Recently Alex Luneburg attended the PHP UK 2009 conference in London. She's written up a great summary of the entire event for the PHP Women website.

For anyone thinking that PHP conferences are full of dry technically laborious talks attended by rows and rows of pasty sun-starved bespectacled boys, thus making them a completely unapproachable unappealing yawn-fest then I'd say think again!

She talks about some of her expectations (set a bit low) and how they were smashed - in a good way - in everything from the quality of the talks to the social interaction between her and other attendees. She mentions some of the talks specifically including one of her favorites, Chris Shiflett's Security-Centered Design.

So to anyone who's never thought of going to a conference before, or who hasn't yet plucked up the courage then I really encourage you to go! [...] If someone like me can go and have such a good time and get so much out of it then I really can't think of any excuse for anyone else not to go too!