The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast, hosted by PHP community member Cal Evans, has posted an interview with another member of the PHP community. This time Cal talks with Alan Seiden, a speaker at this year's ZendCon conference. They're also joined by a guest host Adam Culp (an organizer for the conference).

In the interview Cal and Alan talk some about his background in programming and in using PHP, including his current specialization of using PHP on the IBM i platform. They also talk about Alan's sessions for ZendCon: PHP and DB2 in Depth, Bringing RPG/Cobol Business Logic to the Web with the PHP Toolkit and Make Your IBM i Sizzle with WordPress.

You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the show directly to listen offline. If you enjoy the episode and want to hear more like it, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter for the latest updates.

The ZendCon conference has just announced the opening of the Call for Papers for their 2016 event. The conference will once again be happening at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in October (18th-21st).

We’re pleased to announce the ZendCon 2016 PHP Conference, the most anticipated PHP centric event of the year, where community and enterprise PHP developers from around the world gather to share and learn the latest hot trends and technologies in today's professional PHP development.

We know speakers are key to the success of a conference and hope you will submit a talk. In appreciation for the efforts provided, our speakers package ensures they will not need to worry about anything other than delivering the best talks.

They're not just looking for PHP topics either. They'll consider a wide range of topics including PHP frameworks, devops, source control, continuous delivery and many more. The Call for Papers ends May 31st, 2016 so be sure to get those submissions in early (and often) before time runs out.

Thijs Feryn has posted his latest video interview with a member of the PHP community. In this latest episode he talks with Adam Culp, organizer of the ZendCon and Sunshine PHP conferences as well as the SoFloPHP user group, while they were both at this year's ZendCon conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I’ve started a good habit of releasing new episodes of my podcast and video blog on a weekly basis. Let’s continue to do that! This week’s episode features Adam Culp from Zend. Adam is a community animal.

They talk about the conferences Adam organizes, his involvement in the PHP-FIG and contributions to the Zend Framework project. You can watch this latest video either through the in-page video player or directly on YouTube. If you're more audio-inclined, you can listen over on Soundcloud too.

Thijs Feryn has posted his latest in his series of video interviews with members of the PHP community. In this latest episode he talks with Gary Hockin of JetBrains about developer evangelism, the PHPStorm IDE and community conferences.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Las Vegas for Zendcon where I had to opportunity to chat with a lot of friends from the PHP community. This week’s episode features Gary Hockin, developer evangelist at JetBrains. Gary advocates the PHPStorm project and is a proud Welshman.

Because Gary and I are both evangelists, one of the central themes of the interview is developer evangelism. We talk about the life, the travel, the public speaking, but also about the not so glamorous parts of the job. Throughout the conversation we also talk about PHPStorm and PHP community conferences.

You can watch the video either through his in-page video player or over on YouTube. If you prefer the audio-only route, you can also listen on SoundCloud. You can also check out previous interviews Thijs has done in this category on his site.

The Run Geek Radio podcast, hosted by PHP community member Adam Culp, has posted its latest episode - Episode 099: Crawling Before We Can Walk.

So many startups attempt to skip the crawling stages and the MPV (minimum viable product) as they push to become successful. Just as many developers attempt to skip the vital stages of learning and forge ahead to create bugs, security holes, and poor code. Adam Culp, the host of Run Geek Radio, talks about how important it is to crawl before we can walk.

He also talks about the ZendCon and Sunshine PHP conferences (he's an organizer for both) and an update on some of his own personal speaking and running happenings. You can listen to this latest episode using either the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 of the show. You can also subscribe to the feed to get info about future episodes as they're released.

The 7PHP.com site has posted another interview in its series talking with members of the PHP community about what they're doing and things happening around the PHP ecosystem. In this new interview Khayratte Wasseem talks with Cal Evans and Adam Culp about this year's ZendCon conference.

ZendCon is said to be The Global PHP Conference and every year is an amazement in itself. But this year, 2015, will be one of those “once in a blue moon” type of event with the arrival of PHP 7. So Zend Inc., The PHP Company, promises to deliver one of the most unique and exciting ZendCon till date. Most of the PHP Rockstars and leaders will be there. I’m really sad I can’t be there. But if you are nearby, you should not miss it!

This 7PHP interview focuses entirely on ZendCon. I was honored to have this interview through The Community Father, Mr Cal Evans who is one of the key person behind the event and also the amazing Adam Culp being the main organizer.

In the interview they cover a bit of history about the conference, how it compares to other conferences and things they've learned from previous versions of the event. They also talk about some of their own experiences at the past events, things they'd like to share with other conferences and about Zend itself, the company that puts on ZendCon each year.

For those that will be attending the upcoming ZendCon Europe the Zend blog has announced the first ever ZendCon hackathon happening the night of the first day of the conference (Monday the 18th) starting at 7pm.

This special event reserved for ZendCon Europe attendees will stretch your coding limits to the extreme in a friendly competition. Join us on Monday night (room TBA) at 7:00PM for the hackathon kick-off. The rules will be announced then, and the hackathon will run throughout the event until Wednesday. Prizes include the highly coveted big green elePHPant, a 1 year subscription to GitHub, and certification vouchers for the fresh new PHP and ZF2 certification exams!

More information about the event will be shared at the actual conference, but if you're attending but sure you check out this fun event. Hackthons are a fun way to get people together, group up to write new and interesting applications...oh, and the prizes are nice too!

Davey Shafik has a new post about doing the closing keynote at this year's ZendCon Europe conference (happening November 18th through 20th in Paris, France).

In a little under three weeks I will be giving the closing keynote at ZendCon Europe. This will my first keynote and I’m excited to be talking about The Evolution of DevOps.

His talk will cover how the DevOps role has come into its own over the past few years and what kinds of changes to expect, as a developer, in the upcoming years. If you'd like to hear this and lots of other great talks, there's still time to pick up your tickets for either just the conference or for both the conference and tutorials. You can even opt to take the Zend certification while you're at the event.

Zend has officially announced that they will be presenting a "sister" conference to the one they already hold each year in California, this time in Europe - ZendCon Europe.

ZendCon PHP 2013 will be the place where European PHP professionals gather this fall. [...] Attend Europe's largest conference focusing on Enterprise PHP solutions, Frameworks, PHP Training and all things PHP. Meet the legends who created PHP and are partly responsible for what the WWW looks like today. Whether you wish to find a job, take PHP training, find a services company to help you, or just meet the greatest developer ecosystem ever -You are in the right place!

The event will be held in Paris, France on November 18th through the 20th at the Marriott Rive Gauche. Following the same pattern as the US version of the conference, the first day will be tutorials with regular sessions the following days. It's still pretty early on so there's no details about the Call for Papers or anything yet, but you can sign up for more information on the current conference site.

For those that will be in the New York City area tomorrow night (10/25), Daniel Krook has something you should consider attending - the New York PHP User Group is having a meeting with a talk on MongoDB (and a ZendCon Recap).

PHP on IBM System i consultant ZendCon. 10gen MongoDB evangelist Steve Francia will provide an overview on using PHP with MongoDB.

You'll need to RSVP to get a spot or, if you can't make it in person, you can always watch the live stream starting at 6:30pm.

Have a user group meeting you'd like to let the community know about? Let us know!