I attended the PHP UK conference last week, and had a great time. My thanks to all the organisers – they did a great job and were all volunteers. Here are my thoughts on the talks I attended, and I’m looking forward to the videos of the presentations I missed.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades – Aral Balkan
Aral did a very polished presentation and is obviously a very experienced speaker striving for perfection. It was very energetic, fun and enjoyable. The content tended to flit from topic-to-topic a little but it was very well delivered.
What’s new in PHP 5.3 – Scott MacVicar
This was a good presentation which covered the topic very efficiently. The content offered little insight over what information can already be found online, but without having to keep up with internals, release notes or RFCs. A solid delivery, with obvious interest in the subject-matter from Scott.
Of Lambda Functions, Closures and Traits – Sebastian Bergmann
I have really wanted to see this talk for a while, and it clarified a lot about the upcoming features and was very well presented.
Living with Frameworks – Stuart Herbert
A very interesting perspective on how frameworks affect the management of a development team, and a good discussion on how to adopt on where legacy code exists. Essentially a case study about Gradwells‘ own experience with adopting the symfony framework, it was detailed and well delivered although I felt it was a little too naive and evaneglistic about the use of frameworks. Stuart comes across as very experienced and intelligent. This was the most useful and relevant talk I attended at the conference.
Myphp-busters: symfony framework – Stefan Koopmanschap
Stefan did well to debunk some of the myths that surround symfony. It was clearly well prepared, and Stefan knows his topic well. The one thing that I felt detracted from the talk was how so many of the points made could be applied to many of the other available frameworks. It seems daft to say it but it would have been good to have an even bigger plug for symfony.
Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior – Chris Shiflett
This was a very professional presentation. The topic of how interaction design affects the security of an application offered some new and interesting perspectives. It was great to hear Chris discuss a topic about which he has become interested in recently, his excitement for the content was clear, and yet delivered in an understated way. Full of quick-witted humor and obvious intelligence. By far the best talk of the conference.
The food was good, and it was worth visiting all the sponsors stands to see what they are up to. I think that just about everyone from ibuildings was present judging by the number of shirts.
My main complaint about the day was the lack of power outlets – my poor Eee 701 only lasts a couple of hours at a time – next year can we have power outlets (just daisy chain 4-ways) in the conference room/auditoriums?
I also enjoyed the conference. I think the point about power is a good one but remember a venue like this will charge for every item that gets plugged in!! As for the Ibuildings shirts, that wasn’t all of our UK people, and there were some (including me) that weren’t Ibuildings branded
[...] Since this was my first keynote ever, and to a completely new audience, I was rather jittery beforehand. The session felt good while I was presenting it, however, (a few more hours of sleep would not have hurt as I did make a couple of sleep-deprived rookie mistakes) and the feedback has been — well, what can I say? Here’s a smattering that I’ve found thanks to Google: I was completely taken by surprise by Aral Balkan’s “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” talk. I mean, put a trendy guy with a cool name who claims to be a flash developer together with a cheesy talk title and make it the first talk of the day … I mean, meh. However, I was very happily surprised to find it was a great talk, the audience loved it and I was completely inspired! (LornaJane) We had a quick chat and then headed for the auditorium where Aral Balkan give us a very energetic talk on the future. This was a spectacular talk which was the keynote of the day called The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades. (Thijs Feryn) Aral Balkan’s keynote provided food for thought and he’s a very enthusiastic speaker. This was an excellent up-beat talk which raised my general happiness with the day. (Rob Allen) [G]reat keynote by Aral Balkan, on the future of web development and RIAs. Aral highlighted that both hardware and software have become commoditized and that user experience is now the key differentiator for software products. His zany slide deck and manner made for quite an entertaining talk. (Philip/KnowledgeTree) Aral did a very polished presentation and is obviously a very experienced speaker striving for perfection. It was very energetic, fun and enjoyable. (Marc Gear) [...]
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