Day One at php|works was dedicated to tutorials. Paul Reinheimer did a 6 hour crash course for those who wanted to take the Zend Certification Test here at the conference. I’ll be honest with you, it was a grueling 6 hours. At one point in the afternoon, I wandered in while they were on break. The podium area was empty so I looked around. Coming through the door right behind was Paul toting a large bar stool. It seems that standing for 6 hours is about as fun as it sounds and his legs needed a break. That notwithstanding, Paul did a great job of reviewing the topics covered in the test.

I talked with a three attendees at the Crash Course to get their opinion on how it was going. Cairan Walsh, who is not currently Zend Certified found the course interested although he thought maybe it was a bit too basic. Mark Phipps was also in attendance. Mark has been working with PHP for approximately five years and is currently Zend Certified. He said he is looking forward to taking the PHP 5 test. He found the session very informative and said that Paul “really knew what he was doing”. His only regret was that the crash course only lasted six hours. Normally Paul teaches this material over the course of four weeks. Jonathan Larson was also in attendance for the Crash Course. He came prepared having reviews the current Study guide. Even so, he found items that he needed to review before the test.

Everyone I talked to was pleased with the quality of the tutorial and they all felt they were prepared for the test.

Paul’s Crash Course was not the only tutorials running. In the other two rooms Christian Wenz was teaching “AJAX and PHP Boot Camp” and Dan Udey was teaching “Database Design for Programmers”. Unfortunaly, since I can’t get approved for a clone, I wasn’t able to make those sessions.

I did, however, break away from Paul’s Crash Course to visit some of the afternoon’s sessions. I visited for a while with Rob Richards as he presented “Advanced XML and Web Services”. You can find my complete review of that session here. I also had the opportunity to interview Rob so look for that to be posting in the coming month. Also, Wez Furlong, another interview that will be coming soon to DevZone, presented “Extending PHP”. Apparently Sara Goleman was originally slated to present that session. Wez got up and started the session with “Hi my name is Sara Goleman”. :) Sara’s absence did not diminish the quality of the session though. Wez did a great job.

That’s it for the Day One wrap-up. Come back often as I post more session reviews and wrap-ups.

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