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!

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!

Tobias Schlitt has posted about the eZ Components book on his blog today - including how you can win a copy of your very own!

As you can see [below], we already got some examples and hope that everybody who ordered in advance got their examples by now, too. If you don't, stay tuned they should arrive soonish. We are both absolutely amazed by the printing quality and the overall impression of the book.

To win your own copy of the book (German) head over to this quiz page on the DynamicWebPages.de website and answer three simple questions.

The Zend Developer Zone (and Zend) are running a new contest where you could win yourself a free copy of their popular Zend Studio IDE.

It's a very poorly kept secret that Zend is working on the next generation of Zend Studio. They must be getting down to the 'fit and finish' pieces of the project because my buddy Yossi wrote me and asked me to enlist the help of the PHP community at large. So here's his request. The Zend Studio team needs your help. They are looking for a code snippet to showcase the syntax highlighting and debugging capabilities of Zend Studio.

They're looking for certain types of code snippets and a list of the criteria are included in the ZDZ post. The deadline's at at midnight (Pacific) on July the 26th, so get those snippets together and get them sent off for your chance to win!

On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new post that has the info on how you could get your hands on a free copy of Zend's Studio software (a $300 USD value).

My good friend Avigail was kind enough to cough up some copies of Zend Studio and even a license for Zend Guard. [...] We've got a quiz (No, not a survey, a quiz!) to test your mad Zend Studio skillz. If you don't have said skillz, I'd suggest downloading the Free 30 Day Trial of Zend Studio and develop them.

Once you are a Studio-Fu master, take the quiz by clicking on this link.

First prize is a Zend Studio perpetual license + Zend Guard annual license, second prize (3 winners) are licenses for Zend Studio Professional, and third prize winners (200 winners) get a 50% off coupon for a purchase of Zend Studio.

Previously, it was mentioned that Zend had recieved a nomination by Red Herring towards an award sponsored by the Israel Venture Association to be the honored Israeli Start-Up. Well, according to this new post on Zeev Suraski's blog today, they've won the award.

Yesterday, Zend won Israel Venture Association (IVA) and Red Herring's Best Software Startup award for the year 2006. Those of you who know the Israeli hitech landscape can understand what an amazing feat this is; For those who don't, Zend (and two other startups in other hitech areas) won out of a list of 400 nominees, which in turn are only a small fraction of the startups in the country. Israel has the highest concentration of startups in the world, second only to the Silicon Valley. So, the fact Zend won is pretty amazing and a great honor for all of the team.

Zeev shares his own thoughts on the occasion, noting that he believes it's really the testament of PHP's success, it's growth, and powerful features that pushed Zend over the top to win.

Many congratulations to all of those at Zend!