Why is SymfonyCon important in PHP world?
SymfonyCon 2018 is one of the biggest PHP events every year and it brings great and innovative announcements for the upcoming period in PHP world. This year’s event was amazing and the main room was an actual garage! It may sound awful, but the organizers really made it look quite fantastic as you can see in the photo below.
Lisbon
The conference was held in Mariott Hotel, Lisbon. As a newcomer I witnessed attendance of over 500 people and during that time I started realizing how important SymfonyCon is in PHP world. It lasted for two days during which people could see 26 presentations spread over three tracks (based on their skill level).
The conference started with a keynote by Fabien Potencier, the creator of Symfony. After a warm welcome speech I had the opportunity to listen to presentations which included topics like “using the workflow component for e-commerce”, “symfony messenger component”, “integrate vue.js components in a symfony app” and a lot more. The two speakers that made the biggest impression on me were Kévin Dunglas and Tobias Nyholm. Both speakers made some very interesting points, but the reason why they stood out the most is because they made it very easy to understand what they were talking about with the usage of humor.
As in every programming conference, it is not only about listening and learning, it is also about meeting new people, building new friendships and gaining new knowledge.
The time after the conference
We agreed to stay for two more days in Lisbon and it was the best decision we could have made. Why? Well, in two days we managed to walk around three cities, visit a lot of historical and cultural landmarks and hang out with our friends from other companies like Netgen and Sylius.
One of the things we were surprised by the most was the temperature, which averaged at around 20°C. Over the two extra days we walked for 35 kilometers on foot and did 75 kilometers of road travel. Besides visiting Lisboa, St.George’s Castle, Belem Tower, Jeronimo’s Monastery, Monument to the Discoveries and eating pastéis de belém we used our last day to travel and see a little bit more of what the sorrounding places have to offer. We decided to visit Cascais and Sintra and they made bigger impressions on me than Lisbon itself. Our tour guide took us all over the Sintra and showed us beautiful monuments, castles and views. Pena Palace and Cabo de Roca were my favorites and left me speechless.
In conclusion,
this was my first SymfonyCon. I had the greatest of times and am really happy that I met a lot of new people, hung out with my collegues from our company and besides the programming we had a unique opportunity to visit different places around Lisbon.
SymfonyCon is one of the most important events for Locastic, since we’ve been working with Symfony since it’s release. That’s why it’s crucial for us to follow all the latest trends in the industry. If you’d like to hear what we learned at SymfonyCon, or you need some help with your Symfony project — let us know at info@locastic.com.
Since SymfonyCon 2019 is announced and it is in another amazing city — Amsterdam, I hope I will not miss it!
