For those that weren't able to make it, Sebastian Bergmann has posted a short summary of what went on at the Dutch PHP usergroup's TestFest 2008 event.

I arrived shortly after noon, just in time for the start of the test fest at 12:30. After a short introduction to PHPT, we started writing tests for the Reflection API. We managed to write 37 tests with 10 people in 4 hours.

You can find out more about the user group on their website including meeting times, locations and links to other great PHP resources.

Now that we're in to May, there's only one thing on a PHPer's mind (well some of them out there) - testing! This month several groups all around the world have set times for their own TestFests to dedicated time to writing up tests for PHP.

The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. [...] All it takes is someone to organize a UG to spearhead the event and to get others involved in writing phpt tests.

Several groups have set up their times (here's the list) including teh Atlanta PHP group's happening today and the Cologne/Bonn user group's happening tomorrow. If you want to get in on the action and haven't found a group, check out the list and see if there's one nearby and join up before the event starts!

Sebastian Bergmann has posted a checklist as a reminder of things to bring with you to your local event.

Mike Lively has made the announcement that the Las Vegas area finally has its own user group:

I am pleased to announce that Las Vegas finally has a PHP User Group and our first meeting is...tomorrow. I am pretty excited as I know there is a fairly decent size PHP programmer community in LV, it just hasn't been organized yet.

Their meeting is later today (April 11th) at 4pm at PT's Pub east of I15 and south of 215. It's an "anything goes" sort of even so expect to come, socialize and meet up with lots of great developers from the area.

On the PHP.net website, the official announcement for TestFest 2008 has been posted:

The PHP-QA team would like to announce the TestFest for the month of May 2008. The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. These UGs can meet physically or come together virtually. The point however is that people network to learn together.

The event is not only a teamwork/friendship building effort but will also help out the PHP.net mentors in a serious way - testing has largely been their responsibility and having a wealth of user-submitted tests to help out cuts their workload dramatically.

You can find out how to get you and your local PHP user group involved, head over to the TestFest homepage.

Resulting from a conversation among developers at this year's PHP Quebec 2008 conference, a new event has been created to help test PHP against as many different configurations as it can be - TestFest.

The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event local UG are invited to join the TestFest. All it takes is a local organizer to spear head the event and to get others involved in writing phpt tests. The submissions will then be reviewed by members of php.net before getting included in the official test suite.

The even will be announced sometime in March and its hope is to get as many people in the community involved to improve the language. There'll also be a raffle to give away 10 of the stuffed elePHPants as well as, for the ones who are "test worthy" and seem able to write up good tests on their own - commit CVS access to php.net as well as an official php.net account.

For more details on the event, check out this page on the (new) PHP.net wiki.

Jakob Westhoff has posted about a birthday one of the PHP user groups is celebrating - the PHP Usergroup Dortmund:

I'm writing this blog article from the HiccUp Dortmund, where our birthday meeting takes place. [...] Nearly all our oldies are present today to commemorate this anniversary.

You can get more information on the group and the wheres and whens of their next meetup over on the user group's page (including links to current information about several of the group's members).

Matthew Weir O'Phinney has a reminder for anyone in the Burlington, VT area tonight - there's a meeting of the Burlington PHP user group tonight at 5:30pm.

Bradley Holt will be giving a presentation on developing a web application using Zend Framework. Bradley Holt is founder and web developer for Found Line, a local design and development studio which has used Zend Framework in several recent projects.

You can get more information about the meetup from this event page on their Google Groups site (happening at the Brown & Jenkins Coffee Roasters).

Patrick Reilly has posted about a new group that's being formed in the PHP world - a PHP Evangelism Team designed to help promote the language.

The goal of the PHP Evangelism Team is to bring together the right people, resources and experience from across the PHP Community to provide developers with the process guidance and best practices needed to create new opportunities for the web.

They're also looking to help support local user groups and aid in any PHP-related event they can. You can subscribe to their mailing list to get more information as the group develops. Check out the post for the address to join the list.