PHP South Coast Conference 2015
18 Jul 2015 at Action Stations

My first php conference, was great, enjoyed myself immensely, got lots of good ideas, met may great people.
Now trying to implement ideas between this thing called work :)

This was a great start to a new conference. I found the unique venue to be very inspiring and to break the "same all" feeling i get from the many conferences I go to. The venue allowed for a comfortable hallway track as well as great rooms for talks.

The social was also epic, but could use some improvement on the food/drinks side of it to hold more attendees in place, I heard there was the option to open all attractions? that would be geek epic.

The Magma room made it very hard to see slides from the back, so maybe some thoughts into having smaller screen on the side may be interesting. Also for the main room add a small screen to the ground so the speaker can see his slides without looking back and up.

The staff nailed it, friendly, present, i had really great room monitors to tell me when to start and "get off the stage your time is done" :P

Bravo, I did not see anything that cannot be improved easily next year, i expect big things in the future.

PHP South Coast set the bar pretty high for a first event, the venue was a great choice & overall I had a great day.

Things to improve for next time (Only minor criticisms):
* A 9:30am start time - I was a little knacked by the end of the day.
* The dinner - I was left a bit peckish after.
* I was pretty happy loading the schedule on my phone, though the site could had made use of some offline first magic.

Things not to change:
* Saturday! Not having to worry about commuter traffic / organising time off was awesome!
* Laser tag! Having something to break up the post conference networking (and on site!) was a great touch.

Congratulations to James and the team, the event was a huge success.
A really good event that felt like it had been running for years. There seemed to be a common goal shared with all of the delegates of sharing information and knowledge for the good of everyone. Embracing other ideas and sharing successes and failures can only be of benefit so these events are a great platform to communicate.

Great looking venue, plenty of room for everyone and the setting I thought should incite creativity.

I would be very interested in hearing people's thoughts on the engagement with us and the other sponsors. Any ideas on how we could engage with more people are veyr welcome. If you have ideas on something quite interactive or different that you would like to see at these events i would be keen to hear it

Very smooth running conference premiere. Was only missing a dedicated conference wifi and a printed schedule.

Awesome event, really hoping theres one next year.

Awesome speakers on both tracks, didnt speak to a single person who didnt enjoy the talks the attended.

Only a coupe minor criticisms I could possibly give which have already been said by others:

- 8/9am start was maybe a little early for anyone travelling by public transport from outside portsmouth island. I know a number of people, myself included, that were pretty tired by the end of the talks and as a result didn't stick around for much of the social.
- printed schedules in the attendee bags or on the lanyards
- Magma Digital room was rather difficult to see the screen if you were sat down due to not having tiered seats
- Evening dinner was a little lack luster in comparison to the offering at lunch


That said, I still greatly enjoyed the day and would love to attend next year

Thoroughly enjoyed the event, and looking forward to the next events (the guys in the office are still talking about it). Thanks to everyone involved.

Great event, good location, interesting talks and fun social.

As some others have noted, the background noise in the venue was rather distracting, and not helped by the environment being rather echoey - we devs are a noisy lot! More soft furnishings would have helped here.

The venue is PERFECT for geeks:
- lasers
- submarines
- explosions
- big engines
- stunning environment (the dockyard is awesome)

I'm very satisfied by the technical talks (too few advanced topics), but still an awesome catch-up with the UK PHP community.

Fantastic first conference for South Coast. All the talks were relevant and really stood out. Everyone was also super friendly.

The only feedback I have is to provide a mini schedule within the goodies bag.

Truly a great event! It was my first PHP conference, and as a WordPress community member and frequent attendee of WordCamps, I felt very welcomed. Great quality and diversity of the talks, fantastic venue, good food, and again, open, friendly atomostphere that encouraged networking. Great conversations were had.

Only thing I would have liked would have been a printed schedule :) next time ;)
There will be a next time...right? :)

Great success. The first PHP South Coast event but already a fixture in the calendar. Well organised and great speakers.

Excellently organised.

Some suggestions for next year, not yet covered by other comments:

* Have an MC for each stage. Someone who can give a 20-second introduction to the speaker, direct questions at the end, and give a summary of what's to follow that talk (i.e. now a 20-minute break). It just helps to "book-end" the speaker's content and allows for reminders and notices to attendees.
* If in the same room, block-off the door by the speakers, once the talk has started.
* Having the name tags as a folded piece of card (names on both outside faces) with a timetable inside, and a hole punched at the top (by the crease). Certainly more convenient to grab and look at that than to wait to get outside or pull out the phone.
* Free wi-fi at the venue that doesn't need a custom sign-up :-)

*showed (not chowed!)

* Great price for a developer conference
* Some really good speakers - keynote was especially good
* Good social space, plenty of seating, circular venue made it easy to wander into new conversations without it being awkward
* Best social ever imho - good contrasting activities, both choices chowed you understand your audience
* Lots of staff available in rooms and corridors for assistance
* Nice swag
* Friendly sponsor staff
* Lots of new faces / conference-newbies
* We can do it all again next year (please!)



Better for next time
* Magma Digital room's projector wasn't well focused
* Microphones in the Magma Digital room were not good enough to counter the external noise.
* More local speakers, or a local speaker track perhaps?
* Pick from any of the food available for dinner for fussier eaters like myself (lunch did this well)
* Breakfast/later start time (8-9am on a Saturday start makes it tricky to locate breakfast when travelling in)
* Cloning machine so I can make a duplicate of myself and see all the talks.
* More information as part of lanyards/bag (printed schedule & abstracts)
* I see someone mentioned a hallway track? I had no idea that was a thing at this conf.
* it's over already :(

Brilliant conference. Beautiful setting, good venue, and the area for breaks and the corridor track really suited its purpose.

The only thing that let it down, really, was the catering. Lunch was awesome, but the evening meal was a bit lacking and I would prefer tea and coffee during lunch (and a little more choice in terms of drinks at the social!)

But it's awesome, I'll certainly be back for phpsc16!

PS. Ticket prices were very affordable & having it as a weekend event was good.

Just awesome! Didn't feel like he first event.

Some feedback:
- Magma room was a bit warm & too much external noise but spacious with the outer seating which was great
- Coffee was not available enough
- Lots of hallway space with seating which was very good
- It would be useful if sessions were marked as beginner/intermediate/advanced as this would help when choosing between sessions - this goes for all events though.

Looking forward to next year (or lets do it twice a year!)

Thanks to everyone involved in organising the conference. It did not feel like it was the first time it had been run.

I would definitely come back next year.

You picked a great selection of talk.

As a new developer this was my first ever conference. It was well organised, the talks were interesting and the people very friendly. Cal Evans keynote was awesome and really got the event off to good start. Some of the later very technical talks were above my head but overall I really enjoyed the experience.

My only criticisms are: in the Magma room there was a lot of external noise being heard which was distracting. Also the seating arrangement meant that it could be very difficult to see the screen if the room was fairly full.

Would have been nice to have had coffee available all day (though the lemon/lime water was very refreshing for a warm day), and there seemed to be an imbalance in food between lunch (where masses of sandwiches seemed to be left over) and dinner (when you weren't allowed peas with the chicken/rice).... though the fruit kebabs at lunch were very good.

Otherwise well organised, and well managed. A good range of talk topics in both tracks. Wifi was adequate, and enough power points in the track rooms to keep the laptop boosted.

Evening social entertainment was fun, especially the board games (I finally got to play Tokaido) but seemed slightly anti-climatic as a lot of people had already disappeared.

Hallway track, useful as always at conferences.

Overall a 4 out of 5, with scope for improvement next year with lessons learned, but an excellent first conference by the South Coast folks, and good to know that there will be a next year.

I had a great time. Everyone was very friendly, things ran smoothly.

I little point of feedback: As much as i loved the characteristic location, i have to say the noise coming from the ground floor was a little bit distracting during the talks in the Magma Digital room. Not a huge issue, but i found it easier in the in other hall to take in the information given.

That being said: I enjoyed every talk i saw today, which doesn't always happen, so my hats off to all the speakers and the organisation! If there is going to be a '16 edition, i'll gladly attend again! :)

For a first run, this is just an awesome achievement! Awesome location, very good catering and enough space to be able to have a chat.

I can only give you 1 concrete tip for the next one. I really missed a printed version of the schedule. While being in a talk... a lot of times I think... where do I go next?