Ola peeps… PHPUK13 has happened!
It was my 3rd visit to the PHPUK conference, only this time a different venue.
I spoke with Lineke of PHPWomen during the PHPBNL13 conference and it seemed PHPWomen was offered a ticket for PHPUK13 … sometimes life does have nice things to offer 
. Many thanks to the organization of PHPUK13 for the ticket!
Well.. my thoughts on the conference…? Wouldn’t you want to know..
The venue
I’m a person who truly -hates- public transport, the shorter the trip the better. If it’s possible to conveniently avoid public transport, even if it takes me longer, I’d do it. The Brewery wasn’t a convenient for me. Soo… I silently cursed PHPUK13 when I found out about the change in venue from Olympia Exhibition Centre to The Brewery. Olympia is almost around the corner of where I stay… grrr
A few talks
As always, so many talks and different tracks. I wonder if there ever will be a PHP conference with 4 or even 5 tracks. Anyways, it’s not always easy to choose between 2 interesting talks 
An overview of the talks I found interesting:
- Pair Programming, TDD and Other Impractical Things
Loved this talk!! Perhaps it’s the type of topic that allows for it.. but the enthusiasm of speaker was very affecting. I think this was one of the most motivating talks I’ve seen. And yes… all very impractical!! Some topics should definitely be heard by non-technical managers who deal with dev teams. - Keynote panel: Frameworks: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Frameworks used to be one of my favourite topics to read about, which to my surprise usually causes strong reactions. I hardly can imagine a website without some sort of framework. From that perspective I don’t understand the fuss. I personally love working with frameworks eventhough the ones I use aren’t the most popular but it works for me. Coming back to the panel, it was a bit dull. I was hoping to see fights and heavy discussions. Instead, the main focus was the distracting Twitterwall in the background as most tweets from delegates were about.. “we want beer”! - Bottleneck Analysis
I really want to start using the software he mentioned! .. but where do I find the time!! - Scaling with HipHop
The other talk of 10 commandments sounded like concepts I’m reasonably familiar with and I don’t use ZF so HipHop talk seemed a logical choice. Well, I can tell you… half this talk was like Chinese for me, definitely outside my comfort zone which is good! (I may look Chinese but I’m not really-ish). The only things I understood was 500% for FB and 100% performance gain in WordPress…
..yes, I felt quite an unknowledgeable person after this talk. - Expert Troubleshooting: Resolving MySQL Problems quickly
MySQL is an area I’d like to better myself. I’ll definitely need to re-read his slides and play with the tools and commands and understanding the stats. - A Hands-On Introduction to Writing Unit Tests Using PHPUnit
Another one of those things that I (and we at work) want to do but simply not yet had the time for. Great talk for beginners and I definitely feel more confident to get started… oh and I just heard that the guys at work are interested in using Cucumber… experiences anyone?
The presentation was very nice and the food looked delicious, it truly did but I couldn’t be bothered to stand in the long long long queue for a main meal. Luckily, there were tables with salads and sides. Guess what I went for instead.
The venue – revised..!
Olympia… what?! The Brewery is definitely a much better venue! The venue has more personality compared to Olympia, a nicer atmosphere and for me this mainly is because of the internal and external architecture of the building. Who cares? .. well, I do .. a lot PHPUK13, I took back the curse!! The venue is lovely, it is an excellent choice. Loved the guys standing outside, greeting everyone and opening the doors… so posh for a PHP conference Overall.. I think it was yet another successful event organised by PHP London.
Thank you PHPWomen for this opportunity!
Thank you PHPUK for hosting this event, cya next year!
Kana Yeh
Interesting review. I think it would help to add the names of the speakers besides the titles, especially if you write so specific about the speaker (Pair Programming talk)