As part of their drive to let developers know about Azure, Microsoft have been reaching out to development communities that would traditionally be non-Microsoft centric - in particular PHP and Ruby. [...] So, this month Microsoft are bringing Josh Holmes to Dublin to talk directly to Irish developers about building and deploying web apps on the Azure platform.

It's a free event and all who are interested are welcome to come. It'll start February 21st at 7:30pm (19:30) at the Radisson Hotel on Golden Lane. There's no charge for the event, but you still need to register to reserve a spot - there's only so much room, after all.

There may only be just 4 million+ of us Irish folk, but we do have an Irish PHP User Group which started up recently. If you're anywhere near Dublin or Cork cities on the last Wednesday of any month, meetings are held at 8pm on those days

If you'd like more information on the group there's on of two places to check them out - either on their website with details about meetings and group news or over on the irc.php.ie IRC server in the #phpug channel for more interactive information.