than I remember, but this is my recap.

Included in the things he mentions are:

• The people he was able to meet (like Joshua Eichorn and Sebastian Bergmann)
• The talks he gave ("Truth about XSS" and "Agile PHP Testing")
• His interview with Cal Evans of the Zend Developer Zone
• The PHP 5 Certification
• and Wez Furlong's "Not PDO" talk

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...

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...