The Ibuildings techPortal has published the latest episode of their DPCRadio series (as recorded at the Dutch PHP Conference 2011) - Aral Balkan's keynote session The Art of the User Experience: making beautiful, delightful, fun things.

In this session, Aral Balkan will outline the important role that user experience design plays in the making of virtual products and inspire you to see that it is your job - regardless of whether you make web sites, mobile apps, intranet systems, or ticket machines - to make this new world that we are crafting together not only usable and accessible but beautiful, fun, inspiring, pleasurable, delightful, and - dare I say - magical.

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

On the Ibuildings techPortal there's a new post for people out there wanting to attend this year's Dutch PHP Conference but find the ticket price a problem - they're running a contest to give away one ticket for this year's event!

Good news! We've managed to acquire a conference ticket for the Dutch PHP Conference in Amsterdam, on June 8th and 9th, to give away to our readers. We know that since you're reading techPortal, you are interested in technology in general and probably PHP in particular. The Dutch PHP Conference is one of the leading european conferences for PHP content and we hope you can join us there!

The ticket to this year's Conference also includes admittance into the Dutch Mobile Conference if you're interested in that as well. You can find out more about the Dutch PHP Conference on the main event site.

According to this new post to the Dutch PHP Conference blog, the schedule and ticket prices for this year's event will be published next week (sometime between the 19th - 25th).

In our previous blogposts we announced that we would publish the schedule on 15th February. It seems however that this date was a bit too optimistic, and that we need a bit more time to get everything in order. So hang in there, the schedule will be published next week! If you want to be first in the know, make sure you follow @dpcon on twitter.

They've already posted the prices for the tickets though:

• Tutorial Day: 350 Euro (Regular), 297,50 Euro (Early Bird)
• Conference Days: 350 Euro (Regular), 297,50 Euro (Early Bird)
• Full conference: 630 Euro (Regular), 535,50 Euro (Early Bird)

The Early Bird prices are only good from the start of registration until April 15th, so keep an eye out for their announcements about the opening of their registration. You can get more information about the conference from the event's website.

The Dutch PHP Conference has Call for Papers has also been opened!

We're back! And we are glad to announce that we'll be organising another edition of the Dutch PHP Conference, which will be held in Amsterdam from 7th to 9th June 2012. Thursday 7th will be the tutorial day and June 8th and 9th will be the main conference days. Ticket sales will start on February 15th. [...] We're looking for high-quality, technical sessions from speakers who can cover advanced topics and keep our demanding audience inspired

The Call for Papers is open until January 31st, so get those talk ideas in soon. In addition to the normal DPC conference, they're also holding the Dutch Mobile Conference at the same time, a 3-day conference about technologies used for mobile websites and mobile web application development.

In a new post to the Ibuildings techPortal today, Patrick van der Velden shares some of his thoughts about one of the presentations given at this year's Dutch PHP Conference - Think like an ant, distribute the workload.

[Helgi's] presentation started off explaining to us why distributing can be a good thing by pointing out three significant aspects: budget, efficiency and perception. Budget-wise, for a distributed application there is no need to invest in a big, expensive and hard to maintain server that runs the entire application by itself. A company can save a significant amount of money investing in a collection of smaller or virtual servers or even use "the cloud".

Patrick goes on to mention some of the other key points Helgi made about distributing the workload out from a point of user contact to other "workers", decoupling your application into functional pieces, designing for distributed computing from the start and making internal APIs between the sections of the application to make communication simpler. The slides of Helgi's presentation are also posted on Slideshare.

The Ibuildings techPortal has announced a contest today where they're giving away a free pass to this year's Dutch PHP Conference.

I'm wildly excited to announce that we have a ticket to give away for the Dutch PHP Conference 2011!! The conference is entirely English-language (although you will hear many languages spoken in the hallways!), and takes place in Amsterdam between 19th and 21st May 2011. The schedule is online now, and it promises three days of really excellent technical content from some of the leaders of the PHP Community from Europe and beyond. The tickets are on sale already; bookmark this link in case you don't win the ticket.

Entering the contest is simple - just leave a comment on the post with an email address and the winner will be picked from the group. You'll have to leave a comment before March 18th, though or it won't count towards the contest!

The Dutch PHP Conference has officially announced that they've opened the ticket sales for this year's event (happening in May).

At the moment, we're selling tickets with an early bird discount - that's € 325 for a 2-day conference ticket, € 325 for the tutorial day or € 595 for both. Don't wait too long to get your ticket because early bird sales will end on April 1st. After the early bird, ticket prices will be € 375 for a 2-day conference ticket, € 375 for the tutorial day or € 695 for the full conference pass.

If you'd like to order your tickets for the event, head over to their registration page and pick up as many tickets as you need. Be sure and get them before that April 1st deadline (no fools here) to get these discounted rates.

The Ibuildings techPortal has officially announced next year's Dutch PHP Conference happening in May - 19th through 21st.

It's that time of year again! For the fifth year in a row, Ibuildings is organising the Dutch PHP Conference, and the new website is back online at http://www.phpconference.nl. The event will be held in Amsterdam from 19th to 21st May 2011. Thursday 19th is tutorial day, and Friday 20th and Saturday 21st are the main conference days. Mark those days in your calendar!

The post also talks about the Call for Papers that's now open and will last until January 13th, 2011. Accepted speakers will have travel costs paid, be given a room during the conference and a pass to the conference. You can submit as many proposals as you'd like so head over to the submissions page and get those ideas in!