How UTTERLY wrong I was about expecting the worst, FrOSCon was one of the most fun and well organized conferences I've ever had the pleasure of going to, I know I said something similar about php|tek at my own personal blog but FrOSCon is a very different type of conference, so open and just awesome to see all those none PHP people and being able to talk to them about whatever you wanted.

A lot of open source project had booths there, ranging from operating systems to databases over to office solutions and more, additionally there were some companies that were with booths doing some really neat tricks with things like OpenMoko and other devices that you'd usually never think about doing - So walking around and seeing all these projects there was truly amazing for me - even being able to approach big names that come there and just chat with them as a peer.

The PHP user groups in Germany have been helping FrOSCon a lot through the last couple of conferences and finally we got a whole track for just PHP and man o man it was filled with good talks left and right - ranging from myself to Derick Rethans, Sebastian Bergmann, Johannes Schlueter, Rasmus Lerdorf, Harmut H and more really good speakers. Those handling the PHP sub conference did a really good job, thanks Toby and Kore! and of course those I don't know by name

In conclusion this was a really good conference, the talks were high quality, great people, well organized, the conference food was just mind blowing, best conference food I've ever had

I feel like I must inject this point here, if you go to FrOSCon, give your self a day or two before / after the conf to look at the area around it, I went to a Croatian restaurant with couple of the conference attendees in a lovely part of Siegburg and apparently there's a brewery at the abbey that is worth taking a look at but I didn't have time, so all in all a vibrant area around the conference in my opinion.

I've added this conference to my yearly todo list since I believe it will only grow and get better with every year, kinda like a good whiskey and I think this is a conference everyone should attend at least once, developers and managers a like since it gives such a good view into the open source world; the entrance fee this year was a mere 5 euro and there are cheap hotels all around the area.

I've been trying to elude to write about my talk but it went well, given I didn't have much preparation time. The slides look a bit weird but I do believe they get the point across and overall people seemed to like it.

My slides can be found on slideshare and a video of me speaking will follow sometime later when the media guys at FrOSCon have processed it all.