The 7PHP.com site, in collaboration with the Nomand PHP user group is giving away two free tickets to attend this month's user group event (happening May 22nd).

NomadPHP is like a virtual PHP User Group mainly for people who do not have the chance to avail of a local PHP user group. But it is open to ANYONE around the world. NomadPHP is an initiative brought forward by the icon of The PHP Community, namely 'His Awesomeness' Mr Cal Evans. It will kick-start its first group talk session on the Wednesday 22nd May 2013 (i.e in some 16 days as from the date of this post). The speaker is the PRO PHP Guy / PRO Zend Framework Evangelist and author of the book Zend Framework in action, Rob Allen. Rob will be introducing and talking about Zend Framework 2 - it is a must for anyone willing to learn ZF 2.

The Nomad PHP user group is designed to be a "user group for those that don't have one". It's a virtual group meeting once a month that you can attend anywhere in the world. You do have to purchase tickets, however. This post shows you how you can enter to win one of the two free tickets, though - either via email or by writing a PHP article for 7PHP.com.

The QaFoo group has announced a giveaway they're doing of a ticket to this year's PHP Unconference Europe:

PHP Unconference Europe is an amazing PHP community meet-up. We would love to help you experience this event and therefore raffle 2 x 1 ticket (viable for non-german as well as german participants). In order to take part in the raffle, just complete the following sentence in a Tweet: "PHP quality is … /cc @qafoo". Replace the "…" with something that you consider important for software quality in your PHP projects and CC our Twitter account (required).

If you haven't heard about the PHP Unfonference Europe, it's a yearly unconference style community event where the participants set out the schedule based on who wants to present and what they want to hear when the event starts. It's less about formal presentations and more about discussion and and "experience sharing." It will be happening May 4th and 5th in Manchester, UK.

The Lone Star PHP Conference (being held June 28th and 29th in Dallas, Texas) has officially announced their full schedule and the opening on the sale of their Early Bird tickets.

Sessions to be presented at this year's two-day event include:

• Profiling PHP Applications (Derick Rethans)
• Composer for busy developers (Rafael Dohms)
• Building web apps from a new angle (Pablo Godel)
• Essential GIT for Developers (Adam Culp)
• Usability For Developers (Beth Tucker Long)
• Turbo Charge Your Logs (Jeremy Cook)

This year's event also includes a "PHP Foundations" track aimed at those just starting out with the language or wanting to learn PHP for the first time. You can pick up yourEarly Bird tickets right now - there's a limited number so be sure to get yours soon!

The PHP Argentina conference officially announced the sale of the tickets for this year's event (happening October 4th & 5th in Buenos Aires):

As of today we are opening the sale of PHP Conference Argentina tickets. And what better way than to offer a big incentive for those who get them early. [...] Hurry and get your ticket now! There is limited space, so you may be risking being left out. Remember that PHP Conference Argentina is the most important conference for developers in Latin America.

Tickets are discounted 50% off their regular price if you get them before the end of May and the first 50 tickets purchased will be entered into a raffle for a seat at the Speakers dinner. Speakers for this year's event include Rasmus Lerdorf, Derick Rethans, Andrei Zmievski, Mark Story, Nate Abele and Pablo Godel. They haven't announced the schedule yet, but it's coming soon.

For more information about the event or to get your tickets, check out the main conference site.

A new PHP conference has just been announced to the community - the True North PHP Conference (2012). The event will be held in Toronto, Ontario November 2nd and 3rd and is currently running their open Call for Papers.

We are firm believers that the PHP community is second to none. We also believe that Toronto has an awesome PHP community and deserves an equally awesome conference. Those beliefs are what inspired us to create True North PHP, a conference designed to showcase Toronto's talent and give back to the community that has given us so much.

If you're interested in speaking, you can find out more and submit your topics or, if you're just interested in attending, you can already pick up your Early Bird tickets.

Stefan Koopmanschap, a speaker at the upcoming PHP North West Conference (in Manchester, UK the first part of October) is doing something interesting with a ticket he purchased - he's giving it back to the community and is taking nominations for the recipients.

It all started last year: I decided I wanted to go to PHPNW even if I wasn't accepted as a speaker. Being Dutch, I made sure to purchase my ticket for the conference during the blind bird period to save some money. But then I got accepted as a speaker. Part of the speaker package is a ticket to the conference, so I had this spare ticket. One option would be to get a refund. The PHPNW crew had no problem with this. But then I figured I could actually also try and do some good for the PHP community with the ticket. I'd spent the money already, why not use it for someone's benefit.

He wants to try to provide the same kind of experience and community interaction he did when he first got started with the language, so he's donating his ticket to PHPNW back to the cause. If there's someone you'd like to nominate for is ticket, send an email with their name, contact info and why you think they should be selected over to phpnw12@ingewikkeld.net. He'll select a winner on August 15th so they'll have plenty of time to make arrangements for travel and accommodations.

As Bradley Holt mentions in this new post to his blog, the tickets for the Northeast PHP Conference will be going on sale this Thursday (June 28th) for $99 USD.

The conference will be taking place on Saturday, August 11th and Sunday, August 12th at Microsoft's NERD Center in Cambridge, MA and will feature talks from some generous sponsors.

Sessions at this year's event include:

• How NASA uses PHP
• Creating an Epic RESTful API and Conquering the World
• PHP Security 101
• Where MVC Ends, Services Begin
• Getting into Git

This promises to be an excellent conference, so be sure to get your tickets as soon as they're available! You can find out more about the event on the main conference site.

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.

php|architect has announced a new contest they'll be hosting (a scavenger hunt, really) and are giving away a ticket to this year's php|tek conference happening in May in Chicago.

Ok PHP fans, we don't do this often, but once a year we do give away a ticket to php|tek to one lucky programmer. This year, however, you are going to have to work for it. Starting Friday, April 13th, 2012, those of us who work at php|architect will tweet clues, and you are going on a web scavenger hunt. That's right, dig up other people's websites, trash their JavaScript and generally make a nuisance of yourself as you follow the clues to the…well, you'll just have to wait and see.

You'll need to follow the php|architect folks on Twiiter (Elizabeth Tucker, Marco Tabini and Cal Evans) to get clues about the hunt. First prize is a ticket to php|tek this year but other prizes include a ticket to their next Virtual Summit, any three books from their catalog and a free one-year subscription to the magazine.

Once you've found the solution, you'll need to enter it here to be entered. Good luck!

The jsDay/phpDay organizers have announced a contest to win a free ticket to this year's event(s), one for each conference:

GrUSP is organising a tweet contest and its prizes will be two tickets, one for each conference. The contest will start today (March 29th) at 1pm CEST and will end April 1st at 7pm CEST.

Anyone can enter - all you have to do is tweet a post with a few things: the "#grsup" hashtag, a mention of the twitter accounts for the events, a link to the conference site and something about the event. Be sure and get those tweets posted before April 1st a 9am CEST - they'll pick the winners soon after! (Oh and multiple entries are accepted so the more you tweet, the better your chances!)