Last week I returned from Verona, Italy where I spent a full week with some of the best Javascript and PHP developers out there. I've been wanting to go to phpDay for a number of years so when I was invited to present a talk about Symfony2 and MongoDB, there were no more excuses, I had to be there!

Pablo talks about the sessions he attended (at both JsDay and phpDay) including Zeev Suraski's (Zend) keynote, a talk from Lorenzo Alberton about "Taming the Twitter Firehose" and his own presentation about MongoDB and Symfony2. He also mentions the second day's keynote from Rasmus Lerdorf and a workshop about building PHP extensions.

This is the ninth 'social' interview in a series with the phpDay 2012 speakers: it's 'social' because the questions have been submitted and voted online on Facebook. We are happy to introduce you Giorgio Sironi, a freelance PHP developer and PHPUnit_Selenium mantainer.

The questions cover a wide range of topics including:

• His thoughts about functional programming
• What he thinks of traits in PHP 5.4
• Which open source projects he follows the most
• What features he'd like to see in future versions of PHP

You can read the full interview here. You can also find out more about this year's conference (and get your tickets - hurry! it's next week!) on the main conference site.

The final schedules for jsDay and phpDay are online: http://2012.jsday.it/schedule/ http://2012.phpday.it/schedule/ Although the international conferences for JavaScript and PHP are almost around the corner, we have several important news!

Besides all of the great sessions during the day, they'll also have:

• Free drinks (provided by Aperol) and food at Pizzeria San Marco (provided by Softonic) A Symfony CMF Hacknight (sponsored by Ideato, register here)
• The launch of a new book PHP Best Practices
• The release of an app version of the schedule for the two days

If you still haven't gotten your tickets for this great event, you can still register now and enjoy the conference next week!

This is the second 'social' interview in a series with the phpDay 2012 speakers: it's 'social' because the questions have been submitted and voted online on Facebook. We are happy to introduce you Stefan Koopmanschap (@skoop), co-founder of PHPBenelux, now active in the PFZ.nl events team , symfony community manager. He will give a session at phpDay called "A Practical Look At Symfony2" Saturday May 19th at 12 am on track 1.

They talk about Stefan's framework choice process, his thoughts on functional programming, what he thinks of traits in PHP 5.4 and what Open Source projects he's following the closest.

You can find out more about Stefan's session and the conference at http://2012.phpday.it.

Sessions from jsDay include:

• Backbone.js FTW! (Pierre Spring)
• JavaScript Application Architecture (Brandon Keepers)
• Ember.js - Focus on your app not on boilerplate code (Garret Alfert)
• Getting Started with Nodejitsu (Nuno Job)
• Go to hell Flash! We have Open Web! (Michal Budzynski)

Sessions from phpDay include:

• Test Driven Development with Symfony 2 (Jacopo Romei)
• Scalable architectures: Taming the Twitter Firehose (Lorenzo Alberton)
• Get'em in shape: let customers appreciate the agile workflow (Stefano Maraspin)
• An introduction to Phing the PHP build system (Jeremy Coates)

For more information about these events and to get your tickets, see the sites for each conference: phpDay, jsDay.

GrUSP is organising a tweet contest and its prizes will be two tickets, one for each conference. The contest will start today (March 29th) at 1pm CEST and will end April 1st at 7pm CEST.

Anyone can enter - all you have to do is tweet a post with a few things: the "#grsup" hashtag, a mention of the twitter accounts for the events, a link to the conference site and something about the event. Be sure and get those tweets posted before April 1st a 9am CEST - they'll pick the winners soon after! (Oh and multiple entries are accepted so the more you tweet, the better your chances!)

We are very happy to announce the first confirmed speakers for the jsDay and phpDay 2012!

jsDay: Mark Boas (jPlayer/Happyworm), Greg Schechter (YouTube),Christopher Rhodes (Google) and Brandon Keepers (GitHub) , the full list here.

phpDay: Rasmus Lerdorf (Php creator), Zeev Suraski (CTO at Zend, Co-architect of PHP), Lorna Jane Mitchell (PhpWomen) and David Coallier (Orchestra CTO) and many other, the full talk list here.

Their Early Bird tickets are on sale until April 1st for both of these two-day events, so be sure you pick up your tickets now before this great discount expires! (jsDay tickets, phpDay tickets)

• php|tek 2012 - ends December 31st, 2011 (tomorrow!)
• Dutch PHP Conference - ends January 31st, 2012
• phpDay Italy - ends February 28th, 2012

Be sure to submit while there's still time! Thanks to Thijs Feryn for the reminder!

Do you want to be our next php hero? Fill out the form with your profile and talk description. Remember that the phpDay CfP will end on Feb 28th 2012. As a no profit organization we don't have a big budget but we will refund speakers accommodation, meals and we'll give them from 200 € as refund for travel expenses.

They're looking for all levels of talks for the event - beginner, intermediate and advanced in three different categories: Overview, Hands On and In Depth. The deadline is February 28th (2012), so be sure to submit your ideas (the more the better)!