This is coverage of Day 2 of ZendCon07. Previous days coverage are here - Day 0 Tutorials, Day 1 Part 1, Day 1 Part 2 - and my presentation given on Day 1 is available here. This post will likely be updated with photos once I dive into the Flickr steam.

The opening keynote of the day was from Lee Brimelow from Adobe demo'ing Flex and some other nifty toys. He showed off a few live demos and live applications that are out there including Google Finance and Buzzword. But more than anything, he focused on using Flex on the frontend to wrap a PHP backend and how they can play nicely together. Just a few years ago, the message seemed to be that Flash was The Way and we ended up with an entire generation of entirely Flash websites... and their creators went into hiding ala the humans in Terminator. Obviously since Adobe's purchase of Macromedia, something fundamental changed in their message and it's good to hear a more pragmatic approach.

In the various Open Source communities in which I participate, Microsoft is always taken as this large looming figure lurking and waiting. Or its portrayed as this enemy at the gates - not pun intended - waiting to get in and destroy us all. As Tom Adelstein pointed out over the weekend:

Indulge if you will in recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images experienced as intrusive and distressing. The obsession with Microsoft in Open Software communities is excessive and unreasonable and a product of the mind. My only hope is that such thoughts, impulses, and, or images can be expunged by logic or reasoning, which is contrary to the notions in the psychiatric community.

[snip]

Redmond? So what. Let them do what they do. We need to do something other than write about all their transgressions - real or imagined.

To say this another way:

Get over yourself. We have enough problems of our own without imaging more.