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.

I've been asked to post some updates on DPC2008.

The first results of the CFI have been announced. Most requested speaker was Derick Rethans. He'll be at DPC and present an XDebug workshop on the Tutorial Day, and a presentation about the ezComponents framework on the main conference. Most requested topic was a look ahead at PHP5.3 and PHP6. We've found Stefan Priebsch, experienced speaker and expert on PHP migration, to be willing to present this topic. On the main conference day, he will give an overview of the future of PHP.

There are 2 more slots to fill. We're already talking to candidates so expect some more speaker announcements soon.

The total line-up right now is: Zeev Suraski, Marco Tabini, Sebastian Bergmann, Matthew Weier O'Phinney, Lorna Jane Mitchell, Derick Rethans, Stefan Priebsch, Fabien Potencier, Stefan Koopmanschap, Gaylord Aulke, Dennis-Jan Broerse and myself.

The Tutorial Day is almost sold out, there are about 20 tickets left, so hurry if you want to join one of the tutorials. For the main conference day, which has a bigger capacity, 40% of the tickets is sold right now. If you haven't purchased your tickets yet, you might not want to wait until the end, we expect to sell out (luckily not as fast as last year, but it will happen :-)).

Main website: http://www.phpconference.nl
Registration: http://www.phpconference.nl/register

I'm proud to announce that we're organizing another edition of the Dutch PHP Conference, with the help of the great people at Zend. It will be in Amsterdam on June 13 and 14 this year.

Last year we organized it for the first time, and based on feedback from our visitors we have made several changes to this years event:

• We now have 2 days instead of 1 (1 tutorial day + 1 conference day).

• Last years event was sold out way too early so we increased capacity (still, don't wait too long to get tickets ;-)).
• A new website with more relevant information, which will be updated regularly as we move closer to the conference. The new site is at www.phpconference.nl.
• We only fixed part of the program, and visitors can help finalize it (more on that below).
• The conference will be in English, because we had more visitors from abroad than we had expected last year.

So far, we already have been able to attract great names from the PHP community such as Zeev Suraski, Marco Tabini and Sebastian Bergmann. More will be added as we get closer to the conference.

To finalize the schedule, we want to do something different. Instead of the more common 'Call for Papers' where speakers can submit their talks, we're doing a 'Call for Ideas', where we want to hear from our visitors (or potential visitors) who they would like to see at the conference, or which topics they would like to hear about. We can't guarantee availability of speakers of course, but we'll try to match the requests as close as possible. Enter your ideas at the box in the bottom right of the website.

Oh, and for those who were present last year, this time we have a dedicated internet connection for speakers and a redundant beamer.

I hope to see you all in June!