DPC11: Retrospective June 14, 2011
Before our memories get swamped by our daily lives, let's take a look back at the Dutch PHP Conference 2011. For me, two things stand out when I look back on this years DPC.
One was the rate at which ideas were exchanged, both during the regular conference days and at the associated social events. Triggered by the talks they attended, people from many different nationalities were discussing a broad range of subjects, ranging from front-end technologies like HTML5, via the pitfalls of API design, to Extreme programming and its merits. Although this isn’t anything new for conferences like this, I felt that this year was extra dynamic. Many people I talked to were very enthusiastic about their co-attendees and their ideas.
Exchanging ideas is ultimately the goal of a conference like this. When everyone goes home inspired and with a head full of new ideas and insights, the conference was a success. This was clearly the case with DPC11. A prime example of a talk that inspired people was Aral Balkan’s keynote: The Art of User Experience. It was easily the most discussed talk of the conference. It was cool to watch all these PHP developers get excited about UX.
The other thing to stand out was the fact that many talks were not about PHP. That sounds a bit strange for a PHP conference, but to take a closer look at the subjects of the different talks let us do a little not-very-scientific analysis.
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