In SF for ZendCon

October 7th, 2007 by Ivo

I'm going to ZendCon this year.

First time I visit the conference. First time I visit San Francisco and first time I visit the United States. :)

Landed yesterday in the afternoon. I'm here with fellow Ibuildings-guy Tom and our girlfriends.

Today we went into San Francisco to do some sightseeing. Went to fisherman's warf, saw an airshow, did some shopping (both Tom and I did take european->us outlet converters, but we hadn't taken into account that some of our adapters do not support 110 volt :)

San Francisco is a very nice city with remarkably friendly people. Tomorrow we'll visit the Golden Gate Bridge & Park, and for next friday after the conference we've got tickets for Alcatraz.

I'm really looking forward to the Zend Conference. Meeting lots of old friends and hopefully a lot of new PHP enthousiasts. Sessions that I'm interested in are the ones from Matthew, Ilia, Eli and
Joel. There are many more I'd like to see; unfortunately I can only visit one at a time.

Some tips for those that haven't arrived yet:

  • Tom is in the Hyatt (where the conference is); I'm in the Bay Landing Hotel about a 3 minutes walk from there, because the Hyatt was already booked for some of the days I'm here. However, it turns out that the Bay Landing Hotel not only is 80$ per night cheaper, it also has complementary breakfast (18$ in the Hyatt) and free internet (9$ in the Hyatt), so that turned out just fine. :)
  • When we arrived, we took a taxi to the hotel. Today we discovered that one floor up from the taxi stand at SFO airport, there is a 'hotel courtesy shuttle' stand, with free shuttles going to most hotels in the region, including the Hyatt.
  • When you do take a taxi, tell them 'Hyatt Burlingame'. Tom discovered that just 'Hyatt' takes you to the Hyatt in san francisco city center. :)

So, if you're going too, see you at ZendCon! And if you're not going, you're missing out on a great event!

2 Responses to “In SF for ZendCon”

  1. October 08, 2007 at 10:21 am, Almer said:

    Told you SF was cool!

    FYI, de Apple store is located on 1 Ockton Street, I missed it but maybe you have more time than I had ;-)

  2. October 08, 2007 at 4:43 pm, Ivo Jansch said:

    The apple store was right there in front of us when we exited the Powell bartstation, so it was the first thing I saw of San Francisco. :)