10th October 2009 sees the second annual PHP Conference to be held in Manchester, PHP North West. As one of the organisers I've been watching the arrangements come together with growing excitement: this year we have a new venue, a schedule literally packed with excellent sessions, plenty of social activity, and some community-driven input on Sunday morning - I'll even be speaking myself this year. Some of the topics at this year's conference include various PHP frameworks, performance, Drupal, project management, and much more.

The conference is a regional event aimed at PHP developers of all levels as well as their managers, coming together and exchanging ideas around developing PHP within teams today. Our attendees range from those living locally or making a daytrip of it right across to speakers and attendees flying in from mainland Europe. We're very grateful to all our sponsors, they've stepped up to get involved even in the difficult economic climate and without them this entirely volunteer-organised conference simply couldn't happen.

Over the last month I've been to quite a few of the GeekUp events which are local to me in Leeds, UK. These are where a selection of technologically-minded people get together, usually have a few small presentations, and then mostly chat and drink beer all night. I've been to these events as both a visitor and a speaker, and met lots of people and learned a lot.

The month started with a visit to the Leeds Geekup in April, where I gave a talk entitled "Enterprise Web Development" - the slides are available on slideshare.