SunshinePHP 2015
5 - 7 Feb 2015 at Embassy Suites Miami International

Really good job!

Great conference! Congrats!

Hi,
this was my first conference so far. And I liked it a lot. But I have one mention. It would be awsome if you title better the talks with beginners, advanced and so on. Because there where a lot of interesting talks, but the most where for beginners and not for advanced.
So next time it would be helpful if there is a segmentation.

This was my first PHP-specific conference, though I've attended a ton of other technical conferences. Overall, I'd give 4 / 5 stars for the event.

The Good:

* Lots of really interesting sessions to pick from, especially on the second day.
* Many of the sessions were less about "look at this cool technology" and more about "here's some ideas I have about X". That leads towards better discussions and more thoughtful presentations.
* A broad variety of session levels, from beginner to quite advanced.


The Bad:

* For a technical conference, I wish there were power bars in session rooms, or at least somewhere to go and easily charge.

* It would have been really useful to know from the session descriptions who the audience is supposed to be. The tutorial descriptions were pretty vague for 3 hours of content.

* Hotel wifi was unusable in the bedrooms in the suites. The front desk said it was a known issue in most suites and their only suggestion was to move to the front rooms. Given the cost of internet ($15-$20 a day), I think the conference organizers should look at alternative venues for next year.

The Ugly:

* As a vegetarian, the lunch selection was pretty mediocre. One day the vegetarian options were limited to lettuce for salad and fried plantains. There's no protein there :(

I agree with the previous comment by ANONYMOUS which said, "If you came as an intermediate/senior developer looking to learn, the conference was a disappointment."

I felt the same way this year (although neither of the two previous years) and I heard the same from friends & colleagues.

A solution to this problem might be to include on the schedule a technical rating (say 1 to 3) for each talk so people will be able to find sessions at their desired level.

There was also a bit of overlap of session content & topics. At least two sessions promised to explain what a REST API is and why you should care.

Finally, and worst of all in my opinion, I saw a few talks given by presenters who were not knowledgeable on the subject of their talk. One was a teacher who should have been talking about teaching instead of designing APIs. Another was a developer who should have been talking about debugging rather than Zen. I heard similar complaints from friends & colleagues about still more talks, which I did not attend myself, where the presenter had only a passing familiarity with the topic of their session.

On a positive note, the food this year was great both days. Coffee was in ample supply. The rooms were comfortable and I didn't see any problems with the A/V equipment.

I have been attending SunshinePHP since the inception and each year it just gets better. The topics and speakers were excellent once again. It is a great environment to network and establish relationships with others that have the same interests.

It is very well organized conference and I look forward to ssp16.

Great job!

Interesting; the organizers or the site decided to delete my comment about how this conference was not very technical.

I was not the only person who felt this way and I think it would be good for the organizers to know how the conference was received for developers not involved in the "PHP open source community."

If you wish to socialize w/ members of the PHP Community, this is a great conference. If you came as an intermediate/senior developer looking to learn, the conference was a disappointment.

A very well organized conference with a good mix between content and social interactions. Impressive it's all a one-man show in preparation. Well done,

This was the best SunshinePHP yet. Many of the issues from last year were resolved. Everything ran pretty smoothly. Had a great time chatting with speakers & attendees alike during and after the sessions.

I think for next year we should move the happy hour bar to the vendor room to avoid issues with noise but still have it close enough to the panel discussion that people can go back & forth.

It was my second time attending this conference and it just strengthened my belief that it is the best PHP conf I've even been to. Keep the great work that you guys do up - you are being an inspiration to every PHP community out there. Thank you very much for the wonderful job you've done! Already looking forward to ssp16!