After hearing about how great PHP Benelux Conferences were I finally made it over to Belgium to check it out, and i was impressed. To catch you up on the new, I moved to Amsterdam last december and thus had the chance of attending the conference which is now 2 hours away on a train ride. I could not expect less of a wonderful conference when names like Michelangelo van Dam are involved and this was no exception.

Among his suggestions, there's things like:

• Value your sponsors
• Value your attendees
• Make your attendees pay
• Value the organizers and your volunteers

...and one of the most important ones: "Have Fun!" If you're not following this piece of advice, you're probably doing it wrong.

I started writing a Zendcon recap post as soon as I got back. And then mis-timed a couple projects. Note to freelancers, make sure your new gig starts AFTER your old gig is over. Or you'll be working an insane schedule. Hence the lateness... First the good part. What made Zendcon special.

He notes that it was a great opportunity to meet people "in real life" that he'd only spoken with online and the overall wonderful experience it was. He mentions some specific people in the PHP community including Juozas Kaziukenas, Daniel Cousineau, some impromptu singing of Queen songs and many more (too many to name here). He also mentions some of the sessions attended including the tutorial on Zend Framework and an uncon talk from Ilia Alshanetsky about optimization.

This year's wiki for attendees. You can see who is coming, register in one of the affiliated groups who are planning events, and take a look at the Birds of a Feather sessions that are being proposed.

Pages created so far include a list of the ZCEs attending, members of the #phpc channel (PHP community) on the Freenode IRC network and a page for phpwomen.org members who will be attending.

Whether you have a group you want to add a page for or just want to add your name to one of the lists already made, head over to the ZendCon wiki and make some updates.

It is a great feeling for us to see how many people are interested. Since we are at the university, we have enough space left to get some more attendees in, but beware, space is already getting rare.

For complete information on this event, check out the homepage and sign up today. There's no charge - just show up and enjoy learning everything from beginner PHP techniques out to best practices and working with PHP 5.