This year, for the first time, I went to the yearly ZendCon conference in Santa Clara California. My plan was to absorb as much information as I could, and even participate in the uncon. But along the way, my plans got changed. I’m not going to talk about which sessions were most interesting, or which speaker annoyed me. Instead, I’m going to talk about how I experienced the whole ZendCon conference.

How I used to go to a conference

I started going to PHP conferences about one and a half year ago. My first conference was Dutch PHP Conference, DPC short. A colleague and me both proposed this conference to management, as a way to improve our skills and learn new architectural designs. Management took the bite, and sent us off with 4 people. As we had hoped, we did learn a lot. In fact, we had enough information to maul over for at least 8 months.

Being with people you’re familiar with is of great comfort when you’re in a rather larger crowd like the DPC attendees. You have people to fall back to, and you have a good time with your colleagues. When you go back home, you feel as if you’ve grown towards each other. This would be awesome, if we had a team-building weekend. But this was a conference, and team-building isn’t really a conference’s intention.

How I attended ZendCon

I was planning on going to ZendCon together with a (new) colleague. But due to circumstances my colleague had to return home upon landing in Washington. This left me all alone in unknown territory. I wasn’t worried about traveling alone, but rather about just being alone. Hence I decided I would have to go out and meet new people or this would be the worst experience ever. Going out and meeting new people isn’t something I usually do when I’m in company. But now was as good a time as any to start.

So the first morning there (one day before the conference kicked off), I got on the hotel’s wifi and started checking out the #zendcon hashtags on twitter. Just to see if people were gathering to meet up somewhere. And yes, about half an hour later I had my first appointment: breakfast with @nanderoo and @DASPRiD. As it turns out I had met @DASPRiD before, on DPC actually, so there was no problem to start a conversation.

After breakfast, we decided to hang out in the hotel lobby and see if other people wanted to meet up. By the end of the afternoon, a whole bunch of us were gathered in the lobby. Old friends meeting up again, new friends getting acquainted. The atmosphere was great and I was very happy to have met so many nice people.

During the conference days, I regularly met up with the people I met that first day. Exchanging experiences from the conference or just chatting away and having fun. From this point forward, getting to know new people became quite easy. Friends met new friends and gradually your network is expanding. It kind of baffled me how easy it was to just go sit at a table and start talking to people. Generally speaking, everyone was quite cool about talking to total strangers. This gave me the confidence I needed to just go out and meet these new people.

All this socializing never gave me a dull moment. There were always people around to have a chat with, have a drink with, discuss issues with, have fun with, go to the swimming pool with, go to In-N-Out Burger with, go to a Microsoft VIP Party with (thanks Josh for the invite!), go to Taco Bell with, visit the Apple Campus at One Infinite Loop with, have expensive steaks with at Mortons, discuss tv shows with, dream of Yellowstone-PHP-conference with, go to IHOP with, have a laugh with funny stories from a certain adult video streaming company in Charlotte, …

What will I remember from this experience?

I hope I’ll remember all the great people I’ve met, when I meet them again. Sessions and tutorials are what make a PHP conference a good learning experience. But the other people are what make a PHP conference an incredible experience. My only advice to other people is to just go out and talk to new faces. Use the social media to your advantage, and turn a conference into an experience you’ll never forget.