The Zend Developer Zone has a reminder for those in the Amsterdam area - the phpGG user group (newly formed) will be having their next meeting on September 23rd.

On Tuesday 23 September 2008 the Dutch PHP user group will have its first meeting, in what will become a bi-monthly event. The goal is have meetings with other members, enjoy some coffee and tea and meeting other developers and the chance of prizes to win.

Two speakers will be presenting from about 8pm to 10:30pm - you can find out more about the group and the meeting from their site, including how to get there.

If you live in Belgium and have been thinking about attending one of the PHPBelgium meetings but aren't sure what they'd be like, check out this post from Marc Veldman on the Ibuildings blog for a sneak peek.

Last week the Belgian PHP User group held their second meeting. Because the venue was fairly close to our office in Vlissingen, some of us decided to have a look. We were early, so there weren't many people yet, but soon the room began to fill up and in the end there were a little over 30 people. Not bad, given that this was only the second meeting.

Talks given covered methods for improving your PHP development (best practices) and a look at the Zend Framework. There were even raffles for fabulous prizes (like copies of "Enterprise PHP Development", elePHPants and a ticket to attend ZendCon this year). Check out the group's website for more information on the next meeting and other bits of info.

A new entry has been posted to the PEAR blog with the latest minutes for the group's July 13th meeting.

Some highlights from the meeting include new/upcoming RFCs for package naming schemes, exception handling in PHP 5.3, and a vote on extending the current PEAR2 Policies. Heavy stuff, check it out!

You can check out the full notes here on the PEAR portion of the PHP.net wiki.

Gennady Feldman has posted two comments/suggestions about things he thinks could be done to improve the PEAR and PECL websites:

So I attended the PEAR2 presentation and had a chance to bug the guys behind PEAR/PECL. There's definitely exciting stuff happening and they are pushing forward with many exciting ideas.

His suggestions include updates to documentation, crrection broken parts of the API and a "Package News" feature with the ability to leave comments on them.

He's also posted another suggestion - the ability of the authors of the project to provide other links besides the ones just for the project (external documentation, tutorials, etc)

Jakob Westhoff has posted about a birthday one of the PHP user groups is celebrating - the PHP Usergroup Dortmund:

I'm writing this blog article from the HiccUp Dortmund, where our birthday meeting takes place. [...] Nearly all our oldies are present today to commemorate this anniversary.

You can get more information on the group and the wheres and whens of their next meetup over on the user group's page (including links to current information about several of the group's members).

Ben Ramsey says congratulations to the Costa Rica PHP group on having their first meeting with 37 developers in attendance.

It sounds like they have a very active and vibrant PHP developer community in Costa Rica, and they've found two very supportive universities that have offered to host their meetings and events. I wish that every PHP user group could find sponsors willing to provide computer labs and even bring in outside speakers!

According to the Costa Rica PHP website they had a wonderful response from local developers and found them all eager to contribute however they could. They even have the support of two local universities where they can meet/do work in their labs (even bring in speakers from other countries).

Daniel Crook points out the next meeting of the New York PHP Group where Dan Gisolfi will be talking about some of the latest things that IBM has been up to in the mashup arena.

Centered around the concept of "situational applications," IBM's work with mashups targets a growing trend in Web site development. [...] IT specialists should embrace the model as a foothold for PHP in the enterprise.

Some of Dan's presentation is outlined as well - a demo of IBM's Mashup Starter Kit, a look at best practices, and talk on the collaboration of IBM with Zend and ProgrammableWeb. If you're wanting to attend, be sure you RSVP as soon as possible (before the 21st @ 3pm) to reserve your spot.

The Zend Developer Zone has an announcement about an upcoming PHP user group meeting happening in Boston:

What is less known is that PHP is also making significant inroads in the enterprise. Join BostonPHP, IBM and Zend as we discuss where Enterprise PHP (and OSS) is going and how it's going to get there. This promises to be a great evening with plenty of "horsepower" to answer your questions.

Speakers for the evening will be Mark de Visser, Zend's CMO and David Boloker, IBM's CTO of Emerging Internet Technologies. The meeting will be happening on Tuesday, September 11th starting at around 6:30pm. The meeting will be held in Cambridge at 1 Rodger's Street. Check out the official announcement of the meeting for full details.

Many congratulations go out to the Frankfurt PHP User Group today on their 5th anniversary (as mentioned in Marcus Wolff's new post)!

The PHP User Group Frankfurt am Main (PHPUGFFM) will be celebrating its 5th anniversary tomorrow and is planning for a big party, so if you're in the area, be sure to drop by! Well, of course it's a geek party (they're developers, what did you expect? :-)) so there'll be plenty of talks before the actual socializing will start.

Session topics will be Unobtrusive Javascript, $YAJQ ++, PHP Homebanking (the sequel), PHP Dos, Don't and maybes, juicy Joost and ION parser - sounds like a very interesting mix to me.

The meeting will be happening on May 10th there in Frankfurt at around 7:30-8:00pm and will feature some good talks before the party begins. Check out the meeting's entry for complete information.

PHP developers around the Columbia, MD area looking for ways to connect with other developers in your area show check out the new user group Chris Shiflett has started up - the Columbia PHP Meetup.

I just created the Columbia PHP Meetup Group, something we have been wanting to do for a while. The inaugural meeting is going to be held at our headquarters on Mon, 05 Mar 2007.

The plan for the first meeting, according to Chris, is to give lightening talks on whatever subject the attendees decide on. Other OmniTI-ers might show as well (Wez Furlong, George Schlossnagle, etc).