PHPBenelux meeting "PHP on Windows"
28 Oct 2009 at RealDolmen HQ, Prins Boudewijnlaan 26, 2550 Kontich, Belgium

Interesting talk, with a good body of information on how microsoft is changing with an emphasis on their recent and not so recent involvement in the PHP community.

Also interesting to hear that microsoft has the same "convservatives"* problem as the PHP community, and the open source community abroad. But it is clear that their strive and message outwards is to create a nice interchangeable web stack, that plays nice with the competition.

The Azure part was also very interesting, a clear overview on what it is, what it should become, and how you can utilise it in your PHP application to leverage it.

* People who have a clearly defined picture of who the enemy is, and who don't want to change that picture.

Really liked this talk, glossing over the overarching concepts and goals of silverlight, while also occasionally diving into deep to show the workflow when building silverlight applications and the nitty gritty stuff of the code.

Went in with only a cursory understanding of silverlight; Went out with a good feeling of what it should be used for and what it entails.

The PHP side felt a bit interchangeable, could have been any language really. But that's really not all that surprising. There were a few gotcha's mentioned though, which is good to know. As well as some info about WCF (Windows Communication Foundation)

I think it's fair to say that Katrien is part of the PHPCommunity, with the devoted passion she speaks about Microsoft's efforts to bring PHP in the Microsoft solutions range.

An A++ in my book... and I do agree: make web, not war !

Awesome demo/presentation by Maarten and Kevin. Saw cool features that I might implement if the opportunity is there.

Guys, keep up the good work.