If you've been wanting to attend this year's Dutch PHP Conference (June 10th through 12th) but don't think you could come up with the price for the tickets, you're in luck! Lorna Mitchell has posted about a new contest they're running to give away one ticket to the event allowing the winner access to the main conference days.

We've been busy putting everything in place for the event and our schedule is now available over at http://phpconference.nl/schedule. So now you've seen the schedule, you probably want to join us! [...] We have a ticket to give away which will grant access to the main conference days at the Dutch PHP Conference!

To put your name in for a chance to win the free pass, simply comment on this post on the Ibuildings techPortal with a valid email address attached and you'll be entered. The contest ends March 16th, so be sure to make your comment before then!

If you hadn't heard (and were up in the air on attending this year's event) the Dutch PHP Conference has put their tickets on sale as a part of a "big blind bird" discount, but it's only good before the schedule for this year is released.

In previous years, we always had 'early bird' discount on our DPC tickets. This year, we'll have early bird discounts as well, but we're adding an extra level of discount. Since the schedule isn't available yet (our Call for Papers is still running), we're launching the ticket sales with a 'blind bird discount'. For those of you that know that whatever the schedule is, DPC10 is going to be awesome anyway.

The passes are discounted for a limited time - you can get a full conference pass for 500 Euro (marked down 150 Euro) and a "Tutorial Only" ticket for 265 Euro (a discount of 85 Euro). Sound good? Head over and purchase your tickets

Raphael Stolt has an interesting idea about PHPUnit plugin (GitHub_TicketListener) that allows you to close (or reopen) Github issues via PHPUnit tests.

Since PHPUnit 3.4.0 a new extension point for interacting with issue tracking systems [...]. The extension point has been introduced by an abstract PHPUnit_Extensions_TicketListener class, which allows developer to add tailor-made ticket listeners supporting their favoured TTS.

The "@ticket" notation that PHPUnit allows as an annotation is the key to linking together your unit tests with the new listener. Two methods, getTicketInfo and updateTicket, are used to have the listener make a cURL connection over to Github and send the request to a REST-like service on the remote side.

If you haven't heard about the Charter Tickets available for this year's TekX conference you only have a little bit of time to pick one up yourself - until January 6th! If you want to find out a bit more about why these special tickets were offered, check out this new post to Marco Tabini's blog (of php|architect) with some of their thoughts.

It posĀ­siĀ­ble to purĀ­chase a full - exĀ­peĀ­riĀ­ence TEKĀ·X tickĀ­et'"valid for both the main conĀ­ferĀ­ence and tuĀ­toĀ­riĀ­al day - for $650. The catch (if you want to call it that) is that the speĀ­cial is only valid until we anĀ­nounce the schedĀ­ule. [...] The reaĀ­sonĀ­ing beĀ­hing the CharĀ­ter ProĀ­gram is very simĀ­ple: we recĀ­ogĀ­nize that there is a core of atĀ­tenĀ­dees for whom our conĀ­ferĀ­ences have beĀ­come an opĀ­porĀ­tuĀ­niĀ­ty to meet up with their peers and learn what's hapĀ­penĀ­ing in the PHP world.

This Charter Program was created just for those people, the ones that are there regardless of what the conference itself has to offer but are confident that they'll be in for a good even no matter what. For them it's not just about the sessions, it's about the people they'll meet and friends they'll see again.

The Zend Developer Zone has an update about the upcoming ZendCon conference coming in just two weeks.

ZendCon is now only two weeks away, and we've been hard at work in preparing for it. We've got a number of things in the works that we hope you are going to really enjoy!

Updates include new developments on the Unconference sesions, the creation of two new types of tickets - a First Day pass for $299 and a pass for just the UnCon/Expo Hall and opening Keynote. More information can be found on the registration website. There have also been two new keynote speakers added to the schedule - Andi Gutmans speaking on "PHP at the Heart of Mainstream IT" and Scott Baker's talk "A Series of Fortunate Events".

In part two of his look at telecommuting (here's part one) Chris Hartjes talks about accountability and how you can show your managers your progress in your development.

Telecommuting is not for misanthropes who dream of long stretches of uninterrupted work. You *will* be asked to prove that you're working, not sitting on the couch playing video games when you're supposed to be debugging that new Ajax-powered user interface. Just pushing your code into production isn't enough.

He recommends a ticketing system the managers could check in on whenever they'd want an update (as well as keeping it open to the customers so they can see the progress of their projects too).

As is mentioned on the ServerGrove blog (here) the Symfony project is holding a contest to get help from the community and offer monthly prizes.

Pascal Borreli came up with a great idea to involve the symfony developer community and advance the development of the framework. The event is called one-day-one-ticket and it will give monthly prizes to the developer that fixes the most bugs in symfony. While it is still a good idea to contribute to the community anyway and get your merit badges, a little extra incentive always helps.

This post on the Symfony blog gets more into the details of the contest. To enter you have to sign up and close one ticket a day for the month. You'll then be entered to win one of that month's prizes including copies of books, a "surprise gift" or a contribution from ServerGrove.

If you're planning on attending the CodeWorks conference in your area (or where ever the closest stop might be), you might want to check out this extra incentive to register for your pass early - the possibility that your ticket could be free!

We're so excited that the schedule for CodeWorks 09 is finally online that we have decided to come up with a great promotion: if you sign up for CW09 before July 6th, your ticket could be free-or you could win a "Master Subscription" to all of php|architect's books and magazines! Read on for more info.

If you register before July 6th (just five days away!) you'll be entered into the contest to win one of several prizes, the top being a full refund on your ticket and a free pass to your CodeWorks city of choice. Other prizes include a "master" subscription to php|architect magazine and "master access" to all of their books.

Of course, there's some rules that go along with the giveaway, so be sure to look them over before you enter.

For those wanting to attend this year's Dutch PHP Confernece (in Amsterdam), you'll be happt to know that tickets are now on sale!

Ibuildings is proud to organize the third Dutch PHP Conference on June 12 and 13. Plus a pre-conference tutorial day on June 11. Both programs will be completely in English so the only Dutch thing about it is the location. Keywords for these days: Know-how, Technology, Best Practices, Networking, Tips & Tricks.

The cost per ticket ranges from 500 Euro for a full access pass to conference-only tickets for 250 Euro. You can also get a tutorial-only pass if you'd only like to get in on those sessions (for 295 Euro). The conference happens June 11th through 13th so be sure to get your tickets quickly and reserve your spot now!

You can find more information on the Ibuildings blog.

The PHP Unconference group (putting on the meetup in Hamburg, Germany in September) has announced that tickets are now officially on sale for the event.

The PHP User Group Hamburg and the Department of Computer Science, University Hamburg, Germany are delighted to invite you to the third PHP Unconference. The main focus of the unconference is PHP and related web technologies. There is no official agenda; anyone can suggest a session. The PHP Unconference 2009 will take place on September 12, 2009 and September 13, 2009 at the Geomatikum, Hamburg University. See the location on Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/bu5mom.

The tickets cost 25 Euro for both days (Sept 12th & 13th), but students of the Hamburg University can get in for free. You can find out more about the event on the unconference's site and you can reserve your spot now by purchasing your ticket.