One of the best feature in PHP Scripting Language is its community, and without it nothing would exist as we can see it today.
Part of this community a lot of core developers, documentation editors, web application developers, hackers, Quality assurance team, tons of open source projects, PHP UG around the world, and many many other people contributing each one in its category, and even friends and family !
Users Group are an active element of the PHP ecosystem, and I believe that everyone should be involved to contribute and keep these UG active around the world.
While surfing php.net you will notice many UG Events, you will say that’s great, why are you shouting ! Unfortunately a lots of them are not active anymore, others disappeared many years ago…
I was checking last week for a website that is supposed to be the PHPUG home, a place where PHP user groups can connect and interact, it was called phpgroups.org. Unfortunately, as Chris pointed the project “might need a kick”.
Manuel Lemos pointed me to phpusergroups.com, which is “just the top PHP user groups listed in PHPClasses based on the number of users that stated they belong to a group.” PHPClasses.org remain the only reference for PHPUG so far.
Another initiative by Rafael Dohms and Guilherme Blanco, is a PHPUG page on Sharemymap website http://www.sharemymap.com/m/maps/php-user-groups
The PHP Community is You, and if you can’t find a UG around you, invite the few people you know and start even a small group. Do not wait until others find you, make sure you find them first. Make an online home and communicate that you exist, so others can also find you.
Exchange ideas with people in your place. People in different places don’t have necessarily the same needs and you should profit from each others to make the community active.
Maybe this year you will start only 3 developers, to find yourself become hundreds after one year, or even thousands ! And who knows maybe the second year you will start organizing your own local PHP Conference.
What do you say ? See you next year !?
Hi there,
My name is Michelangelo and I’m involved with a very successful user group in Europe called PHPBenelux. If you want to learn more about running a local PHP user group, try to see me at either phpNW10 or at ZendCon uncon sessions where I’ll be presenting my community talk with pointers, tips, successes and failures.
All slides will be available on slideshare after these conferences, so do check them out.
Community works !
Hi there,
My name is Michelangelo and I’m involved with a very successful user group in Europe called PHPBenelux. If you want to learn more about running a local PHP user group, try to see me at either phpNW10 or at ZendCon uncon sessions where I’ll be presenting my community talk with pointers, tips, successes and failures.
All slides will be available on slideshare after these conferences, so do check them out.
Community works !
Right, the problem of most user group directories is that many of them die and they do not delist the groups from the directories.
The PHPClasses user group directory goes a step further by verifying if the actual user group page still exists and still lists a user group.
It also tries to give priority to groups that actually contain more real users. That is to prevent giving visibility to fake user group pages.
The PHPUserGroups.com page lists the top most active user groups in the world but also contains links to top user group pages by country.
Right, the problem of most user group directories is that many of them die and they do not delist the groups from the directories.
The PHPClasses user group directory goes a step further by verifying if the actual user group page still exists and still lists a user group.
It also tries to give priority to groups that actually contain more real users. That is to prevent giving visibility to fake user group pages.
The PHPUserGroups.com page lists the top most active user groups in the world but also contains links to top user group pages by country.
We are running pretty successful LAPHP group here in Los Angeles.
So far the phpusergroups.org (maintained by PHPClasses) list appears to be the only one relatively well maintained but even that one contains a lot of dead groups. As Manuel pointed out they check if the page actually exists. But probably need to archive them after a while if their web page is gone.
There is also a list at PHP.net with the events calendar. It contains correct groups, but the events list is pretty off. mostly because it requires you to set up a standard schedule for your events (like every second Tuesday or so), but for the groups sometimes it is difficult to maintain the regular schedule.
We would be willing to get involved if someone would take an effort to create a well maintained catalog of user groups and events for PHP community.
We are running pretty successful LAPHP group here in Los Angeles.
So far the phpusergroups.org (maintained by PHPClasses) list appears to be the only one relatively well maintained but even that one contains a lot of dead groups. As Manuel pointed out they check if the page actually exists. But probably need to archive them after a while if their web page is gone.
There is also a list at PHP.net with the events calendar. It contains correct groups, but the events list is pretty off. mostly because it requires you to set up a standard schedule for your events (like every second Tuesday or so), but for the groups sometimes it is difficult to maintain the regular schedule.
We would be willing to get involved if someone would take an effort to create a well maintained catalog of user groups and events for PHP community.
I agree with you Oleg.Thanks.
I agree with you Oleg.Thanks.