Thjis Feryn has posted another in his series of video interviews with a member of the PHP community. In this latest episode Thijs caught up with Cal Evans at this year's PHPBenelux conference.

The interview was recorded at PHPBenelux Conference 2016. Cal Evans was invited as the keynote speaker which he was very excited about. He had keynoted our very first edition back in 2010 and now he was back. Over the years there was quite some talk about inviting him back, but up until recently it never really worked out.

He obviously did a really good job.

They talk some about branding, being a "developer advocate" and being a member of the global PHP community (or just your local one). You can watch the video of the episode either in the in-page video player or directly on YouTube. If you're more audio-inclined you can also listen over on SoundCloud. If you'd like the show, you can check out other interviews on his site through the "interview" tag on his site.

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.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has posted the latest community interview in their series today. This time host Cal Evans talk with Thijs Feryn, one of the organizers of the PHP Benelux user group and conference.

In the interview Cal and Thijs talk about his involvement in both the user group and the conference, his experience as a speaker (with over 100 talks under his belt) and some of his advice to people wanting to get into speaking. They also give some tips to speakers wanting to make effective talks that people will enjoy and remember. They also share some of their experience running conferences.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 for listening whenever. If you enjoy the interview and learning more about members of the PHP community, be sure to subscribe to their feed.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode - an interview with Michelangelo van Dam, an organizer of PHPBenelux and well-known speaker.

Cal's three questions have to do with his user group and conference experience:

• You're a leader of the PHPBenelux User Group that moves around a lot, tell us some about how that works
• Tell us some about he PHPBelenux conference and some of the things you've learned about running an event like that
• Why should someone be part of the PHP community?

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

On 7php.com today there's a new community interview - this time it's with Michelangelo van Dam, the President of the PHPBenelux user group and well known PHP speaker/community advocate.

In this edition, I talked with Michelangelo van Dam a senior PHP/Zend Framework consultant. This man really needs no introduction; he is so much of an invaluable asset to the PHP community. As per wefollow.com, he is ranked as the 4th (out of 113) most influential person on Twitter for #zendframework and as the 25th (out of 2,543) most influential person for #php

Questions in the interview cover everything from a bit of history about Michelangelo out to how supportive the PHP community is:

Give and expect nothing in return. People appreciate it more when you give something from the heart instead of giving something as a favor for a future return.

Other questions touch on his "community animal" nickname, his community/life balance and his tracking of the work Microsoft is doing to help the PHP language.

The PHP Belenux conference has officially announced their Call for Papers for their event happening in January 2012 in Antwerp.

With the kickoff of the conference site we are also opening the call for proposals (CFP), this is where you get to step up and take the stage. If you have any cool subject related to PHP which you would like to talk about, please fill out the CfP which will run from September 1st and closes on October 15th.

Speakers will receive a package including a hotel stay, travel reimbursement, meals, drinks and, of course, full access to the conference. You can submit sessions lasting either 50 minutes (talk) or 3 hours (tutorial) with a few guidelines and suggestions to follow. Topics they're interested in (but not limited to) include CMSes, cloud computing, NoSQL, frameworks, best practices and HTML5. Remember, the last day for submissions is October 15th so get busy submitting - there's no limit to how many you can enter!

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!

As is mentioned in this new post to the ServerGrove blog, the company will be sponsoring the upcoming PHP Benelux conference happening January 28th and 29th, 2011 in Antwerp, Belgium.

ServerGrove will be sponsoring the PHPBenelux Conference 2011 this year. PHPBenelux is one of the most active PHP organizations in Europe steadily promoting knowledge sharing events like this one. The 2011 conference offers an awesome schedule over two days. Friday January 28th offers tutorial sessions in the morning and the main conference starts in the afternoon with three simultaneous tracks.

The tickets for the event range from a Conference Only pass for 150 Euro out to a full Conference + Tutorial Day pass for 300 Euro (you can get yours here). They'll be having talks on a huge range of topics including geolocation, Doctrine, SOA, Varnish, the Zend Framework and software management tools. Additionally, if you'd like to get an idea of the great quality of the sessions that'll be presented, check out the PHP Benelux site for audio from the 2010 event.

The PHPBenelux group has officially announced this month's BugHuntDay they'll be having near the end of November on Saturday the 27th in the offices of WEBclusive.

As has become tradition after 2008 (Zend Framework) and 2009 (symfony), we again organize a PHPBenelux BugHuntDay in November this year. We even decided to make the BugHuntDay a bit bigger. On Saturday November 27th, we will be focusing not on one but on two projects! We will focus on Zend Framework for the framework-heads, and on the Joind.in codebase for the community-heads.

Developers wishing to work on the code base for either project are welcome, whether you're familiar with the frameworks involved or not (Joind.in uses CodeIgniter). If you're planning on attending, sign up and mark yourself as attending on this Joind.in event.

The PHPBenelux 2011 conference's Call for Proposals has been open since earlier this year but the deadline for submission is on the horizon.

After a successful first conference earlier this year, the PHPBenelux team is proud to announce the 2nd edition of the PHPBenelux Conference. We're extending to two days this year with a half day tutorial, and 1.5 days of conference. The conference is on Friday 28th January and Saturday 29th January in Antwerp. Become part of this year's speaker schedule at the PHPBenelux Conference 2011. Each chosen speaker receives a speaker package!

Talks should be about 60 minutes including Q&A and can be on a wide range of topics (some of their suggestions include content management systems, frameworks, best practices, etc). But remember, you need to submit your proposal before the end of the month to be considered!