Quick Thoughts from Cascadia PHP

Having just recently returned from Cascadia PHP, where I had the pleasure to be presenting on Docker and how to containerize your development environment, I wanted to take a moment and jot down some thoughts about the nature of the PHP Community and supporting your local conferences.

This was a smaller conference than I'd been to so far, but with that decreased size came an increased level of connectedness between all of the attendees, which really enhanced the sense of community. I had the pleasure of meeting many people from the local area and learning their stories, as well as many folks who flew in from around the country.  I was strongly reminded of what it was like to be just embarking on your development career - it's been a long time since I've worn those shoes - stick with it and keep pushing yourself. =)

As with every conference that I attend, I walked away with a list of "research homework" to do, which is wonderful - if we're not learning, we're not growing.

A couple of those homework/research points:

• Using middleware when converting legacy applications
• The PHP-FIG group - getting involved

For anyone curious, the slides to my presentation can be found on SlideShare.

If you happened to be at the conference, please send in your feedback via Joind.in - your constructive feedback is always valuable and appreciated!

If you haven't been to a conference (or just haven't been to one in a while), you really are missing out on a wonderful and supportive community of people. Everyone has something to teach someone else and something they can learn from someone else.  (This is a reminder to myself for when I get so bogged down with work that I wonder if I really have time to go to this event or write that blog ... yes -- make the time.)