The elePHPant arrives at Persistent on 20th September - I wanted to announce that we have found the Venue for PHPCamp pune.

The event will be held at the offices of Persistent Systems:

Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd.,
Plot No. 9A/12, CTS No. 12A/12,
Erandwana,
Near Padale Palace (Opp Sharda Center),
Pune - 411 004

You can get more information about the conference from its official website.

I hope this all will lead to a few people to step up and really start getting involved deeply in emPHPower. Aside from this Sebastian has handed in a BOF session on emPHPower for OSCON. I hope this one will work out.

A spot has also been set aside at the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo's unconference for someone to speak on the subject and to get a feel for things from the business perspective. Lukas has also been working up more details about the effort and has set up a mailing list to help with collaboration.

The PHP Vikinger unconference will be held for the third year in Skien, Norway. Just like previous years it follows directly after eZ Systems conference which puts this year's PHP Vikinger on June 21st, the longest day of the year.

He also links to pictures from previous years (nice hat Rasmus!) and a report from an attendee of last year's event. Check out the event's site for more information.

[PHP Appalachia is a] PHP unconference nestled in the Smoky Mountains, for those who like to camp or stay in a cabin, enjoy spending time with friends, and talking about PHP. As before, we will have a few presentations, but a lot of the time will be flexible and spent how the group sees fit at the time.

They're looking at renting a chalet this year depending on interest. They've already opened up pre-registrations for this year, but space is very limited so you should reserve your spot today by dropping Elizabeth a note at elizabeth _at_ naramore _dot_ net. The cost is about $200 USD for the week's event.

The remaining question was not if, but when should we do the next one? This question can now be answered: On the weekend of April 26th / 27th, the PHP Unconference 2008 will once again take place in our beautiful city.

They're going with the mix of predefined sessions and on-the-spot talks given by anyone that wants to get up to speak (proposed to the group attending and selected based on the popularity). It will be held there at the local University there in Hamburg again. You can keep up with the latest information on the unconfernece over on its (German only) blog.

I do have a list of new features planed(or already implemented) for the Pyrus installer.

The list includes:

• no installation necessary. It runs out of the box as a .phar. No go-pear.phar needed
• Pyrus is much more development/production-oriented, and will have a "deploy" command for managing deployment of development code to a production server
• out-of-the-box supported packaging formats include .tar, .tgz, .tbz, .zip, and .phar
• PHP 5.3+-based code means it fully utilizes cutting edge PHP features such as SPL iterators, XMLReader/XMLWriter, ZIP extension, phar extension (if enabled), exceptions
• full application support is available with the new www and cfg (configuration file) roles

Check out his post for more items on the list.

The PHP Unconference is a way to bring people who have a shared interest in PHP together. It could be just to explore interest in a common theme or it could be to do work together to accomplish a goal.

Several of the bloggers that will be giving talks during the un-conference times have posted information about their talks (both to their blogs and to the ZendCon Wiki):

• Joshua Eichorn - PEAR2
• Maggie Nelson - You Don't Need a DBA
• Nate Abele - This Presentation is not about CakePHP
• Ed Finkler - Introduction to Code Igniter

Keep checking back on the session list page of the wiki to see what other topics might pop up. And, if there's a topic you don't see listed and would like to hear a talk on, present it yourself!

ZendCon is sneaking up on us fast. If you've not got your tickets yet, time is running out so you had better hurry. To whet your appetite, ere are a few blog posts or ZendCon mentions from speakers and attendees who will be there this year.

Included in his list are bloggers like Terry Chay, Brian DeShong and Mike Naberenzy and events like the Happy Hour 2.0 and the Unconference.

When was the last time an event challenged your assumptions, and made you think? The PHP Unconference is a way to bring people who have a shared interest in PHP together. It could be just to explore interest in a common theme or it could be to do work together to accomplish a goal.

This year's chairperson is Patrick Reilly and they've posted some basic principles presenters will need to follow as well as a space on the wiki for topic suggestions or ones you'd like to present on.

You can learn more about this year's conference from the main conference website and stop by the zendcon channel on the Freenode IRC network to meet other attendees.

This year we are trying something new at ZendCon, we are providing Unconference space for attendees to create their own sessions. To help facilitate this, we have asked someone to be the Unconference Chairperson. This person won't be in charge of setting the agenda or approving sessions, the attendees will do that. This person will be the coordinator, the facilitator, the person in charge.

Cal did a short interview with Patrick about the role he'll be playing and his own message to those attendees that might want to participate.