php quebec conference recap

i'm back home and rested now after PHP Quebec - where I did a presentation on drupal's distributed authentication and sxip. i have to admit, i'm still pretty new to the whole conference going / speaking scene - but the time (while short and fast) was enjoyable - thanks to the php quebec organizers for a good show.

a couple personal highlights :

• caught rasmus' presentation - he's doing some pretty cool stuff over at yahoo! - and i finally got to shake his hand. rasmus and I are very loosely linked by friends of friends in the toronto area, and yet i've never actually had a chance to meet him (largely 'cause he lives in california).
• met steve mansour - who was doing photography for the conference - and is a big drupal fan. he was nice enough to take this poor little anglophone under his wing. we got to talk a lot about some of the cool stuff he's up to using drupal - he's also heavily into the community wireless scene in montreal. very cool.
• turns out, one of steve's good friends is "bopuc" - who's path i've crossed via #joiito (and it seems i can't leave the house anymore without having jonas' name come up in conversation these days), so after last night's speaker dinner we met up with boris and grabbed a couple beers. some pretty heavy, and very interesting conversation ensued. oh, and guys - next time you're in the toronto area - beer's on me.

the one thing i did realize, though, is that despite having used PHP for development since 1997 (is that really 8 years ago?!?!), i've never gotten involved in the PHP community at large. i think that's something i'd like to change - time permitting of course. but there are some pretty cool things going on in the community and some pretty cool folks behind it. hopefully they'll have me back :)