It all started in…. 2019, when I visited my first conference https://cdc.dev/, it was mainly focused on .NET, but, it was a blast! I met so many developers, nice people, topics were incredible, and, for me, I had the opportunity to chat with people from around the world, working for big companies, doing amazing projects.
Since then, I started looking for events and this is when I found Laracon US, me, being a Laravel Developer it was the greatest news that I can have gotten. Immediately I started investigating the venue, how to fly into the city and of course, what the city had to offer so I could do some tourism before and after the conference.
While I was following the event and getting ready to buy tickets and accommodations, a virtual content for a discount was set, and to my surprise, I was one of the lucky winners!
I couldn’t be happier!
Little did I know that we would be entering a pandemic and shortly after, Laracon would be canceled 🙁
Since that date, I had the desire to attend a conference, and after digging on the web for several months when everything was opening up again, I found PHP[TEK]! After looking at the speakers, the schedule and seeing that it was my beloved city Chicago, I couldn’t resist and bought that ticket immediately!
My first day, was kind of a challenge, I was staying 1 hour from the venue, so, I was always in a hurry to get into the conference.
Not knowing anyone, I didn’t know what to expect, but I was in luck!, everybody was super friendly, and open to talk and they had amazing stories to tell, from dev and things in life overall, I was even able to praise the chicago river tour to a few participants (not bad for me being a foreigner).
One of the things that caught me was that inside my conference swag there was a ElePHPant which for now on, I will call “Lary”, it was a complete surprise as I didn’t know of the existence of this mascot until I was given my bag at the conference, and I will confess, can’t wait to get more in upcoming conferences!
One positive thing that I would like to mention is that during the conference there was a real rush to trade ElePHPants, some special ones from the sponsors and others from past conferences, many people were in a HUNT, and that’s something that I want to be able to do in upcoming conferences.
You don’t trust me? Look at this, the HYPE was real!
[TEK] was amazing, not only because of the topics but because I had the opportunity to chat and see people who have contributed to the PHP Ecosystem, I’m talking about PHP Core developers, BIG libraries maintainers, and people who teach about PHP regularly, making the community and normal people get better and better every day.
It packed a good amount of good quality talks and tutorials all condensed during a 3-day schedule, as with all conferences and events there is some good and not so good content, but the good content outperformed the others big time!
I was even able to launch a few things that I learned in production while at the conference 👀
An activity that I really liked is that inside the SWAG bag, they included a puzzle, which (surprise) was incomplete, for you to get all the pieces you had to talk to the sponsors and each one had a missing piece.
By doing this I had the opportunity to meet all of them and learn about their offerings, it was very rewarding as few of them had services directly related to my current job, so, I was able to discuss how using their services could make some parts easier and better and learned some things that would help me to save costs and things to consider when developing new products.
The conference had 2 after parties which consisted of table games, an open bar, and snacks (light dinner) area. There everyone had the opportunity to meet each other, form teams, play, do some networking and overall, have fun! I even bought a game called Exploding kitten right after I got home, it was so much fun!
The saloon was full of people and you could just get to the game you preferred and/or get to play with the people you had already met at the talks earlier, I was very shy, so, this helped me to know many people.
After the conference, I was able to meet Nuno Maduro, from which I was able to chat a little bit about open sourcing, how to contribute, and how is he capable of doing so many things. And this conversation really helped a lot, as, I was able to make my first open source contribution, which I ever wanted and also develop a few packages which you can check here.
On the last day of the conference, and after being less shy, I was able to join a few people who were going to a Hotdog place, sort of a tradition of theirs, the place is Super Dawg, a Chicago-style hotdog, a really good one, but still, I would go with Portillo’s.
While there, we had many conversations ranging from baseball, brewing beer, collecting cards, we talked about the place, a hat tradition that they have, our cities, were I was able to introduce a little bit about my country.
For some reason, both Lyft and Uber decided to block my account while abroad, so I couldn’t hang out longer with the people I met the there, I decided to leave early, you know, to avoid being stranded in the border of Milwaukee at midnight.
Wrapping up, notes to my self and everyone else:
The experience was amazing, organizers did an wonderful job, met so many people and learned so many things, I got motivated to do at least on conference yearly, and maybe in the future, be part of one, maybe organizing, maybe giving a speech, who knows…
I was a little too shy and couldn’t get Twitter’s and/or LinkedIn’s to stay in touch with some of the many brilliant minds I met on TEK, networking and building a community is super important and is something I will get better at in the future.
Can’t wait to attend my next PHP conference, either [TEK] or Laracon. Until this happens, here is a small photo dump out of the 3,000+ photos of the trip.
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