Eli White has an interesting new post about the PHP community and the conferences/presentations associated with it. According to his commentary, it's being done wrong and not quite how other communities/companies do it.

The PHP 'conference circuit' if you will, is one that has grown up in a different manner than other conference circuits that I've been familiarized with in the past (Java, Adobe, 'Web', etc). In most of these other areas, the speakers are PAID to attend. [...] On the flip side, in the PHP conference circuit, every speaker there, in fact, is PAYING for the right to attend that conference and be a part of it.

He talks about the fact that speakers will have more than just the cost of the conference to worry about. In fact, sometimes they can all add up to more than the conference would have cost them normally.

In the end, my point is this. I feel that given the nature of all of these conferences. That the organizers and attendees need to understand the situation and treat the speakers not as a '˜professional speaker that they paid good money to see'. But as what they really are. Far more akin to an Open Source Developer, who is donating their time for the better good and education of the masses.

The speaker schedule for the 2010 edition of the PHP UK Conference has officially been posted and includes speakers such as:

• Damien Seguy
• Lorna Mitchell
• Ian Barber
• Juliette Reinders Folmer
• Fabien Potencier
• Derick Rethans

If you're wanting to register, you just missed the Early Bird pricing, but you can still get in for a discounted price until the end of December. Check out their registration page for more pricing information or just register right away for this great day of PHP goodness.

The initial list of the speakers for this year's ZendCon conference has been posted. Speakers at this year's event include:

• Ed Finkler
• Sebastian Bergmann
• Jeff Moore
• Derick Rethans
• Chris Shiflett
• Aaron Wormus
• Andrei Zmievski

And many more - check out the full list to see what you can expect for this year's ZendCon!

php|architect has officially announced some of the speakers that will be joining the CodeWorks 2009 tour this fall. Here's the list so far:

• Derick Rethans will be speaking on date/time, XDebug and development processes
• Sebastian Bergmann will be speaking on unit testing, quality assurance and best practices
• Ed Finkler will be speaking on creating RIA desktop applications (PHP and Javascript) and introducing CodeIgniter
• Cal Evans will be speaking on design patterns and skills/problems PHP programmers could face
• Lukas Smith will be talking about database-driven websites
• John Coggeshall is talking on two topics - android development in PHP and the Flex/PHP combination.
• Arne Blankerts will be a part of the code review tutorial and PHP security
• Scott MacVicar will be speaking about alternative databases, pecl and getting involved with PHP.
• Ben Ramsey will talk on AtomPub and HTTP
• Nate Abele will be speaking on PHP in general, frameworks and best practices
• Matthew Weier O'Phinney will speak on the Zend Framework

Keep an eye on this post for more of the nationwide speakers as they're announced!

Thinking of attending one of the many upcoming PHP conferences and want to see some of the people that'll be attending? Check out this list of folks from Zend and the events they'll be attending.

Zend employees have been busy submitting to Call for Papers at various tech/PHP conferences and will be presenting talks around the world. Here is a list of who will be where.

Conferences on the list include PHP Quebec, PHP Con Italia and php|tek. You can find out more about who will be there and what they'll be presenting in the Zend Developer Zone post.

php|architect has officially announced the keynote speakers for this year's php|works conference - Kevin Dangoor (founder of the TurboGears) and Jay Pipes (staff engineer on Sun's Drizzle project).

We are excited to announce the keynote speakers for this year's php|works and PyWorks conference to be held in Atlanta, Georgia in November. [...] Both Jay and Kevin are dynamic, interesting speakers and we are honored to be hosting them at this year's php|works/PyWorks conference.

Kevin will be giving a talk growth in an open source community and Jay will give a talk called "Confessions of a Serial Coder". You can find more information on the conference (including how to reserve your spot) on the main conference website.

Lorna Mitchell has posted a countdown - only one month until this year's PHP North West Conference.

In a month's time I'll be in Manchester, ready for the PHP North West conference. The conference is a one-day event (Saturday, 22nd November), although the social side of things will kick off the night before. Tickets are 50 GBP for the early bird, 35 GBP for students and concessions - so register now.

She mentions a few things surrounding the conference like the excellent speaker list and the free subscription to php|architect magazine all attendees will receive.

Check out the conference website for more information and to reserve your spot. Hurry! Time's running out!

As mentioned on the phpNW conference blog the schedule for this year has been posted.

The schedule is now online for PHPNW - there are a few slots still unconfirmed but this is the main body of the technical sessions that will be happening on the day. We've got some great sessions planned and we hope to see you on 22nd November 2008 in Manchester!

Speakers currently lined up for the event include Derick Rethans, Rob Allen, Zeo Slattery and Stefan Koopmanschap. You can get complete details about the event on the conference website.

The DynamicWebPages.de site has mentioned details about the latest PHP World Kongress conference happening in Munich later this year (November 24th and 25th).

The PHP World congress offers on the first day three Workshops, per to one to the Zend Framework, eZ Components as well as Flow3, which Framework, on which in the future Typo3 will be based. [...] The second day focuses on "PHP in the Enterprise".

Speakers like Tobias Schlitt and Christian Wenz will be presenting. The attendance fee starts at about 490 Euro - check out the official site for more information on registration and the official schedule.

Furthering his emPHPower effort, Lukas Smith has issued a callout to all speakers at conferences and bloggers/user groups around the world to try to integrate(or just talk about) the emPHPower movement somewhere in to their community.

In this case the opportunity is that I am (or the community) is forced to find someone else to step up and spread the word. So I am hereby calling out to the community and speakers at North American conferences to try and integrate emPHPower discussions as "official" birds of feather or lightning talks.

As mentioned, his call also includes a suggestion for all PHP user groups out there:

Actually lets make this call a big larger, I call out to all the PHP UGs in the world to talk about emPHPower and blog about their views, concerns, ideas. If you are a member of a large PHP project, also consider to get feedback from its user community.

If you're wondering what the emPHPower movement is all about, check out the group's main site for full details.