Joshua Eichorn has a wrapup posted for the latest meeting of his local PHP user group and two of the main topics they talked about - "Beginners Guide to PHP" and a "Short Introduction to PEAR".

azPHP had its August monthly meeting on tuesday. We were trying a new approach and a beginner and a more advanced presentation in the same night. We had a lot of new people there so I guess it worked.

Alex Dean gave a Beginners guide to PHP presentation covering interaction with data from the browser. I the presentation about PEAR, its was a shorter presentation since the first one went a little over its planned time. I tried to focus mainly on what PEAR is and why people should use it over something like hotscripts.

As usual, I'll definitely encourage your participation in your local PHP user group - not only is it a good opportunity to meet up with other PHPers like yourself, but the networking from just one meeting can help all sorts of people out...not to mention the topics of whatever the session happens to be.