A World Without PHP

Interesting talk, quite a trip down memory lane plus a nice message about community. Thank you.

A great talk that offered an interesting thought to start the conference and made me appreciative of the language and community I'm a part of.

somehow i didn't get into this talk and didn't feel it met the abstract.

Was not really what it said on the tin. However it was interesting and all about community is what makes the language popular.

Wasn't quite what I expected but I still enjoyed it.

Encouraged me to get more involved in Open Source projects and php communities.

Thanks Ben

The talk down memorylane was interesting and to fun to watch for person who saw most of events mentioned. But for the newer people it was unclear.

As a Keynote it really missed the inspiring punchline.

Good non-typical history of PHP. Fitted the abstract well I think. There was a bit of in-joking I think, which maybe was sometimes hard to avoid. However, good encouragement to get involved in community, and keep it going (perhaps a *little* on the scaremongering side: "get involved or PHP dies and you lose your career" heh, but that might just be me being cynical...)

The look at statistics and things that wouldn't be around was eye-opening, Ben is a charismatic and engaging speaker.

The in-joking was a little off-touch for me at times, but overall the talk was enjoyable.

Wasn't really sure what to expect... based on its title.

A really enjoyable talk with some food for thought ;)

But where would we be without PHP? Or where will we be without PHP? Still a question to be answered.

Really good as a history of PHP, I can understand the comments about the abstract - the narrative of 'where would we be without PHP' fell by the side a little and could be used a bit more to string the anecdotes together

That aside each section was fun and interesting!

A bit disjointed and slightly depressing, not really what I expected from the keynote!

Really enjoyed this talk and was really thought provoking, although I'm not 100% sure it was fitting for an opening keynote.

Good talk, took me back to the old days where php wasn't around actively

Good talk, and very recognisable. However, it felt a bit all over the place. I guess the slow transitions between slides and the often looking at the slides didn't help. Also, it was hard to understand the in-crowd jokes watching remotely from the track 2 room.
That being said, it's a very interesting angle and a topic that more people should think about and be thankful for.

Good delivery and good overview - thanks

An interesting keynote delivered in an engaging and humourous manner.

Fun talk. Nice way to kick off the conference.

Interesting and well presented talk

I'm afraid I got bored and started looking for the closest door. Sorry :( It was an interesting topic which would never have been easy to deliver. A lot of pauses and "umm" moments.

I enjoyed this talk, and Ben is definitely an engaging speaker. I'd agree with some of the other comments that the "punchline" was a bit missed here and/or glossed over, but really enjoyed the reminiscing back to the early days (.php3 files, totally).

This was an interesting talk about the history of PHP and where it ranked at different times compared to other platforms, but it was not what I was expecting. I expected an analysis of likely alternatives that popular sites would have been written in had PHP not been around.

A good overview of the PHP world - history, current state and how far it's come.

Good presentation but I felt the subject was a bit rambley

Ben's an engaging speaker and this talk was a nice take on presenting the history of the PHP community.

Ben put forward interesting views on "A World without PHP" and provided some thought provoking statistics however I felt in some places the talk halted and could have flowed more smoothly.

An interesting start to the conference, did make me think.

I found this talk a little disappointing as a keynote to be honest. Not for the content, because I feel the topic and approach where very promising (although I would have liked to have a little more fun with guesswork on where the world would be without PHP).

It was more about the delivery - which seemed off with a lot of context switching and jokes meant for the in-crowd. I'd say on the whole it did inspire, and made me reflect on the posed statement: "where would I be if it wasn't for PHP..."

I really enjoyed this talk. Ben has natural charisma that makes him amusing and entertaining on stage, and the ideas he spoke about were very interesting. I think the talk lost its way a little at one point (maybe with the interaction with friends off stage?), but overall it was funny and enjoyable. Thanks Ben.

I was disappointed with this talk, and felt it was poor choice for the keynote. It was depressing, vague nostalgic rhetoric. The services, and products which exist now, would still exist in some manner, as those ideas would of just been implemented by someone else in another probably less fun, and pragmatic language. The focus should of been on why and how PHP enabled the world to develop, and how it can continue to make development accessible.

There was no explanations on why PHP became more popular, than Python, Perl and JAVA.
No references to how to improve and contribute to the PHP community, just simply adding documentation can have a positive impact.
Didn't understand the reference to the audience being older then expected? Was the speaker insinuating that PHP use is declining? - why?
Why bring up the PHP internals free-for-all chaos, that problem is only with a small few.
The PHP-FIG project should of been explained more, ignoring the politics - it does have a very clear trajectory: toward more community participation and robust standards.

Speaking as a developer starting out in the industry, I found this talk a little confusing. I understood the main point of the talk which was if there was no php, then the world would be very different but you could say this about anything in life.

Apart from that, all I heard was a quick overview of old technologies and jokes with his friends in the audience. As for saying the PHP world is aging, im 26 and saw quite a few younger people in the building as well.

Poor keynote.

This had the potential to be a good talk, however somewhere along the way, something was lost. In my opinion, this talk certainly should not have been the Keynote. I believe that, as the first talk that everybody is attending, the keynote should be lively, inspiring and suitable for the whole audience. The speaker made reference to the generalization that the audience were "getting older" multiple times, almost as if this was a bad thing or something to feel ashamed of. And yet, this talk was clearly geared toward the older generation of PHP programmers, with all the irrelevant 'trips down memory lane' and in-jokes with friends in the audience, many of which would have been entirely lost on younger programmers due to a lack of explanation or cohesive 'point' being made. This talk had the potential to much more than it was, but unfortunately, ended up falling far short of the mark.

An enjoyable and funny talk. Although I understand where people are coming from with the "in jokes", I think he delivered a great "what if" talk about PHP and it not being around. The idea that some people will not get these "in jokes" is a non-issue as from my point of view, the newer generation may not understand these jokes, but it may encourage them to look certain things up?

This talk gave a good presentation of PHP history and reminded us just how many sites rely on PHP but I felt there was quite a bit missing from the what would the world be like without PHP side of the talk.

I wonder if the talk would be better if generalised to 'A world without open source', this topic may enable a better contrast and provide a more inspirational talk for a keynote.

Whilst Ben is an interesting speaker (heard him before) in my opinion the choice of topic for a keynote wasn't great. The topic was slow and difficult to get into, should have been a bit more lively and thought provoking about the positive future that many of the developers in the audience have ahead of them. Felt like a history lesson first thing in the morning, just didn't work for me.

The talk was good, however it felt a little bit all over the place. Wasn't 100% sure what the take-away message was but the trip down memory lane was fun.