I was happy to be a part of php[tek] again this year. I presented a tutorial, "Managing Dependencies with Composer", and I was a part of the "Open-source Summit" on Wednesday night.

The tutorial went very well. There was a relatively small number of people who attended it but I think everyone got something out of it. I opted to rely on the conference wi-fi this time around and that seemed to work ok. It was a risk, but I hadn't had a lot of luck with my internal network + Toran configuration the last time I gave this tutorial.

I sorta became a ghost just after my tutorial. After a week and a half of non-stop traveling and conferencing, I finally hit a wall. I started to get a sore throat and some sinus issues just after my tutorial and I spent most of the next few days sleeping it off.

Wednesday night I joined a bunch of other project leads and representatives to talk about open-source software and what it takes to get involved and how to navigate the politics you might find.

I've found I don't do well in these types of environments. Especially when there are other more aggressive people in play I tend to just blend into the background. I had the same feeling about the recent PHP Roundtable episode I was invited to. I also mentioned something about it from the Midwest PHP PHP Roundtable experience. I think I'd like to work on this in the future.

The main contribution I brought to the discussion was my story about how I tried to contribute to Symfony, how my ideas were rejected outright, and how I basically wrote off the Symfony community. Well, for at least for six months. I eventually came to my senses and realizing it was how I tried to interact with the Symfony community that was the problem and not the Symfony community itself.

Bec was there so she got to see a bunch of people she knew and a bunch of people she has been meeting from the PHP community. She has started to be more involved with the #ossart project and so people are starting to recognize her work and chat with her on Twitter.

We had a bunch of #ossart with us so we wanted to give some away. I spent one of the "quiet sick days" in the room writing an app to help make it easier to operate Twitter raffles for #ossart. It was a neat project and my first end-to-end Laravel project so that was a first!

There were at least two podcast events during php[tek]. I missed the /dev/hell recording but Bec has been listening to Loosely Coupled (in between episodes of That Podcast) so she actually wanted to see a live recording, too.

It was a fun and interactive session. I was happy I was able to be there because PSR-7 was discussed and Sammy had actually bought a PSR-7 cake since it had been accepted just a day or so before. I also won the "developer shoutout" from Laracasts so I was there to hear about it in person.

Luke got to spend time with Liam again but he also got to meet Ramsey for the first time. We like to see other families going to these events as it makes the whole thing feel more personal and fun for Bec and Luke.

On that note, it was announced that there will be a php[cruise] (mostly guessing on the branding here based on past experience; I haven't seen if that is actually what it will be called, yet!) next year where they are hoping to get more family fun in the mix. Our family is certainly interested in that!

We also learned that php[tek] won't be in Chicago next year. It has always been in Chicago as long as I've known about it so this is quite a departure. It will be curious to see if and how php[tek] changes with the new location in St. Louis.

Finally, php[tek] closed with the traditional photo and cake for Liam's birthday.

The php[architect] team sure has its hands full. Between php[tek], php[world], and php[cruise], they are building a solid set of conferences here in the US. I'll be at php[world] again this year and can't wait to see how php[tek] plays out next year!