Well, ZendCon has officially been done for a week... so what is there left to say that Ed Finkler, Travis Swicegood, Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson, Ivo Jansch, Michelangelo van Dam, Akeem Philbert, Anna Filina, Jason Austin, and Bradley Holt haven't said?

Well honestly, not much... so I'm going to do some quick hits and move on.

The Good

It's been two months since BarCampRDU, but I figured I owed them a review.  After all, the event was... well, I'll save that for the end.

First off, I ended up attending almost by accident. I caught a Tweet about the event and realized it was on NC State University's campus where Garrison Locke and Jason Austin work.  So - as a joke - I mention that I should go.  Three seconds later, Shaun Farrell speaks up and offers to drive while Jason offers us real bedrooms.  The rest was just gas money and details.

Around this time every year, something happens within the PHP community.  We come out of the lazy days of summer with focus and excitement.  It's due to a number of things - like kids going back to school - but  one of the biggest on the calendar is ZendCon.

While php|tek has a definite community or "friends getting together" vibe to it, ZendCon is definitely corporate.  It's reflected in the attitude, the clothing (lots of khakis and polos), and the formal exhibit hall, etc.  There are still numerous friends getting together, but what happens when you spice things up a bit?

Well, I have good news and bad news.

The Good News: php|tek 2009 will have an Unconference!

The Bad News: I'm in charge.

(cue mad scientist laughter)

Let's be clear right off the bat:  All [name]Camps (Bar or otherwise) are unconferences but not all unconferences are [name]Camps.  The distinction - and this seems to be widely accepted - is that [name]Camp sessions should be selected day of and everyone needs to participate in some manner. Uncons can have the above but don't really have to... which is how it works at these Uncons which are attached to conferences.

Therefore, here's the (estmated) format for this con/uncon combination:

• Normal sessions start at the beginning of the day and the three tracks run until about 4 or 5pm;
• At that point, we take over and get full access to the rooms, projectors, network, and anything else not nailed down;
• We're slated to have three sessions in each room each evening, giving us a total of 18 sessions.

So here's your mission: