As Andrei Zmievski points out, the notes from the PHP Developers Meeting have been posted to the php.net wiki.

Taking advantage of php|tek bringing a lot of people together, we had a PHP developers meeting over 2 days before the conference. Day 1 was dedicated to technical issues in PHP 5 and 6, and day 2 was spent discussing potential features, migration issues, current roadblocks, etc.

The notes cover PHP versions 5.3, a possible 5.4 and looks forward to 6.0. There's some interesting stuff in there, so read over it if you get a chance.

Keith Casey (of Blue Parabola) has been wandering around php|tek this week doing some video interviews with speakers about the conference and other various PHP topics. He's posting them over on the Blue Parabola blog - here's the list so far:

• Paul Jones on benchmarking
• Michaelangelo van Dam on PHP Testfest
• Cal Evans on distributed teams and telecommuting
• Lorna Mitchell and Matthew Weier O'Phinney on subversion
• Eli White on the PHP community, ZendCon, etc
• Wez Furlong on PHP core development
• Rafael Dohms on PHP in Brazil
• Jason Sweat on Design Patterns
• Tony Bibbs on Technology in Government
• Travis Swicegood on Git and Subversion
• Elizabeth Smith on PHP-GTK
• Arbi Arzoumani on Conference Organization
• Robert Purcell and Matt Schraeder on Conference Thoughts
• Brett Bieber on PEAR2
• Aaron McCall on the Conference Experience
• thePHP.cc on Code Reviews

Keep an eye here for more videos as they're added to the Blue Parabola site or you can follow along here for the news directly from the source.

php|tek 2009 is still going on but several people have already actively blogged about some of their experiences. Here's a few so far:

• Keith Casey on the Blue Parabola blog
• Eli White on the Zend Developer Zone, Day 2, Days #3 & #4
• Brandon Savage, Day #1, Day #2
• Rafael Dohms, Day #2, Day #3, Day #4, Summary
• Lorna Mitchell, Round-up
• Michelangelo van Dam
• Wez Furlong
• Cal Evans
• Keith Casey
• Stefan Koopmanschap
• Michelangelo van Dam
• Elizabeth Naramore
• Ibuildings techPortal (by Lorna Mitchell)
• Jason Sweat

Keep an eye here for more blog posts from these and other bloggers through out the week!

Eli White has posted a first day summary of this year's php|tek conference's Tutorial Day (Day 0) to the Zend Developer Zone:

The first day at PHP|tek this year is traditionally the Tutorial Day, and this year was no exception. Of course, one almost needs to discuss Day 0 as well. The monday before the conference where everyone is arriving and preparing. Day 0, is basically a family reunion at PHP|tek, which is known for being the 'Community' conference. Hanging out in the lobby, you will see numerous hugs and enthusiastic greetings happening. (As well as a few drinks being bought and shared)

He mentions tutorials given by Ed Finkler and an SVN tutorial from Lorna Mitchell and Matthew Weier O'Phinney. These were just two of many - other included a code review session, an in-depth look at caching in PHP apps and application security. Stay tuned to the Zend Developer Zone for more updates to come.

This year's php|tek conference is less than a week away and all of the hard work and planning has paid off. The conference, the most recent in a series Marco Tabini & Associates have held in Chicago, Illinois, is bringing together speakers from all over the world to talk on subjects ranging from version control, to rapid application development to development frameworks. Marco Tabini, CEO of MTA has this to say about this year's event, "Preparations are down to the wire and, like every year, we have some great surprises in store for our attendees. php|tek is a unique mix of community happenings and great learning opportunities and, for me as for many other people, a great opportunity to meet up with old friends and new acquaintances."

The week will also include a few other events outside of the normal daily sessions, one of which is the Unconference happening just after the last session each day. Keith Casey of Blue Parabola organized this year's event. With the help of the Joind.in site and some community involvement, he's set up some great sessions to compliment each of the day's normal sessions. I asked Keith what he felt was the real goal behind the Unconference and how to make it really work.

"The vital - and therefore most difficult - part of an unconference is getting the word out. First, people need to know it's happening. Then they need to know how to participate both in the pitching and voting of sessions [and] they need to know which session is happening where." In his opinion, though, the real key to a successful unconfernece is to make the connection between the people with something to say and the ones that want to hear it.

None of this would come together without the hard work of others "behind the scenes" handling things like reservations at the hotel, setting up special need for the speakers and coordinating with the staff to make sure things run smoothly during the week. One member of this team is Elizabeth Naramore. She's spent the last few months coordinating things to to make the week flow as smooth as possible. Elizabeth noted that, despite still working out the last minute details, they're "really excited about hosting this year's conference. We have brilliant speakers and some great social events planned, along with a few surprises, just to keep everyone on their toes."

If you're haven't registered yet, there's still time! The conference begins next Tuesday with the Tutorials day and goes through Friday at lunch with regular and Unconference sessions. You can still register on the php|tek website if you'd like to attend but you have to be fast - since the conference is next week, you have to sign up before the end of this week!

If you're going to be attending this year's php|tek (in Chicago) Keith Casey has a suggestion for something else you don't want to miss while you're there - the Unconference happening "after hours" every day of the main conference (save the tutorial day).

Well, we're just about two weeks from php|tek 2009. While many of the presenters are touching up their slides, brushing up their talks, and thinking of the pizza that's yet to come... I have a different question for you: What are you doing? As of today, I'm officially collecting ideas for the php|tek unconference. As I get ideas (I already have quite a few), I'll post them on [...] Joind.in under the php|tek Unconference event. Then all you have to do is register on the site, vote for the session, and feel free to leave feedback.

He's looking for a few good talks or even suggestions for talks you might like to hear about. If you have an idea, let Keith know either via email (at keith [at] blueparabola.com) or on Twitter. He'll add them to the Joind.in page for the event for comment, suggestions and votes on which you, the adoring public, might want to hear.

This year's php|tek conference is rapidly approaching and this year has a few more things in store for attendees than previous years. One of them is a Hackathon, organized by Matthew Turland (of Blue Parabola). I managed to grab a few minutes of Matt's time to has him a few questions about the Hackathon.

Q: Why a Hackathon?
The PHP community at large has seen a few recent events like Bughuntday and TestFest, but at the point where the idea came up to have a Hackathon, events like this had never part of a conference. This seems odd when you think about it, because conferences are a situation where a number of people interested in development are all in one physical location. While online collaboration is certainly possible it's not always as easy or fun as in-person real-time collaboration. And yet, events like these have occurred independently of conferences rather than in conjunction with them.

This will be the first year that an unconference event is included in the conference program for php|tek. I suppose my colleague who originated the Hackathon idea, Keith Casey, figured that firsts come better in pairs. Seriously, though, it gives this large number of aggregated developers a chance to make significant contributions to PHP projects that we all know and use.

Q: How has the interest level been?
The idea has had very positive reception. We've already gotten commitments from core developers of a number of major projects including PHP itself and a few well-known frameworks. It's commonplace at a conference for people to get into ad-hoc discussions with project developers and for patches to be written for issues or potential new features during those discussions. The Hackathon is an attempt to organize these occurrences so that many people are doing it at the same time and have an opportunity to coordinate and pool their efforts.

Q: Have any coding sprints been considered?
As a matter of fact, we've gotten a commitment from people involved in last year's TestFest event to organize another like it as part of the Hackathon. If you're unfamiliar with TestFest, it's a coordinated effort to improve the code coverage of PHP itself by writing tests in PHP. It's easy to get involved and people will be available at the Hackathon to bring you up to speed on what you need to know if you'd like to contribute. This is an excellent opportunity for developers to contribute to the stability and reliability of PHP, which has a widespread effect on all of us.

Q: Will the groups for each of the softwares be the ones to pick whats worked on or will people be free to hack away at any part?
While groups may guide those working, whether they do so will be their prerogative. Ultimately, it's your choice what you work on, and it doesn't have to be a project that someone else is representing. I myself plan to hack on Phergie, my PHP-based IRC bot. Bring your laptop, sit, hack, and have a good time with the rest of us. If everyone enjoys the event, I'll consider it a success and any contributions we make to PHP projects will be icing on the cake.

Q: So, what happens to the bugs they fix? Will they get pushed back into the project?
Ideally, yes. If not, they can be submitted as patches to project issue trackers, which makes them all the more likely to be accepted eventually. We're trying to get as many core project developers involved in the Hackathon as possible. At worst, they'll at least be aware of the patches that are submitted. At best, they can inspect them and push into project version control repositories soon after they're submitted at the Hackathon. So, if you know of a project whose core developers will be present at php|tek, you can help by encouraging them to attend the Hackathon!

Q: And the most important question - will food and beverage be provided?
The tentative plan is for the Hackathon to run from 4:30 to 10:30 on Thursday. Hors d'oeuvres will be served from 7:30 to 8:30, followed by drinks for the remaining time. While we'd certainly like for people to stay the entire time, there are a number of restaurants in the area where people can get dinner then come back for the rest of the event. In any case, we'll update the Hackathon page on the php|tek web site (http://tek.mtacon.com/c/s/hackathon) as more information becomes available.

You can find out more about this year's php|tek conference on its main site and more details on the Hackthon here.

The php|architect crew have announced news talks that have been added to the php|tek 2009 conference schedule in their final version of the schedule.

We just introduced the final schedule for our upcoming php|tek 2009 conference, which will take place in Chicago between May 19 and 22. We have tons of great presentations planned from PHP luminaries like Andrei Zmievski, Sebastian Bergmann, Eli White, Sara Golemon, Terry Chay and many more.

php|tek 2009 will be held in Chicago May 19th through 22nd and there's still spots to signup if you want to attend. Pricing ranges from $400 USD (tutorials only) up to $1,100 USD for a full pass (conference and tutorials) with discounts for alumni of previous php|architect conferences, government employees, members of PHP/MySQL/Linux user groups and many more.

Tony Bibbs has a reminder about a webinar he will be presenting on Propel as a part of the php|architect free webcast series leading up to this year's php|tek conference.

This is just a friendly reminder that this Friday, March 27th from 12pm-1pm CST I will be giving a webinar on using Propel, an object relational mapper (ORM). This webinar is just one of a series being sponsored by php|architect. The webinar will focus on the basics of installing and using Propel as well as one or two more advanced topics.

You can register for this webinar here and check out some of the other upcoming talks on this page on the MTA conference website. Other sessions include PHP & Flash, application security and working with Zend Framework/Dojo.

Matthew Turland has pointed out the webcast series that the php|architect folks will be doing every two weeks leading up to the keynote for this year's php|tek 2009 conference.

Webcasts will be held roughly every two weeks leading up to the beginning of the conference. I'm scheduled for Friday February 27 at 1 PM EST and my topic will be "When RSS Fails: Web Scraping with HTTP." Participation is free, but the number of participants is limited, so register early. Note that participation requires a machine running either Windows XP or higher or MacOS X 10.4 or higher. Look forward to seeing you there!

The first webcast is happening on January 23rd and will be a look at time and project managment with the Web2Project product by Keith Casey. Other topics include web accessibility, using Propel, application security and Zend Framework/Dojo integration.

Check out the webcast series page for more information and to signup.