ZendCon 2016
18 - 21 Oct 2016 at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

Very informative. Could gain great knowledge of cutting edge within latest technology.

I enjoyed the conference and will agree with others that knowing the level of the session talk would be a great benefit., I am very new to PHP and ended up in a couple of sessions that were over my head. I didn't want to be rude to the presenter, so I stayed and tried to understand the discussion. The iSeries reception was a good chance to meet others on the same platform and discuss how the software is being used. I thought the location was good and found it easy to navigate from session to session. I would like to come next year, but my boss says he needs to send the other RPG programmer somewhere next year. I'll have to see what I can do about this. I might have to self-fund, but I think it would be worth it.

I think there needs to be improvements to the session listings. None of the talks I want to were bad, but I would have chosen different sessions had I known the actual content.

Really enjoyed ZendCon this year. Last year was my first, so I felt a lot more at ease this time around... I know that the construction currently being finished will greatly alleviate the "spread-out" issues others were reporting (which didn't bother me at all). I would agree that a level categorization to the talks would be helpful in future talks.

I think that the next year I will forgo even thinking about the giant elephant, as it has appeared for 2 years in a row to be presented to whomever the zenders decided to give it to (no transparency to the "random drawing"

Overall, I loved the venue, loved the event, liked many of the breakouts, and will be planning to attend next years event. Thanks for all the time spent organizing this!

Fantastic conference, this year's Zendcon was the best I've been to yet.
The smoke and nicotine from the casino was disgusting and inescapable and made me feel like my heart was ready to leap out of my chest, but the conference content really kept me going. The sessions and speakers were well picked and I had more takeaways and food for thought this year than any previous Zendcon's I've been to.
Thanks, we're looking forward to next year's!

This was a great conference, but I really miss the five-track, better-clustered-venue days of ZendCon over in Santa Clara.

As an attendee, I think eight tracks are way too many. It was hard enough to decide between five talks a few years back, but there were usually at least a few time slots where there was a clear "best talk for me" winner for me to attend. This time around, I had to choose between the "greater of 2-3 goods" in nearly every time slot.

As a speaker, I think eight concurrent tracks caused some really weird attendance anomalies in individual talks. I saw some talks with less than a dozen people in attendance, others that were packed, and others that were "middle of the road" despite seeming appealing enough to have drawn larger crowds. Kind of a bummer for the speakers who ended speaking to a small crowd and getting maybe 1 or 2 talk ratings.

As for clustering, the Festival and Artist rooms are way, way too spread apart. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of attendees' "which of these two talks should I attend?" tie-breaker was whether or not they were currently near Festival or near Artist. Plus, the venue itself was a bit difficult to navigate.

It was still a great conference, and I'll *definitely* want to attend the next ZendCon even if nothing changes; however, as odd as it may sound, I think it'd be a lot better with *fewer* talks and a *smaller* venue.

My suggestion is to put a level indicator for the talks ( beginner, intermediate, advanced). It would be easier to choose.
I didn't like the fact that most of the talks were focused more in products that in concepts and ideas.

I was really impressed with this conference and thoroughly enjoyed it. The rooms are a bit too spread out, but I don't think it was a major problem - overall the venue was very nice.

I agree with Brian, having a skill level listed with each talk would've helped attendees find the sessions targeted at them.

Last year's session list included a Beg/Int/Adv categorization for each session. That would've been helpful again this year.