php|tek 11
24 - 27 May 2011 at Sheraton Gateway Suites O’Hare

Great conference. I hope to come back next year. The presentations being given by experienced developers was very important and made them very worth the trip. I very much enjoyed the mix of technical topics / demos such as xdebug, Zend, Securing your API along with the business or technique type topics such as Teach a Man to Fish and In the Shadow of the Ninja.


Below is meant to be constructive suggestions, not complaints...
From a event planning perspective, I thought more expectations should be set. The first day, I was hungry. I didn't realize that there would be no food until lunch and I showed to have only coffee for breakfast. At the break I had to run to McDonalds to get something as it was the only place around that had any food. Also, the coffee was out only in the morning. By 10:00, it was gone. I was prepared for it after the first day.

Posting the schedule online was good, but the after hours events were not clear to me until the day of. I suppose I will know better what to expect at the next conference. But as a first timer, I feel like I missed out on a number of events.

Having the slides online was great, but I could have benefited much more if I had them during the presentation to align my notes. I took notes on my laptop in a word processor and am now trying to match them up to the slides - it is difficult. I wasn't made aware that the slides were going to be made available until the break on the first day. So, I was taking too many notes at first.

Power strips would have been a big help. I found that people were around the perimeter of the rooms so they could have a place to connect to an outlet. I also noticed a number of people tripping on the power cords as they were walking through. Power strips that were safely installed (cords taped down) would have allowed people to spread out and caused less of a hazard.

Overall, the conference was good. I was hoping for some Symfony. Also, I think I had too much pizza in one week.

Enjoyed the conference as always - the um "power issues" were interesting however. I do think that running cool stuff like the hackathon and unconference back to back (and overlapping) with the social gatherings made the social events smaller - and you had to choose between code or free beer (or run back and forth - oh noez) which is a bit sad. Perhaps combine them? Hack or play rock band? Present while people play board games?

Great conference, but can we get some more Doctrine presentations next time?