Dutch PHP Conference 2018
7 - 9 Jun 2018 at RAI amsterdam

Nice intro into state machines and work flows but love some example on how to discover one bit by bit

Great intro into how your brain work and recognize potential blind spots. To bad no audience member had an experience ready. maybe have one ready yourself just in case that happens again.

Inspiring talk about great bits of history but missed the message a little bit and went over time a bit.

Good coverage about subscribers but would like to have a little bit more attention to the rest of the subjects

Very useful to actually get some background instead of just following the manual

I had no idea there were so many different elephpants!

Love Mark's perspective on the position of elephpants as a mascot for the PHP community. While Mark talks fairly slowly, he does so in a way that shows his knowledge and passion/respect for the community that the elephpants stand for.

Well prepared (better than I would've expected for an uncon!) and well presented. Chris has a good presenting voice and is clearly passionate about this sort of thing. Would be interesting to see how this relatively short talk could be scaled up to a full conference talk, but I think Chris would fit well on a conference schedule.

Thijs is a great and engaging speaker who is very comfortable on stage, and the slide deck is amazing. The talk details his path towards delivering the closing keynote (which is quite meta!), and contains useful advice like focusing on a passion and working hard to achieve that. There are good lessons to be learned from this story and it is clear that Thijs earned the spot he was given.

However, it also had a bit of a sour undertone that I wasn't quite expecting at the end of DPC.

Where the opening keynote on Friday by Samantha was uplifting, inspiring, and instilled a sense of community, "Controlling the variables" came across as very selfish, or individualistic, in a "take what you want" kinda way. Work hard, grab every opportunity that comes your way, and most of all don't complain, coupled with soundbites from Gary Vaynerchuk saying among other things that "people don't care about you".

For me, a self-employed developer who's been working on his passion for 5 years (and counting!) who is now dealing with burnout because of working too hard, the talk wasn't quite as inspiring as it may be to others. I'm worried that for people dealing with depression this talk may even make things worse, as it reaffirms the notion that they must be lazy or not working enough. If, per the example in the talk, the person who was accidentally infected with HIV through a blood transfusion can outlive a doctor's prognosis, get married, and get kids without complaining just by keeping a positive mindset, then how hopeless must people be who have a hard time just dealing with daily life? Not very inspiring.

So, great speaker, engaging story, but in my opinion lacking in empathy and nuance in favor of sound bites. The talk does have the potential to be really inspiring and uplifting for the right audience, but in the tech world where organizations like OSMI are trying to break the stigma on mental illness, I feel this was not a great fit and should be refined.

The keynote did act as a great discussion starter over the drinks that followed it.

Inspiring with plenty of food for thought on how to approach services. Not necessarily something you can run off and implement just from the presentation, but a balanced and nicely visualized introduction on some different concepts.

Practical, educational, well done.