It's about that time of year again!

As of 8pm EST this evening, the BarCampDC2 registration is open!

At the time of this writing (09:21pm EST on 22 September), there are less than 150 tickets gone... and they're going to disappear in no time.  If you're interested, you need to move quickly to register and get your tickets.  Sponsors are guaranteed a ticket to get in and with $1000 still required for the effort (maximum sponsorship $250) and the solution is obvious.

No.. quicker than that.

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.

The ZendCon UnCon selections are still underway.. .the third batch of presentations have been chosen. The goal is to have about 80% of the sessions chosen before we get there. Yes, this is counter to the usual *Camp-style selection process, but we're competing against a regular conference, so we're bending the rules a bit.

Don't worry, there will be a number of slots reserved for last minute ideas, discussions that stem out of a conference presentations, or adhoc hackathons. If you're attending ZendCon and want to get in on the fun, post an idea, pitch people on it, and see what happens.

Here we go:

Can you feel it? It's coming...

Even after the glory that was SocialDevCamp, we have another DC local conference coming:

The 2008 DCPHP Conference

This is a real conference which means the agenda is set, the speakers have been determined, and the sponsors are coming.

The highlights:

Aaron Brazell is talking about it in "Friends vs Fans" and Jared Goralnick talks about it in "Avoiding the online popularity contest to seek a deeper connection".

It all boils down to:  What is a friend?

There are some people on social networks that seem to add everyone and anyone they have ever, will ever, or ever want to meet.  This gives the massive networks of people whom they don't know at all or know in passing.  This seems to be the most common on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Personally, I approach it a bit differently...

Over the weekend, a fellow DCian and friend - Jimmy Gardner - asked a simple question that I've been kicking around for a while. Since he put it so eloquently, I'll use his words:

There is obviously a lot of good things happening here in the DC area with regards to our local tech community and some of the startups that are being born out of it. But I can’t help but feel that many of us here have developed a bit of a complex, whether we know it or not.

This was just a couple days after Aaron Brazell aka Technosailor said something else that sparked my interest:

Recently, while flipping through a recent issue of php|architect, I came across a familiar name: Hunter Jensen.

Hunter and I met at ZendCon 06 when we shared a hotel room for the week. At the time, he was an active user of QCodo and generally working with a number of customers along that front. Somewhere along the way, he decided to consider the dark side... a degree in law.

(cue scary music now)

Seriously though... if you've been on any forum or mailing list for more than 3 days, you've seen the IANAL (I Am Not a Lawyer) abbreviation. While we can't keep up to date on every single aspect, there are some thing that we need to be aware of and track. I think licensing issues (GPL vs Public Domain vs etc, etc) is one of the biggest issues that make our lives difficult, but there are a number of others...