PHP Summer Camp: Wish you were here

There is no better way to end August than with the always amazing PHP Summer Camp!

This was year two for Saša, Leanna and I in lovely Rovinj, Croatia: a coastal town full of fresh fish, olive oil, warm Adriatic water and a mix of Croatian and Italian culture! And for 4 days, we added a bit of our own "PHP" culture.

I love this conference for two big reasons. The first is obvious: after a long day of learning, you can retire to the hotel terrace, swim in the Adriatic or enjoy freshly-caught fish anywhere in the old town. Where else can you go swimming with David Buchmann (@dbu) and Bernhard Schussek (@webmozart) while talking about Symfony internals? And what other conference organizes a 3-day triathlon  where you can run/bike/swim with 30 other developers each morning?

The second reason is that there are *no talks*. Instead, the entire conference consists of 3 hour, hands-on workshops. True (i.e. with talks) conferences are wonderful, but the Summer Camp has built a niche for being entirely practical. Many speakers still include some slides, but largely, you're programming the entire time: learning new patterns and tools by actually doing. There's no replacement for true, actual practice.

The Workshops

Saša and I had the opportunity to give two workshops: one about coding through Doctrine and another aimed at mastering mid-advanced object-oriented concepts. We had a packed room for both, great questions and (I think) didn't lose anybody! The crowd *did* have more Doctrine experience than we expected, which left us wishing we had challenged everyone a bit more :).

Coordinating 20 workshops and 100+ attendee computers is a huge challenge: if there's too much setup, the workshop is a bust. Before the conference, a (Vagrant) VM was sent to all of the attendees, with all the workshop code pre-loaded. In theory, this should greatly reduce the setup time. This year's VM hit some bumps with Windows, long setup times and problems getting Apache setup. That was unfortunate, and as a speaker, I know that a big part of the cause was due to other speakers setting up their workshops too late. That made it difficult to perfect the VM before it was shipped out. Still, creating a central VM is the right move for this type of conference, and any quirks this year will be ironed out for next year. Like all development, complex tasks are done in iterations.

Extras

Extras is actually a section on the SummerCamp website, because each day comes with something special: wine tasting, the triathlon, dinner at a Mexican restaurant, a full-day boat trip (seriously) and: the Celebrity Debate. This put Bernhard and I up against each other for a (only half-serious) debate on massively important topics like: XML vs. YAML and Coffee vs. Tea. Leanna was our emcee and the crowd was rewarded with some local treats for jumping into the debate with (heckling) us.

Like last year, this was a special, memorable conference that we couldn't miss. For hands-on learning with a perfect backdrop at the end of summer, nothing can top it. Thanks to the organizers Netgen (especially Ivo and Maja) for having us - and I can't wait to come back next year