Small country, big in PHP
PHP is still growing in The Netherlands (according to nexen.net, 46% of Dutch domains use PHP). A good indicator of PHP's growth is the number of conferences and other events that are organized this year. About 4 years ago, there was only one major event, the International PHP Conference. For some reason however, they moved their 'spring edition' from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. Since then, many other events have been organized over here.
This year alone, there are already 6 major (>50) events; 3 done, 3 to go. Here's an overview:
Dutch Joomla Days
2-day conference on the Joomla CMS.
When: April 4 + 5
Location: Utrecht
Attendees: 250/day
Presentations: 36 (both Dutch and English)
Price: € 65
Website: http://www.joomladag.nl
Reviews: Joomladays site, various authors (Dutch), Danny Peeters (English)
pfCongrez
Conference organized by the Dutch PHP usergroup phpFreakz.
When: April 12
Location: Maarssen
Attendees: 250
Presentations: 4 (Dutch)
Price: € 17.50
Website: http://www.pfcongrez.nl
Reviews: Dimitri van Hees (Dutch), Peter Paul Koch (English), Rool Paap (Dutch), Ruud Alberts (English)
PHP Business Seminar
Seminar targeted at promoting PHP to businesses and enterprises.
When: April 22
Location: Vianen
Attendees: 120 (70 main seminar, 50 tech-evening)
Presentations: 6 (5 Dutch, 1 English)
Price: free
Website: http://www.phpseminar.nl
Reviews: Cal Evans, Stefan Koopmanschap, Christiaan Lam, Remi Woler (all in English)
Kings of Code
Web development conference. Not focused on PHP alone but on web development in general (JavaScript, Ajax etc.; PHP is covered by a CakePHP talk)
When: May 27
Location: Amsterdam
Attendees: 300
Presentations: 6 (English)
Price: € 160 (early bird discount of € 30 before May 1st)
Website: http://www.kingsofcode.nl
Dutch PHP Conference
2-day PHP conference (1 tutorial day, 1 main conference day)
When: June 13 (tutorials) + 14 (conference)
Location: Amsterdam
Attendees: 400 (conference day) / 150 (tutorial day)
Presentations: 17 (English)
Price: € 150 (main conference day, tutorial day sold out)
Website: http://www.phpconference.nl
Eduvision PHP Conferentie 2008
Afternoon PHP conference on various topics.
When: October 23
Location: Apeldoorn
Attendees: 80
Presentations: 4 (Dutch)
Price: € 99
Website: http://eduvision.nl/phpconferentie
(if I forgot an event, feel free to post it in the comments.)
It is interesting to note that we also see a growth of PHP usage at the larger IT corporations. The PHP Business Seminar for example, was an event jointly organized by us and Sogeti. Sogeti is one of the largest IT companies in the Netherlands. When we first talked to them 2 years ago, they had a campaign called 'From now on, only do Java', and now for the second time they've organized a PHP event with us. This growth in big companies is a nice accomplishment for PHP.
P.S. The program for DPC is now complete, see the post on our company blog.
P.P.S. Ibuildings is on twitter now. For blog, conference and other event updates, follow us.
Tags: community, conference, dpc, dpc2008, joomladays, kingsofcode, pfcongrez, phpseminar
Entries (RSS)
April 27th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
It’s great to see PHP grow in the Netherlands like this (and especially taken serious in enterprise environments). Imho conferences like the ones you mentioned are one of the best ways to make people and businesses more aware of what’s possible with PHP. This is where the Netherlands has a huge advantage on Belgium, but we’ll get there too. Keep the conferences coming!
April 27th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
pfCongrez was not organised by “the” Dutch PHP Usergroup, but by “a” Dutch PHP Usergroup
However, it’s good to see things like this happening.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Ah that’s a typo, it said ‘the dutch php usergroup phpfreakz’ with a link to their site but a typo in the link made the entire word invisible. Fixed!
April 27th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
It’s very nice to see php grow in the netherlands. We have a lot of conferences and interest is certainly growing. But despite the big interest, the number of php certified engineers is stuck at 205 which is not a lot if you ask me.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
[...] in the area of The Netherlands and you’re into PHP, consider yourself lucky - just look at all the events that Ivo Jansch mentions in one of his more recent blog entries: PHP is still growing in The [...]
August 21st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Ik ga wss naar de joomla dagen in december! Superblog!
March 11th, 2010 at 4:04 am
[...] kabel of ADSL heeft, maar dat is natuurlijk niet het geval. Als je je website eens wilt testen opIvo’s Blog - jansch.nl Blog Archive Small country, big in PHPEduvision PHP Conferentie 2008. Afternoon PHP conference on various topics. When: October … [...]