PHP Tek: A Homecoming by Ben Ramsey

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Ben Ramsey

Ben Ramsey is a coder, author, and speaker with 25+ years of web experience. He contributes to PHP core, maintains ramsey/uuid, and speaks at tech conferences worldwide.

he/him/his<br>ben@ramsey.dev<br>https://phpc.social/@ramsey<br>https://github.com/ramsey<br>https://people.php.net/ramsey<br>https://www.linkedin.com/in/benramsey/

PHP, karaoke, hot dogs, catching up with old friends, and why this conference always feels like coming home.

PHP Tek always feels like a homecoming. No matter how much time passes between conferences, or between the person I was the last time I attended and the one I am now, walking into that hotel and finding familiar faces feels like returning home to close friends and family. That feeling was especially pronounced in 2023, when the conference returned after a four-year hiatus imposed by the pandemic. This week in Rosemont, back at the Sheraton O’Hare, it was there again.

The conference ran May 19th through the 21st. It was three days of sessions, workshops, and the kind of hallway conversations that don’t appear on any schedule. I gave two talks: one on describing APIs with OpenAPI on Wednesday, and a beginner’s guide to OAuth and OpenID Connect on Thursday. Both went well, and I’m always glad for an audience willing to spend an hour in the weeds with me on less glamorous—but no less fascinating or important—parts of development.

A few of the talk highlights from the conference, for me, were:

Shane Rosenthal speaking about NativePHP (check out NativePHP—it’s really cool)

Sarah Peters’s “From Concert Hall to Code Review, Symphony to Software,” where she played violin interludes between sections of her talk

James Warmoth III’s “From Classroom Code to Production Code: Bridging the Gap Between School and the Software Industry”

One of the most memorable parts of PHP Tek is the game night, or after party. Game night is a tradition going back to the earliest PHP Tek conferences. You see, PHP Tek takes place in a hotel by the airport, and there’s little to do nearby. The surrounding area isn’t very walkable, and it takes about an hour to get into Chicago. This is a feature, not a bug. As a result, everyone sticks around to play games, get to know each other, and have fun.

One of my favorite game night traditions is karaoke. This tradition has been quietly accumulating across PHP conferences for twenty years. It started, as best I can recall, in a hotel bar at ZendCon in San Jose in 2006. After a pirate-themed after party, we found ourselves in the hotel bar, where they had a DJ leading karaoke. It was so memorable, they made it a part of the after party at ZendCon 2007. I remember doing karaoke after delivering a keynote at the PHP Experience in São Paulo in 2016, which was surreal (the karaoke, not the keynote). That same year we found a karaoke bar near the hotel at PHP Tek in St. Louis. Along the way, we’ve done karaoke at Lone Star PHP in Dallas, Southeast PHP in Nashville, Longhorn PHP in Austin, Cascadia PHP in Portland, among others. The conferences changed, the cities changed, and somehow karaoke kept appearing.

At PHP Tek, we’ve evolved beyond hunting for a karaoke venue. Since the conference returned in 2023, we’ve been using the sound system already set up in the ballroom during game night to run our own. It happened again on Wednesday, and I ended up leading a good stretch of it. Nobody assigns this role. It just falls to whoever’s willing to go first. (But really, it’s because I’m the most persistent at begging John to let me do it.)

Nate, Jackie, and Larry sing “What It Sounds Like” from KPop Demon Hunters at PHP Tek<br>Another highlight of PHP Tek is Catan Starfarers. This is the most unhinged version of Catan. I’ve never played, but watching is its own pleasure. Omni Adams GMs a game that’s not supposed to have a game master. The games go late. They’re ginormous. I don’t fully understand how anyone wins, and I suspect that’s part of the appeal. Rumor has it, there are folks who attend just to play Starfarers.

Kalen, Daniel, Scott, Nia, Omni, and John play Catan Starfarers at PHP Tek<br>A meaningful moment of the week, for me, was catching up with Elizabeth Barron. Elizabeth has been a fixture in the PHP community for many years, and we go way back; we organized PHP Appalachia together in 2006. We’d stayed loosely in touch over the years, but I don’t think we’d been in the same room since around 2016. She’s back in a significant way now, having joined the PHP Foundation as executive director. We talked mostly about family, life, and things unrelated to PHP or technology. I love that conferences like PHP Tek provide opportunities to catch up with people you haven’t seen in years without any particular agenda.

There were conversations with more of an agenda, of course. The hallway track at PHP Tek is where a lot of the real thinking happens, and this year, some of the recurring subjects were: context generators,...