So this weekend I visited my hometown Berlin for the PHPUCEU. [...] This wasn't a "normal" conference. This was an unconference. As such attendees proposed talks they could give, but also talks that they would want to hear. Every morning every attendee would then have two votes for talks. The top voted talks would then be distributed across the 4 slots in the 3 available tracks. As such several of the sessions ended up being quite ad hoc with multiple people chipping in with what they new about the topic. What is also special about this event is that the sessions are just as long as the breaks to facilitate idea exchange about the session topics, but also about other topics. Overall I found this to be an absolutely thrilling experience.

Presentations chosen and made at this year's unconference included:

• a talk about the PHPRC (PHP Content Repository)
• "Clean Puppet"
• Behavior Driven Development
• Agile documentation
• Hood.ie
• Symfony2 REST API
• NoSQL is Not the Answer

If you're interesting to see what the event was like, check out some of the photos they've posted to their site.

PHP Unconference Europe is an amazing PHP community meet-up. We would love to help you experience this event and therefore raffle 2 x 1 ticket (viable for non-german as well as german participants). In order to take part in the raffle, just complete the following sentence in a Tweet: "PHP quality is … /cc @qafoo". Replace the "…" with something that you consider important for software quality in your PHP projects and CC our Twitter account (required).

If you haven't heard about the PHP Unfonference Europe, it's a yearly unconference style community event where the participants set out the schedule based on who wants to present and what they want to hear when the event starts. It's less about formal presentations and more about discussion and and "experience sharing." It will be happening May 4th and 5th in Manchester, UK.

We are excited to announce more details about the Uncon at tek13! This year we are honored to have Michelangelo van Dam (@DragonBe) serve as our Uncon chair. Michelangelo has done this for numerous other conferences in the past and we are deeply thankful to him for agreeing to help organize our Uncon as well.

This year's unconference will be an entire track happening all days of the conference instead of just later in the day on some days. If you're planning on attending the event and either didn't get a talk accepted or just want to talk about something you love, you should consider signing up when you arrive. Sessions for the next day will be selected at the end of each day from the ones added to the schedule.

Today, I'm excited to announce the fourth Symfony Live Conference in Paris. It will take place on June 7-8th; Paris in the Spring is a lovely city! Like last year, we will have two parallel tracks and the conference will be held in English (with probably a few sessions in French). The call for papers is open until March 30th; if you want to share your real-life Symfony experience, consider submitting a session proposal (SensioLabs covers travel and accommodation expenses for foreign speakers.)

As in years before, there will be an unconference and Symfony training sessions will be on the day before the event (the 6th). Tickets are already on sale so if you're interested in attending or just want more information about the event, check out the main conference website.

If you were looking at the UnCon at ZendCon and wondering what, if anything, you should do, let me give you a couple of hints. The UnCon is the place where people who either did not submit a talk or did not get their talk accepted can sign up for a time to speak and talk on the topic of their choice. [...] It's also a chance for you to get a little practice if you have not spoken before and would like to see what it is like. We recommend that you have either slides, examples or both. It's not "required" that you do, but it definitely helps and it shows that you are treating it seriously.

There are times for full talks (the usual hour-ish slot) or an opportunity for lightening talks (20 minutes long and packed with content) with the possibility of a prize. The session with the highest ratings on the unconference event on Joind.in could win free tickets to other conferences or a copy of the official ZF programming guide. Kevin also suggests a few topics you could speak on that aren't represented in the official session list.

Last year we introduced the uncon track at Dutch PHP Conference, a separate track next to the conference tracks where you, the attendees of the conference, could be the speaker. [...] It was a great success thanks to all the speakers who stepped up to take an open slot and present their topic. [...] This year, we have a bit more time in the morning to register for a slot.

He also mentions the lightning talks (that were popular) and where they'll be in the overall schedule. For more information about the conference, look at their site and maybe pick up your ticket while you're there (Full ticket is 695 Euro, Tutorial only is 375 Euro and just the conference is 375 Euro).

t has been about two weeks since the schedule was published and ticket sales started, but that doesn't mean we haven't done anything in the meantime! There have been a number of updates on both the site and the schedule.

There's five new talks that've been added to the schedule including Paul Matthews' presentation on Solr, Chris Jones talking about high performance PHP apps and David Soria Parra on git. The site updates mainly revolve around the classification of the different sessions - icons added to show skill level and scope of the presentation. There's also an update about the unconfernece and official conference social.

It is with great pleasure that I present to you the Symfony Live Unconference. The Unconference will take place parallel to the second day of Symfony Live 2011 in Paris, and is sponsored by Interlutions and my own company Ingewikkeld.

The event opens the floor to anyone wanting to come and present on their topic - something Symfony or PHP development related, obviously. You can find out more about this new addition to the Symfony Live Paris event on its page and start getting those slides ready!

For the past four years, a group of enthusiasts have been organizing an unconference about PHP and related web technologies in Hamburg, Germany. What started off as a gathering of only fifty people, has grown over the course of three years into an event, which has received much following and attention within the German speaking PHP community. [...] The mission of PHP Unconference Europe is to bring together an international group of around 200 people, who have detailed knowledge of PHP and related web technologies.

For 2011, they've set up the European unconference to provide a whole new group of those with tech-related interests to come together and present the topics they want to hear about. Contribution ideas can be made via their Contribution System. Topics already suggested cover topics like Phing, document generation with the Zend Framework, project management and working with spreadsheets in PHP.

The tickets are already on sale, so if you'd like to attend, pick yours up and reserve your spot today! The cost is £40/46 Euro for the two day event.

Community is all about getting involved and sharing knowledge and best practices. At ZendCon you'll get a chance to step up and share your knowledge and skills to everyone at the conference with the ZendCon uncon. These Uncon sessions are run separately from the main tracks and are open for everyone. Wether you're an attendee, a conference speaker, a sponsor or part of the conference organization, you're welcome to step up and share with the community.

He talks about the types of sessions you can propose - regular talks and lightening talks - how to register your sessions, what you might want to provide (slides, other content) and how you can know which uncon sessions are coming up (hint: follow @zenduncon.