Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

I’ve been meaning to blog about this sooner, but there’s no time like the present. Recently the first meeting of the PHPNW (PHP North-West) user group was held, at the 235 Casino in Manchester.

For a first meetup, the attendance was excellent – over 30 people from the local PHP and web development scene. There were some familiar faces, from GeekUp and other similar groups, but also plenty of new people who I had never met before. The conversations were interesting and we were all helped along by a free round of drinks and, later, free pizza courtesy of Jenny Dunphy and her employers (thanks Jenny!).

There was a great buzz and lots of energy around the group, in large part due to the excitement at the upcoming PHPNW08 conference. Final dates and venue details are to be confirmed (soon!), but there is a huge potential for a ground-breaking conference right here in the North West of England. The PHP development community has changed a lot in the last couple of years, becoming more professional in outlook and spreading into new and more interesting areas of development. The fact that there have been many interesting PHP conferences around the world proves this, and it’s about time that the vibrant NW web development sector put on its own show.

The main driver behind the idea of such a conference is Jeremy Coates, and he deserves huge credit for getting people together behind this idea and making it all happen. There’s still a long way to go, but he has certainly managed to pull a lot of talented people into the operation, giving it every chance of success.

From my point of view, I’m greatly looking forward to more opportunities to network with other people in the PHP and web development industry locally, and the chance to listen and speak to some of the leading figures in our industry at the conference. Adoption of PHP and similar technologies to tackle big IT and web projects is increasing all the time, and conferences like this are essential for promoting the practices and ideas that are needed to make this work, as well as the social network of companies, developers, entrepreneurs and managers whose collaborations are vital to the future of new business in the North West.