The PHP BBQ tour 2009 is over. Some 145 people came to 7 meetings held in 7 different citties in Germany. The basic idea of having a series of barbecues, shortly before midsummer, to get together and having fun at a very relaxed atmosphere has worked out well.

People got connected. Some attendees came to the PHP user group meetings, who have never been seen at a regular meeting before. Some even travelled 1.5 hours per way to get to the events. Members of the user group Köln/Bonn took the opportunity to visit their friends in Dortmund and members of the user group Stuttgart have travelled to Karlsruhe for the first time.

People had fun. Look at the faces of those who came to the events, check out the photos. Due to bad weather conditions and rain showers there have been only two true BBQs. However, the BBQ has never been over before midnight and the guys in Dortmund did have a party until 4am.

People gave feedback. Beer and summer evenings made people say what they think. I got feedback on the importance and stability of PDO, discussed if the query cache is of any use for todays web applications (e.g. not useful for StudiVZ), meet guys from Nexenta (OpenSolaris with the usability of Linux) and spoke about building communities.

Thanks go to the participating user groups and the sponsors (in some cities we had free drinks, free beers, free food!) . The user groups in Germany really rock. BTW, what do you guys think about writing a PHP (BBQ) Cookbook, shall I set up a wiki page? It does not take much more than a wiki page to organize a tour or to found a new user group. Try it out!

PS: 12:47 <@johannes_> GO – congratulations for PHP 5.3 and don’t miss the release party at Mayflower in Munich. Mayflower intended to sponsor the food at the BBQ in Munich. But due to bad weather we did not have a true BBQ. Nils Hitze was clever enough to ensure that the budget does not get lost and now Johann-Peter Hartmann writes on Facebook: starting to organize the php 5.3 release party in munich with pierre and johannes in phprp at ircnet

P.PS: PHP 5.3 Release Party – Munich – Friday, 17.07.2009 – register