ZendCon 07 Wrapup

Wow, what a conference. I remember telling someone that just attending conferences as press is a heck of a lot easier than actually hosting one. This year’s ZendCon (ZendCon ‘07, the third and so far the best ZendCon) was a great conference no matter how you look at it. Great tutorials, great sessions, great keynotes, even great parties…er…networking events. So give me a few minutes of your time, let’s take a look back at the festivities, sessions and most of all, the good times with friends that we called ZendCon ‘07.

My ZendCon Day 1 recap, was actually written before the evening Exhibit Hall reception/Happy Hour 2.0. A great time was had by all as can be seen from the pictures. Tuesday evening ended rather late for a lot of us who attended the “Meet the Teams” late night session. Even though it was late, we had good attendance and everyone who had a question got to ask it.

Wednesday morning came way too early for some of us but most that made the effort were pleased with the keynote from Adobe. Lee Brimelow talked us through both Flex and AIR and how they impact the PHP community. (while poking a stick in the eye of Cold Fusion!)

There were very few “under-attended” sessions on Wednesday but the one I remember as being totally oversold and in danger of the Fire Marshall coming by and kicking people out of were Eli White’s “PHP Features You Didn’t Know Existed”. We tried to schedule a few blank sessions this year because we knew we would have speakers like Eli and John Coggeshall that can pack a room but unfortunately, by the time the conference started, they had all been filled. If you couldn’t get into one of their sessions or any other session, you are in luck, we will be releasing the audio to most of the sessions starting next month. Keep an eye here on DevZone, I’ll announce when they are ready.

Joel Spolsky kicked off Wednesday afternoon with a bang talking about how to build great software. I talked with people who agreed with him and those that didn’t, I didn’t talk to anyone however who didn’t get a chuckle and come away with a smile.

There were so many good sessions on Wednesday afternoon that I dare not say one was my favorite. However, I can say that easily, the best attended was Jay Pipes’ “MySQL Performance Coding – From Soup to Nuts”. I know several people who attended it and said it was great. Judging solely from the fact that there were people standing out in the hall, craning to hear what he was saying, I would say that it’s a topic of interest for a lot of people.

Wednesday evening ended in the Yahoo! party. I could go into details but lets just say, alcohol was consumed…karaoke was sung…picture were taken. I think Sara Golemon wrapped it up nicely on her blog when she said:

Remainder of this blog entry has been censored due to regulation 406.3b: What happens at ZendCon, stays at ZendCon.

As good as everything was up till this point, Thursday morning was still the highlight of the conference for me. Cory Doctorow kicked things off by talking to us about copying in a digital world. His basic premise was, “It will never be harder to copy bits than it is today.” Good news for those of us who like to legitimately purchase content and then utilize it on multiple devices. It was a thought provoking talk and while it was not a “giggle laden” as Joel’s keynote, no one left disappointed.

Thursday’s closing keynote was different. We like to close with something non-technical. While it was no Marco Tabini closing keynote, it was interesting. Premal Shah presented kiva.org to us. He did not present how they use PHP or optimize the site for the millions of hits they get, he presented kiva.org’s mission and the good that they are trying to do. If you haven’t checked out kiva.org yet, you need to visit them at least once and see what they are up to. (Oh yeah, and they use PHP!)

I really want to thank everyone who helped make ZendCon great this year. There were so many people that if I start naming names I know I will leave someone out. So I will just say thank you to all of you. For some reason, people keep coming to me and telling me what a great job I did. Those who have done this before will understand when I say, its a team effort and in working with all the people at Zend, I got to work with the world’s greatest team. Thank you Zenders, thank you speakers and most of all, thank you attendees…without you, we’d all have looked pretty silly talking to a room full of empty chairs!

That’s about it for this year’s ZendCon wrap-up. If you weren’t able to make it this year, keep an eye out for next week’s post where I’ll link to all the slides. If you want to see all the action, make sure you check out the pictures over on Flickr. Also, we will start releasing the audio as soon as it’s ready. Finally, keep an eye out, I’ll be announcing the dates for ZendCon ‘08 in the very near future!