DPC line-up complete
June 9th, 2007 by Ivo
About a month ago we announced the Dutch PHP Conference that is going to take place in Amsterdam one week from now.
Apparently there is much demand for such a conference because we already sold out all tickets one day before the early bird discount ended, and our line-up wasn't even complete at that point. 
We just confirmed the last addition to the program: Derick Rethans, from Xdebug and ezComponents fame, will give a talk about Test-driven Development.
The complete program is available on the conference website.
Dutch PHP Conference 2007
May 18th, 2007 by Ivo
Ever since the International PHP Conference Spring Edition was cancelled last year, and moved to Germany this year, we've been planning to do a replacement conference for the Dutch PHP community.
We've worked hard the past few weeks to pull this together, and I am happy to announce that on June 16th, we will have the first instalment of the official Dutch PHP Conference!
The conference is oranised by Ibuildings with the help of Zend, and is targeted at a Dutch audience. We are still finalizing the program but we already have quite a lineup, with speakers such as Cal Evans, Lukas Smith, Kevlin Henney and Gaylord Aulke (all present in the PHP card deck 
).
In total there will be 12 presentations divided over 3 parallel tracks. The Dutch PHP Usergroup will arrange an exhibition area where open source PHP project can show off their projects.
Following the example of the UK PHP Conference we are keeping the price low, at 75 euro if you register before the first of June. Registrations will start on monday, but you can already have a look at the conference web site:
Ibuildings and Zend announce partnership
November 20th, 2006 by Ivo
I've blogged about our visit to the Zend offices before, and back then I was not able to disclose yet what we did there. We can finally speak openly about it.
Zend, in an effort to better serve the Dutch market with a local presence, has selected Ibuildings to be their official representative in The Netherlands. This means that we are going to support the Dutch PHP community with the entire Zend product range, training and support offerings.
This is a big step for us, and I think it is a great reward for having provided professional PHP development services over the last years. I'm very excited about the partnership, the people I've met at Zend in the last months are all great people, and I think we will have a fruitful relationship for all parties involved.
You can read the official announcement in Dutch on our site here:
Dutch press release on ibuildings.nl
and in English on the zend.com site:
Zend visit
October 2nd, 2006 by Ivo
Last week, my coworkers from Ibuildings; Tom, Ludo, Jan-Willem and I visited Israel to meet with people from Zend.
I cannot disclose yet what we discussed there (expect some announcements soon), but I wanted to share with you what a great week we had, and what great people the Zenders are. Here's a report of our visit.
We arrived in our hotel (Dan Panorama) in Tel Aviv on sunday morning, around 3 a.m. When I woke at around 7, my head told me to turn around and get some more sleep, but I noticed light shining past the curtains, and I was too curious not to get up and have a look (I've never been to Israel before). When I opened the curtain, this was what I saw:
I couldn't suppress a 'Wow!' and I was wide awake. Since it was way to early to have breakfast, I went for a walk along the beach. Tel Aviv was nothing like I had imagined. It reminded me of Italy. Perfect weather, nice people, great!
That sunday was Jewish New Year's day, so we didn't have to work yet, and Idan and Uval from Zend picked us up and took us to Jerusalem. Although both of them apparently did not know the way (they nearly drove us to Gaza ), we eventually got there and they showed us around in the Old City in Jerusalem. Christian places, Arab places, Jewish places, a nice mix of cultures and beliefs. They also introduced us to 'hummus':
Zend's Idan is on the left, Uval is on the right.
In the evening, Zeev invited us for dinner in Tel Aviv. Zeev is a great guy, and it was nice to meet him in person and to be able to talk to him about his ideas and about the past, present and future of PHP and Zend.
From left to right: Jan-Willem, Zeev, me, Idan, Tom and Ludo.
From monday to friday, we had lots of meetings and met a lot of people from Zend. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to take pictures there. All of them were very nice guys and girls, and we really enjoyed our stay. Roy acted as our Tel Aviv Bar Guide and made sure that we had good food and drinks in nice bars each night.
The last night, we went out in Tel Aviv Ports, where Uval made a waitress get on a picture with us, to prove at home how beautiful Israeli girls are:
On saturday morning, after a nice game of pool where we beat Uval and Idan , our trip was over, and we went for the airport. Several hours of security checks (by far the toughest checks I've seen on airports so far) later, our plane took off.
I look back on a great week, where we met interesting people, and have come to know Israel as a very nice and welcoming country. Before we came, Uval told us "you will experience first hand the difference between CNN and reality", and that was very true. Israel was a lot more beautiful than I had imagined.
I'd like to thank all the people at Zend we've met, and especially Idan and Uval, who acted as our personal guides to Israel and Zend in particular. And ofcourse Zeev for inviting us to dinner. I'm looking forward to the-things-I-can't-talk-about-yet and I will make sure I will visit Israel some time again. If only to give them a chance to beat us at pool (practise guys, practise; that pool table in your office is there for a reason )
The rest of the pictures I took are here. Ludo's pictures are here. Tom made some video's, which will probably be online somewhere soon too.
Ibuildings hires 14dayz developer
August 1st, 2006 by Ivo
A while ago, I blogged that we were hiring.
We eventually managed to hire Bart Helms, the lead developer of the web 2.0 time tracking site 14Dayz.com.
We won't take over 14Dayz, as that site remains with the company Bart worked for, but we do hope that adding Bart to our team will help improve Achievo's usability, and also bring some more web 2.0 stuff to ATK and our other products (which, I promise, we will use wisely and subtly).
In a time where many web 2.0 sites seem to be built using Ruby on Rails, it is interesting to note that Bart developed 14Dayz entirely in PHP.
I wish Bart the best of luck at Ibuildings, I hope he will enjoy working here as much as I do.
We are hiring
June 1st, 2006 by Ivo
We are looking to extend our team (which now counts 38) with a software engineer.
What we are looking for is someone who is fluent in PHP, knows a fair share of Software Engineering theory, is accustomed to using and applying design patterns and knows his/her way in emerging technologies such as Ajax. Also you believe that Web 2.0 actually is happening.
Social skills are important too, and ofcourse living in The Netherlands or the willingness to move here are essential. Being a ZCE is recommendable. However if you are not, but can prove you're capable of doing professional development in PHP, that's ok too. After working with us for 6 months, we allow you to take the exam and get certified.
What we offer is the possibility to work in a passionate team of PHP developers, work on new and existing technologies, on open source projects such as Achievo and ATK and on interesting internet-related projects (small and large).
If you are interested, please send a resume to jobs at ibuildings.nl.