Paul Jones has posted a few notes to his blog about the latest Nashville PHP User Group (the first after the group had faded somewhat) including a mention of the main talk from Josh Holmes.

My favorite part of these things (as always) is meeting the other attendees. We retired to a nearby bar after the meeting, where I cliqued up with Brian Dailey, Ryan Weaver, Jeremy Kendall, and others.

Topics that came up during that discussion included the books "Mythical Man Month", "Fooled By Randomness" and "Managing the Next Society".

You can find out more about the Nashville PHP User Group from their website including meeting times, location and future topics.

Rafael Dohms has a new post today promoting the benefits of local user groups (any of them, not just PHP) and talks about the "unsung heroes" of these groups that put the real effort in to make their groups better.

Its really a wonderful environment, especially for the members, who get to experience and benefit from various perks brought to them by the UG. In this whole scenario we have a few unsung heroes, the UG leaders. Fearless souls that sacrifice whatever free time they have to give back to the community and make our PHP world a better place.

He mentions the hard work of these local participants and talks a bit about some of the things they do to make their groups better - coordinating resources, a sacrifice of free time and being there to help when needed on whatever project might come around. Without these people, a lot of local PHP groups just wouldn't be what they are today.

For those that weren't able to make it, Sebastian Bergmann has posted a short summary of what went on at the Dutch PHP usergroup's TestFest 2008 event.

I arrived shortly after noon, just in time for the start of the test fest at 12:30. After a short introduction to PHPT, we started writing tests for the Reflection API. We managed to write 37 tests with 10 people in 4 hours.

You can find out more about the user group on their website including meeting times, locations and links to other great PHP resources.

Brian Moon (of dealnews) has officially taken the lead of the local PHP user group for North Alabama:

As of today I have taken over organizing the PHP/MySQL meetup.com group for north Alabama. Anyone willing to drive into town is welcome to come. Our first meetup that I will organize will be Monday, December 3, 2007. I will be posting directions and more info at Meetup.com once they grant me access.

The group is having a meetup tonight being sponsored by Codango - no word yet on the presentations, but several have already RVSPed to attend. If you're in the Huntsville area and want to attend, head over to the Meetup page for the group and let them know.

Brian Moon (of dealnews) has officially taken the lead of the local PHP user group for North Alabama:

As of today I have taken over organizing the PHP/MySQL meetup.com group for north Alabama. Anyone willing to drive into town is welcome to come. Our first meetup that I will organize will be Monday, December 3, 2007. I will be posting directions and more info at Meetup.com once they grant me access.

The group is having a meetup tonight being sponsored by Codango - no word yet on the presentations, but several have already RVSPed to attend. If you're in the Huntsville area and want to attend, head over to the Meetup page for the group and let them know.

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.

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.