PHPBenelux Conference 2013: another great success

PHPBenelux is a name we are growing accustomed to. What began in 2009 as a small club of local PHP developers has now developed into a renowned international community. This is in part due to the yearly conference, which, this year, was again held in Antwerp. The aim of this event is to bring passionate people who share common interests together.

Combell actively supports the PHP community

The link between Combell and the PHPBenelux community is unique. Not only have we been a Gold sponsor for the event for years, but our evangelist Thijs Feryn is also one of the key members of PHPBenelux. This way, we can keep updated on the latest trends in the PHP community and collaborate closely with them. This can only be beneficial for all our hosting customers, because this knowledge allows us to improve our hosting products.

This year, next to our financial contribution, we also organised Friday evening’s bowling contest. In addition, we dispatched Romy, Bram and Stijn armed with a darts set and a foosball table, which provided much fun and stimulated friendly competitiveness between the participants. We organised a foosball contest in collaboration with our friends at King Foo. The winners were awarded with a Vivabox.

Captivating sessions by prominent speakers

The quality of the info sessions remains the reason why so many visitors (now more than 350) come back every year. Zend Framework 2, Symfony2, Composer, security, git, MongoDB, MySQL, REST, regular expressions, Silex and DevOps are just a few of the subjects broached this year.

In addition, many sessions were given by developers of the technology about which they gave a session. So, there is no better way to learn or to get in direct contact with some big names in the community. In fact, later on, they had a couple of drinks with all the participants.

Time enough to build contacts

The PHPBenelux conference is mainly about technique, but the social aspect is getting increasingly important. This is why, this year, the crew took great care of the organisation of the ‘socials’.

Not only did the event include a bowling contest (sponsored by Combell), but there were also enough drinks, Xbox-consoles with Kinect for interesting “battles” and even a mini-golf. All this provided a unique atmosphere that all participants appreciated very much. This year, more than 250 people stayed until the wee hours, which allowed them to have meaningful discussions and build new contacts, but also to see the return of 'planking'.