php|architect has announced a new contest they'll be hosting (a scavenger hunt, really) and are giving away a ticket to this year's php|tek conference happening in May in Chicago.

Ok PHP fans, we don’t do this often, but once a year we do give away a ticket to php|tek to one lucky programmer. This year, however, you are going to have to work for it. Starting Friday, April 13th, 2012, those of us who work at php|architect will tweet clues, and you are going on a web scavenger hunt. That’s right, dig up other people’s websites, trash their JavaScript and generally make a nuisance of yourself as you follow the clues to the…well, you’ll just have to wait and see.

You'll need to follow the php|architect folks on Twiiter (Elizabeth Tucker, Marco Tabini and Cal Evans) to get clues about the hunt. First prize is a ticket to php|tek this year but other prizes include a ticket to their next Virtual Summit, any three books from their catalog and a free one-year subscription to the magazine.

Once you've found the solution, you'll need to enter it here to be entered. Good luck!

As announced on the php|architect site, the official schedule for this year's php|tek event has been released.

tek '12 is coming to Chicago May 22nd – 25th, 2012. Yes, there is going to be an uncon that goes till all hours of the morning. Yes, there is going to be a hackathon packed with programmers and cool projects. Of course there are going to be some off-the-hook evening activities that people will talk about for years to come.

This year's event includes sessions about:

• creating and using PHP components
• application testing
• HTML5 & Javascript
• Continuous deployment
• Puppet
• using the SPL
• Gearman

Tickets are already on sale for this year's event and, if you get in before the end of February, you can get the Early Bird pricing of $200 USD off the cost of a main conference-only ticket and $300 USD off the price of a full conference ticket.

php|architect has officially announced their php|tek conference for 2012 and have opened their Call for Papers:

The simple answer is to the question "What topics are you looking for" is: anything that helps inspire PHP developers to do their jobs better, more easily, and more efficiently. [...] Most importantly, we do not necessarily look for talks that are about PHP. Some of the most successful presentations over the years have been on products built on PHP (like frameworks) and on technologies that are tangential to it (e.g.: Apache, JavaScript, databases, and so on).

The deadline to submit is December 31st for the two types of sessions - tutorials (3 or 6 hours long) and regular talks (50 minutes). You can manage your proposals via the php|architect website.