The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their ZendCon Sessions podcast - a talk from Shahar Evron on CouchDB.

Welcome to the ZendCon 2009 edition of the ZendCon Sessions. The ZendCon Sessions are live recordings of sessions that have been given at previous Zend Conferences. Combined with the slides, they can be the next best thing to having attended the conference itself. [...] This episode of The ZendCon Sessions was recorded live at ZendCon 2009 in San Jose, CA and features Shahar Evron giving his talk: "Introduction to CouchDB with PHP"

You can listen to this latest episode in three ways - you can either download the mp3 of the session, listen via the in-page player or you can subscribe to their feed and get the latest episodes downloaded right to you.

New on the Zend Developer Zone there's the latest episode of the ZendCon Sessions (as recorded at ZendCon 2009). This episode is a talk Sam Hennessey gave on scaling vertically with IBM i.

Welcome to the ZendCon 2009 edition of the ZendCon Sessions. The ZendCon Sessions are live recordings of sessions that have been given at previous Zend Conferences. Combined with the slides, they can be the next best thing to having attended the conference itself. [...] This episode of The ZendCon Sessions was recorded live at ZendCon 2009 in San Jose, CA and features Sam Hennessey giving his talk: "PHP – Faster And Cheaper. Scale Vertically with IBM i"

There's three ways to catch this latest episode - you can either listen via the in-page player, download the mp3 directly or subscribe to the ZendCon Sessions feed and get the latest episodes automatically. Be sure to check out the slides too!

New on the Zend Developer Zone there's a new post with the latest recording from this year's ZendCon (2009) conference - Ilia Alshanetsky's talk "PHP 5.3 == Awesome!".

Welcome to the ZendCon 2009 edition of the ZendCon Sessions. The ZendCon Sessions are live recordings of sessions that have been given at previous Zend Conferences. Combined with the slides, they can be the next best thing to having attended the conference itself. [...] This episode of The ZendCon Sessions was recorded live at ZendCon 2009 in San Jose, CA and features Ilia Alshanetsky giving his talk: "PHP 5.3 == Awesome!"

You can listen to this new episode in three different ways - either via the in-page player, through the direct download link or by subscribing to their feed.

After attending the recent Zend/PHP Conference (2009) Kim Greene has written up some of her thoughts on what she experienced, both during the conference sessions and after.

In October, I attended the Zend/PHP Conference for the first time. I see a lot of opportunities for integration between Lotus Domino, PHP and RPG so I’m anxious to expand my horizons. And what an expansion it was. ZendCon was unlike any other conference experience I’ve had.

She mentions the wide range of attendees, the sense of community surrounding the entire conference, some of the sessions (keynote, panels and regular) she attended and the announcements that were made by Zend about their software (like Zend Studio) and partnerships with IBM.

The conference has only just ended and already those summaries are rolling in - here's just a few of the many out there:

• Jason Austin's look back - day 1, day 2, day 3
• Ed Finkler's summary
• one from Fabien Potencier
• Michelangelo van Dam
• a review from Anna Filina Keith Casey's look at the Unconfernece
• A summary from Travis Swicegood
• David Coallier's post to the echolibre blog
• a quick wrapup from the Zend Developer Zone

If you weren't able to attend or just want to catch back up on the presentations you missed, you can always check them out on Joind.in!

If you'd like to keep up with a daily recap of some of the things going on around this year's ZendCon conference, Eli White, Editor-in-Chief of the Zend Developer Zone, will be posting videos all week long about the event.

He's added T-2 Days and T-1 Days so far and you can keep up with more of the video posts as they come out on this page of the Zend Developer Zone website.

If you think the only reason to go to a conference like ZendCon is for the main speaker list, you're missing out on half the fun and content. The Unconference, managed this year by Keith Casey promises to be one of the best ever (here's the list of suggested sessions so far). Matthew Weier O'Phinney agrees and in his latest post he talks about why unconferences are important and why you should attend.

Why should you care? There are great sessions already selected for the conference featuring some well-known speakers from the PHP world; why would you want to either attend or present at the uncon?

He talks about how the unconference atmosphere can help with continuing the conversation from other sessions (like a subversion talk that spawned off a best practices session), how it can be a "springboard" to getting into the speaking world and how it can help to explore new ideas and concepts that the main conference tracks just don't make very easy.

The Zend Developer Zone has an update about the upcoming ZendCon conference coming in just two weeks.

ZendCon is now only two weeks away, and we've been hard at work in preparing for it. We've got a number of things in the works that we hope you are going to really enjoy!

Updates include new developments on the Unconference sesions, the creation of two new types of tickets - a First Day pass for $299 and a pass for just the UnCon/Expo Hall and opening Keynote. More information can be found on the registration website. There have also been two new keynote speakers added to the schedule - Andi Gutmans speaking on "PHP at the Heart of Mainstream IT" and Scott Baker's talk "A Series of Fortunate Events".

On the Zend Developer Zone the latest episode of the ZendCon Sessions has been posted - a recording of Matthew Weier O'Phinney and Mike Naberenzy's talk on best practices.

In this series we will be releasing regular sessions from ZendCon 2008 as we lead up to this year's ZendCon. This episode of The ZendCon Sessions was recorded live at ZendCon 2008 in Santa Clara, CA and features Mike Naberezny & Matthew Weier O'Phinney giving their tutorial: "Best Practices of PHP Development".

You can grab this latest episode in one of three ways - download the mp3 directly, listen via the in-page player or subscribe to the feed to get this and other great episodes delivered right to your desktop.

If you're going to be attending this year's Zend/PHP Conference, you might want to check out this new post from Keith Casey, the chair of this year's unconference.

While php|tek has a definite community or "friends getting together" vibe to it, ZendCon is definitely corporate. It's reflected in the attitude, the clothing (lots of khakis and polos), and the formal exhibit hall, etc. There are still numerous friends getting together, but what happens when you spice things up a bit?

Zend has agreed to a series of unconference sessions at this year's event, around 25 during the length of the conference. Anyone can contribute and anyone can add their topic to the list. It'll be run in a BarCamp style and sessions will be voted on and sessions will be selected by the end of the day. If you'd like more information, check out the unconference page on the ZendCon site.