Combell goes Canada

Confoo took place in Montréal (Canada), between 9 and 11 March. Confoo is the greatest Web Techno Conference and is the ultimate platform for all sorts of web technologies. The focus lies mainly on PHP, databases, Python, Ruby & Java. Confoo built a solid reputation over the years and is known for hosting many European speakers.

The 2011 edition continued in the same vein. Thijs Feryn, our technology evangelist, presented 2 talks:
- CLI, the other SAPI: a presentation on the use of PHP using the command line
- Varnish in action: a presentation on Varnish, the famous reverse caching proxy

Montréal is the largest city of the province of Quebec, where people still mostly speak French. The city can be described as a mix between the French-European charm of Paris and the strictness and the size of New York. The Hilton Bonaventure hotel, where the event took place, is located in the heart of the city. The very tall Hilton building is surrounded by the buildings of downtown and offers, besides rooms, also a first-rate conference infrastructure. The rich programme, including more than 100 speakers, was nicely spread over 8 parallel tracks and offered a great diversity of subjects.

Many internationally renowned speakers were present at the conference. Besides the core contributors of PHP and other technologies, there were also representatives of Mozilla, Microsoft, Oracle, Disney and the New York Times (among others).

During the day, the focus lied mainly on technology, while the evening programme was essentially based on culture and Montréal’s culinary habits. The event was a huge success, was completely sold-out and is still one of the leading developer conferences in North America.