As the time for this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo grows closer, there's more and more talk about who'll be there and what will be talked about. The Zend Developer Zone is taking the opportunity to do a little looking back - and having some fun in the process. They're hosting a ZendCon trivia contest for some fabulous prizes.

Let's have a little fun, shall we? Here is what we'll do. I'll ask ZendCon or PHP trivia via twitter (http://twitter.com/zendcon) and the first person to email me the correct answer at contest@zend.com will win a prize.

Up for grabs are ZendCon trading cards, books, elePHPants and copies of Zend Studio. Remember, you have to be following zendcon on twitter to get the questions and answers must be submitted via email (no DM, IM, tweets or IRC answers will count).

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the official press release for this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo:

Zend Technologies, The PHP Company, announced today that registration is open for the fourth annual Zend/PHP Conference and Expo, the world's largest gathering of the PHP community. Leading PHP experts, professional PHP developers, and business managers will convene September 15 - 18 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The theme of this year's conference is "High Impact PHP" and sessions will explore the many ways that PHP is used to deliver breakthrough design, functionality, performance, and scalability in new web applications, resulting in real business advantage for their users.

You can already register for the conference and reserve a room at a nearby hotel of your choosing. Speakers this year include Chris Shiflett, Sebastian Bergmann, Jay Pipes and several speakers on a System i track.

Check out the ZDZ post for a long list of some of the great talks that will be presented during the week.

Lukas Smith has posted a quick emPHPower update to his blog today concerning recent thoughts and progress he's made on the initiative.

I hope this all will lead to a few people to step up and really start getting involved deeply in emPHPower. Aside from this Sebastian has handed in a BOF session on emPHPower for OSCON. I hope this one will work out.

A spot has also been set aside at the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo's unconference for someone to speak on the subject and to get a feel for things from the business perspective. Lukas has also been working up more details about the effort and has set up a mailing list to help with collaboration.

As posted on the Zend Developer Zone today, Zend has issued their Call for Papers for this year's Zend/PHP Conference and Expo happening this September at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

Zend invites submissions to the Zend/PHP Conference and Expo, ZendCon08, which will be held September 15-18 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. ZendCon is the largest gathering of the PHP community and is the one time a year to mingle with the core developers, business leaders, and prominent members of the PHP community.

This year's conference program will include competitively selected presentations, tutorials, and invited speakers. All sessions undergo a peer review process by the ZendCon Content Review team.

There's a few different tracks this year including "The Basics of PHP", "Performance and Scalability", "Zend Framework" and several vendor presentations. You can find out more about the requirements and where to send your presentation on this page on the ZendCon 2008 website. The deadline for submissions is midnight on April 30th, 2008 so you better get busy preparing and sending it in!