With just two weeks to go, the DPC is really getting close! The venues are expecting us, all flights and hotels for the speakers have been booked, the necessary equipment has been arranged and the booklets have been printed. Everything is ready to go, in order to make DPC12 an even more awesome conference than the previous editions!

This is definitely the time to order your tickets if you haven’t already done so! Soon the option to pay by invoice will be disabled and the only way to pay then will be by credit card. If you are planning to pay by invoice, now is about the last chance you will get. The tutorial “Creating Re-usable Modules for Zend Framework 2” has almost sold out, so if you were planning to visit Matthew’s tutorial there’s even more reason to hurry up!

If you are attending tutorial day, please take a moment and look at the additional information we added to the tutorial page, telling you if you should bring or install anything for the tutorial(s) you bought tickets for. By doing this you can help making the start of the tutorial to be as smooth as possible, making it more fun for yourself and your fellow attendees. However, if you aren’t able to meet all the demands before the tutorial starts you are of course still very welcome to join.

It’s time to go and find your favourite PHP shirt, get your laptop ready for tutorial day and get your suitcase out of the attic to start packing. And for crying out loud, if you still haven’t ordered your ticket go and do it NOW!

We’re happy to announce that this year’s edition of DPC will have an unconference track, just like last year. The unconference track is a separate track running alongside the main tracks where you, as an attendee of the conference, could be a speaker! It’s an ideal opportunity to share your knowledge, present your projects and to get some real-life experience of speaking. How does it work? Just walk up to the unconference host during the conference days, tell him what you want to talk about, and he’ll put you on the schedule!

This year the unconference will be hosted by John Le Drew. John has been working in web development for 12 years and is currently helping start-ups in London to get their technical strategy right, while also trying (when time allows) to kick his own start up, geeks.io, into action.

The uncon sessions are typically just as long as the regular talks: 45 minutes. However, due to  last year’s success the so-called “lightning talks” will be back as well. These are shorter sessions (of 15 minutes), which are ideal to just spark a little discussion, present an open source project or talk about a solution to a problem you’ve found. Worried that 15 minutes might still be too long? This year we will take “short and concise” to a whole new level, as there are rumours about a special session with 10 quickly succeeding 3-minute presentations!
 

To keep all of you up-to-date on the schedule during the conference, we will post updates on the @dpc_uncon twitter account and keep the schedule up to date on joind.in.

Last year the presentation by Mike van Riel was rated best, which meant he received a coveted slot in this year’s conference schedule. This time we’re doing exactly the same, so if your presentation is rated best you will receive a guaranteed slot on the DPC13 conference schedule!

The uncon is always a lot of fun to attend, both as a speaker and as an attendee – so make sure to drop by once or twice during the conference days on Friday and Saturday!

We wanted to remind you that the early bird period for the Dutch PHP Conference is almost over. You will of course still be able to register for the event at a later date, but please note that prices will go up soon, as the 15% early bird discount will no longer apply. Also, if you are planning to attend one of the tutorials on tutorial day there is even more reason to hurry, the tutorials have a limited number of seats and will probably sell out well before the event. Especially now ticket sales are going faster than ever!

We’ve got experts from all over the world offering solutions for problems that PHP developers have to deal with on a daily basis. For example: Douglas Crockford, Rasmus Lerdorf and Joe Stump will do the keynote presentations, and the schedule includes sessions from people like Lorna Jane Mitchell, Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Chris Cornutt, Davey Shafik, Elizabeth M. Smith, Helgi Þorbjörnsson, David Zülke and many more. There are lots of interesting hard-core PHP sessions and tutorials to attend. Amongst others, topics include security, performance, scalability, software design, deployment and API’s.

So there’s no reason to hesitate any longer. Book now to ensure your first choice of tutorial and to take advantage of the early bird ticket prices!

Until now the schedule still had one annoying "to be announced" slot on it that needed to be filled: the Saturday afternoon closing keynote! We spent quite some time looking for a suitable, experienced speaker who could complement the schedule – and someone who wouldn't simply perish next to the big names of the other keynote speakers, being Rasmus Lerdorf and Douglas Crockford.

And then we found him! We’re proud to announce that nobody less than Joe Stump will do this year's closing keynote! This former lead architect at Digg has advised dozens of companies and has co-founded three venture-backed startups. Joe has tons of experience as a technical leader, entrepreneur and as a conference speaker. Make sure you don't miss this session, because if anyone can deliver a grand finale and send us all home inspired, Joe is definitely the man for the job!

Now all the speakers are announced and all the blanks in the schedule are filled in there’s no reason to wait any longer. Check out the schedule, ask your boss for some budget and order your tickets quickly - as the early birds discount will only last for a couple more weeks!

Just like in previous years, we would like to invite all delegates to join us at the conference social. This year’s social will be held on Friday 8th June at ‘The Tara’, which is in the very centre of Amsterdam. This event gives you the opportunity to meet with some of the most interesting and talented people from the PHP community, such as speakers, sponsors and of course other attendees. To give you even more reason to attend: there will also be free drinks for everyone! (Beer/wine/soft drinks)

The conference social is made possible thanks to the generous support from our sponsor Engine Yard. A little word from Engine Yard’s Elizabeth Naramore as to why Engine Yard decided to sponsor this event:

“Engine Yard is thrilled to be a part of DPC this year. As one of the most prominent PHP conferences in Europe, we like the diverse topics and the great atmosphere that DPC provides. We are proud to be sponsoring the social event specifically, because we love when talented people from all over the globe are brought together in a relaxed, fun atmosphere. We've found that's where community bonds strengthen, where interesting conversations happen, and where ideas are born, and we're happy to help make that happen at DPC.”

More information on the social event, links and pretty pictures can be found on the social page.

We are happy to announce that we have just published the schedule and registration is now open. Quickly, go and check out all the great content we have to offer this year! Once you’ve decided that you want to join us, you can go to the registration page to order your tickets. Please note that you will get a 15% early bird discount if you order your tickets before 15th April. Ticket prices were announced last week and can be found in this blogpost.

This year we have no less than six(!) parallel tracks on tutorial day, which means more choice than ever before! Those of you who visited our tutorial day last year will be happy to know that the tutorials have moved to larger rooms compared to previous years, so there will be enough place for everyone to sit at a table and do some actual hands-on work.

For tutorial day (Thursday 7th June) you will have to specify which tutorial(s) you want to attend beforehand, during the registration process. For the main conference days (Friday 8th and Saturday 9th June) you are free to decide which sessions you want to attend on the day itself.

We hope that you’re as excited about the schedule as we are, see you in Amsterdam!

In our previous blogposts we announced that we would publish the schedule on 15th February. It seems however that this date was a bit too optimistic, and that we need a bit more time to get everything in order. So hang in there, the schedule will be published next week! If you want to be first in the know, make sure you follow @dpcon on twitter.

Ticket sales will start next week as well, as soon as the schedule is up. The good news is that we decided not to take part in the economic crisis and the tickets will actually be slightly cheaper compared to last year!  If you order your tickets before April 15th you will receive an additional 15% ‘early bird’ discount:

Tutorial day only (Thursday 7th June)

• Regular price: € 350,-
• Early bird price: € 297,50 (15% off the regular price if you order before April 15th)

Conference days (Friday 8th and Saturday 9th June)

• Regular price: € 350,-
• Early bird price: € 297,50 (15% off the regular price if you order before April 15th)

Full conference (All three days)

• Regular price: € 630,-
• Early bird price: € 535,50 (15% off the regular price if you order before April 15th)

We appreciate your patience while we tie up the last loose ends, and we will let you know through the usual channels (this website, our twitter account @dpcon) when the schedule is up and registration is open.

The call for papers closed this morning. Many thanks to all the speakers who submitted a whopping total of 267 papers. A new record! As per tradition, we’ve made a little breakdown of the number of papers submitted per country:

So what’s next? We’re going to read every single one of them and try to create the best schedule ever! However, it is a huge task, so we will need about two weeks.  On February 15th we will publish the schedule on the website (at that point it might still contain some blanks) and ticket sales will start. Everybody who submitted a paper will be contacted before that date with information about whether or not their proposals got accepted.

“I missed it! Can I still submit?”
Unfortunately we won’t accept proposals anymore, but if the subject relates to mobile web development you can still submit to the Dutch Mobile Conference, as it’s cfp has been extended by two weeks!

Since we opened the Call for Papers we have already received more than 150 submissions, which is absolutely amazing! Thanks to all the speakers who submitted so eagerly!

We seem to have received papers on pretty much every subject imaginable. Topics like deployment, the cloud and PHP 5.4 seem to be very well covered. We’re very happy to receive such submissions, as we expect a lot of people to be really looking forward to learning more about these subjects.  For some reason, submissions on front-end related matters and noSQL-databases seem to be a bit scarce compared to previous years. Maybe developers finally gave up on doing front-end stuff? Was the noSQL revolution we thought to see nothing more than hype? Or are we drawing conclusions too quickly and you simply haven’t  submitted your papers yet?

In any case: we’ll be accepting submissions until Tuesday January 31st, which is next week. If you haven’t submitted anything yet please don’t hesitate to submit your talks using our Call for Papers form now!

We're back! And we are glad to announce that we’ll be organising another edition of the Dutch PHP Conference, which will be held in Amsterdam from 7th to 9th June 2012. Thursday 7th will be the tutorial day and June 8th and 9th will be the main conference days. Ticket sales will start on February 15th.

Dutch Mobile Conference
As you might have noticed, the DPC has got a sibling this year! Because web development is moving to mobile at an ever-increasing rate, we decided to host a conference dedicated to mobile web development in parallel to the Dutch PHP Conference. Want to attend both events? Don’t worry, because with your DPC ticket you can visit the tracks at the DMC as well.

For more information, please check out the DMC website at http://www.mobileconference.nl/

Call for papers is open!
Speakers, the call for papers is now open! We’re looking for high-quality, technical sessions from speakers who can cover advanced topics and keep our demanding audience inspired. Tutorials are 3 or 6 hours in length (note that 6 hours is our preference) and the standard conference sessions should be 45 minutes.

As always we’re excited about all kinds of different topics. Typically you could say that as long as it’s somehow related to PHP and you’re really excited about it, we want to hear it! It doesn’t matter who you are, this event is all about technology. DPC has an established reputation as the best place to expand a developer’s skill set and improve existing practice, and that remains our focus this year.

(Note that the DMC will have its own CfP - see http://www.mobileconference.nl/call-for-papers for more information)

The call for papers is open until January 31st. You can send in as many proposals as you like, so start submitting your talks! If you are accepted as a speaker we’ll pay your travel costs, put you up in a hotel and give you a pass to the conference so you can join us during the event.

We’re very excited to see what you can come up with, and we’re looking forward to reading all the different proposals.

Your hosts,
The Ibuildings DPC team