Dutch PHP Conference 2011
19 - 21 May 2011 at Amsterdam RAI

I really hope Sebastian's new book, that we received a free copy of, will be more engaging than his talk, which was just plain boring.

I knew nothing specific about Oracle products, so it was great to get some quick insights, but still, the talk was too sales-focused, and before all, the title has been grossly misleading.

Great talk - pity my boss wasn't here. There's just no way on earth I could ever convince the boss to implement all of the points, but you never know... I might get away with one or two.

Left me feeling a bit disappointed due to the lack of preparation. The slides were fine, but from what I could tell Ray had never seen them. Having two presenters ended up being distracting, since it was really only Ray running through the slides. This meant there was a lack of structure to things and the flow seemed quite stilted. Some interesting bits and pieces in there, but it could have been far more effective.

I might have been hoping for more from this. It seemed a little like a summary of a manual for a few functions/classes. Though to be fair it does mean I don't have to RTFM now.

However Martin did a good job presenting.

I've ran into loads of char set issues before and thought I knew a lot of tricks and best ways to configure tables/columns etc - but I learnt a new config setting at this one. If I come away from a talk learning something totally new... it's a good talk.

While ligaya didn't say much, when she did - it was invariably funny.

the only downside was that the talk could have used a little more rehearsal, oh, and that damned fly that was buzzing around Ray's head an the projector.

found this to be the most useful of all the ZF talks.
I don't know if it was join.in feedback or just that one of his earlier talks ran over, but the pace, energy and humour were all increased in this one.

I'll be putting some of this in place as soon as I get back to work.

Great content, the example code was simple and easy to follow. The slides were very clear and easy to read.

As for speaker style, there were two speakers at DPC who stood out above everyone else as being very comfortable in front of others, they could pass for teachers/lecturers. One is of course Lorna and the other Ian Barber.

Interesting talk. I like the concepts involved but some of the examples weren't the best. I'd heard Helgi was very nervous - but I didn't really get that impression while he was talking.

Loud music and cramped. Quite a few groups ended up moving to different locations so we could carry on discussions from the day. Free drinks is always good though and the atmosphere was really positive.