Derick Rethans has posted his summary of the happenings in the world of PHP as experienced through his eyes:
It's the end of the year again, and that means that I (once again) spent way too much time writing this wrap up of PHP in 2006. In this, the fifth iteration of my annual PHP Look Back, we'll explore the happenings of the PHP world in 2006.
He mentions things like the various PHP releases over the year (especially the release of 5.2), discussions and debates over some of the core functionality of PHP (variables, syntax, etc), actions of the PDM, lots of Unicode talk, and many, many suggestions for functionality to be added to the core.
Check out the full (lengthy) look back here on his website.