I went to my first real PHP conference last week, phpTek which was located at the Ohare Hyatt in Chicago, IL. The big conference sponsors were Microsoft, Facebook, Active State, Adobe, hostedlabs, Active Media,
and php|architect.

The days were fairly full. They started out at 9, and then there was usually a coffee break after the first sessions or so, then we went until 12:30 and stopped for lunch. The lunch consisted of a buffet sponsored by adobe. Each table was contained a PHP topic. The idea was to have a working lunch, so each table would discuss a certain PHP topic. As you can guess, that works for the most part, until people digressed onto some other topic. All in all, it was a good idea, and I hope they do something similar next year. The afternoon then had a couple sessions, another coffee break, and then another
session or so. Wednesday night they had a Jeopardy style PHP Trivia contest, and Thursday night Facebook sponsored an Open Bar and live music by Andy McKee.

After the conference, I was inspired to buy about 5 newbooks which pertained to sessions I attended. For 3 days, I felt like I was back in school, only this time, it was much more enjoyable, and I’d gladly do it again! The only disappointment was the lack of power and wireless connectivity. If you were
in International A, you were usually able to pick up a signal. However, you were out of luck if you were in B or C.

There was also a podcast created by the php|architect guys. Warning: This was after the open bar, so
there is some interesting dialogue 🙂 phpTek Podcast