Purpose of the entry
For those who don’t know me, I always do a small write-up on each conference I attend (it is to persuade all you non-attendees to be there next year and maybe say hello).
This write-up will be on an incredible event packed with lots of interesting topics, relaxing atmosphere, interesting people to meet AND goodies to win. In short the Dutch PHP Conference. And this year it got even better.
Overview
- What is #dpc10?
- Yes! I spoke at the Dutch PHP Conference
- Who was attending?
- Pros and Cons of this year
- Conclusion
What is #dpc10?
The Dutch PHP Conference is an event organized by ibuildings and spans 3 full days.
One tutorial day and 2 conference days. Generally the talks cover the more advanced PHP related topics. This year was the fourth installment of many more to come and was hosted by Lorna Jane Mitchell.
Compared to the previous years there was a new feature: the Uncon organized by PHPBenelux. The uncon is a less formal main stage at the conference where beginning and experienced speakers can bring their topics under public attention. You get requested the same day to speak in a certain time slot or you can volunteer to talk. If accepted your name will be listed next to the main speakers topics.
Yes! I spoke at the Dutch PHP Conference
I spoke about the good practice on separating different responsibilities of your application. It focused on
- a model is NOT your database
- how models retrieve results in the form of collections and entities from your Data Access Object (Dao, this might be
the database logic or a web service). - Why it is a good idea to implement using a factory (or even dependency injection) and not hardcode your dao inside each model.
- Creating a dao interface (contract based design) so that when you want to switch to another implementation, the model requires no change.
- that with this system (what OOP is all about) you create clear separation and unit testing is made very easy.
- you promote loose coupling
- Easy creation of extra layers by the use of decorators
It was a completely unprepared lecture, because it was a “Hi Nick fancy to speak” kind-of-a-thingy. I am glad I accepted because I received very positive feedback and generally people wanted more. You can see the comments on my talk on joind.in
Who was attending?
Approximately 400 attendees with the “open source state of mind” at heart joined the conference. People who love to learn or lecture
on everything programming related. It is about so much more than PHP. I urge you to join even if you are programming into a different language like .net or java. There is a wealth on information at this event and you feel the positive vibe of each and every attendee.
The sponsors gave away some cool gifts too, with Microsoft taking the lead. The raffle included a full week to Las Vegas, an XBox360, programs and much more. Microsoft is really starting to embrace the PHP Community by sponsoring almost each PHP Conference, for which the community is very grateful.
Pros and cons this year
Pro:
- better stage venue
- lots to learn at great lectures
- lots of awesome people who are happy to meet you
- an awesome feature called uncon sessions which is already fully adopted at United State conferences
- conference social drink at a local pub sponsored by GitHub => Free drinks for everyone
Con:
- like every year, the food is a bit disappointing. Prepare yourself to eat very basic sandwiches for 3 days. (The organizers could learn something from PHPUK, they serve awesome food, see my previous post)
Closing notes
Great value for money and in general a conference you should attend, no excuses.
See you next year at The Dutch PHP Conference 2011 (9-11 June 2011).
Thx for reading and feel free to comment,
Nick Belhomme
