Today begins my coverage of ZendCon 2007. This is the first entry and covers Day 0... the Tutorials.

Today started with a $4 muffin. As the first day of festivities but not yet the conference, breakfast was not available. Hence, the muffin and a flock of slightly annoyed geeks.

When I checked in at the registration desk, I got one of the best surprises so far. Last year Zend put together a deck of cards featuring prominent PHP'ers. This year they got even more creative went with trading cards featuring the speakers and other prominent PHP'ers. I happen to be one of them... BarCampDC was the first time seeing CaseySoftware, LLC on shirt, this is the first time seeing myself on a card. Sounds odd but kind of fun. I'll attach the card once they're available online.

The tutorials were an extended format. Two three hour sessions with a deep focus on a single topic. There was the standard Zend Certified Engineer Crash Course by Chrisitan Wenz, an Extending PHP session given by Wez Furlong and Sara Goleman, a Security Crash Course by John Coggeshall, and finally PHP Development Best Practices by Matthew Weier O'Phinney, Mike Naberezny, and Sebastian Bergman. I attend that last one last year, so I opted for the Security Crash Course.