As of today, my highly esteemed colleage and pants-freedom advocate Paul Reinheimer announces a new event for php|works next week:

20/20 6:40

To put the concept simply:

The format is a little bit different than a talk (thank god) and hopefully a lot more fun. Basically the presenter gets up there with twenty slides, each are going to be shown for exactly 20 seconds, for a total of six minutes forty seconds. No take backs, no do-overs, no boring slides full of code.

The format lends itself well to quick, interesting presentations on pretty much anything.

Wow.  It's like an automated lightning talk... it has the potential to either be a glorious exchange of concepts or an entertaining session of mishaps, humor and a bit of chaos. I give even money for it to be a bit of both. 

Elizabeth Naramore is the ringmaster for this chaos. If you're interested, contact her while there are still slots left. She's at elizabeth at phparch dot com.

Some of you may have heard the rumor that Marco Tabini and I are working on something.  You might have heard bits and pieces... but very few of you have heard the full story of how it came about, what it is, and where it's going.

This post is not that announcement.

This post is about my upcoming presentation at php|works 2008! (I know, I'm a jerk.)

Well, actually it's been over for a week now, but I digress...

One week ago today wrapped the second PHP Appalachia Conference.  The first one was two years ago and consisted of a bunch of geeks sitting around a camp fire, hanging out in a small cabin, and generally having a good time.  This time around, it was quite a bit different.

The highly esteemed Elizabeth Naramore - who works with Marco Tabini* of php|Architect to organize php|works and php|tek - took the lead and found The Beast.  It's this massive mountain-top fortress cabin which sleeps 40, seats 40 in the kitchen, seats 20+ in the movie theater, and 20+ in the living room in front of the massive flat screen television.

While I seem to be talking more and more about conferences lately, this next one is near and dear to my heart... PHP Appalachia.

PHP Appalachia originally came about a few years back because... well, I'm not sure, but I've heard (I wasn't there) that it resulted in a bunch of PHP geeks sitting around a camp fire, a bit hacking away a bit during the day, and generallly building the community that PHP is known for.

In past years of ZendCon, I would provide day by day coverage of all the sessions, events, people, and chaos.  I began with that mission this year - ZendCon 2008 Day 0 - but quickly realized that way too much happened which I could give justice to.. so I punted and went for the Closing Thoughts..

The Good...

Disclaimer: This is my fourth year at ZendCon.  Although I spoke last year, this year I took a more active role in being the front man for the Unconference.  Special thanks to DevZone Editor and Zend Community Manager Cal Evans for his willingness in accepting my application for the job. ;)

Day Zero of ZendCon has always been Tutorials.  You bring your laptop, camp out for three hours, and see what you can learn.

The ZendCon UnCon selections are still underway.. .the fourth batch of presentations have been finalized. This week has been fast and furious for the final sessions working out.. it's amazing how many people were waiting until the last minute. 
Slackers!

No more ideas are being accepted prior to the conference as we want to leave some room for last minute additions.  This is not the full list. For the full list of sessions, check out the Unconference Wiki page anytime...

First, we have Ed Finkler - the creator of the cross-platform Spaz Twitter client in attendance to talk about his experience with Adobe AIR in creating Spaz.  While not strictly a PHP talk, desktop applications and integrations are appearing more frequently and are often the end points of the API's we create.  Come see the other side of the coin a learn some tips and tricks... or share your own.