Last week, I attended the inaugural PHPSouthAfrica event in Cape Town. The event was organised and hosted by Liquorice Digital, a digital agency based in the picturesque CBD. This landmark conference was arranged to bring together developers from around Southern Africa who specialise in the PHP programming language – of which Flow makes extensive use in its solutions.
A few months ago, I heard about this conference on Twitter, and I investigated it with some curiosity and – let’s be honest – a little skepticism; the latter was due to the fact that South Africa has never hosted an event of this nature and proposed scale. So, why is a conference like this important? PHP is a web programming language that drives a large amount of South African and international websites, and conferences like these bring together PHP programmers to share their knowledge and to network with others in the same field.
Once the buzz on Twitter started growing for this conference, I decided to bite the bullet and submit a proposal for a talk at the conference. My submission, The Debugging Checklist, was accepted, along with nine other talks, and the flop-sweat began. Cut to next scene, and I am standing in front of 120 eager faces in an unfamiliar city, impostor syndrome gripping my insides like a vice. I gave my first-ever public-speaking performance, which consisted of a 30-minute talk and included some off-colour jokes, a few handy tips and select anecdotes, and to my relief the crowd seemed to enjoy it. Other speakers included experts in the field from as far as Iceland, Canada, Germany and the United States.
In its entirety, the conference was a great success and was exceptionally well run. Nederburg sponsored 100 bottles of wine, which eased the usually socially awkward troupe of techies’ inhibitions, and everyone seemed to enjoy the presentations, the food and the hospitality.
The conference will hopefully be a harbinger of similar events to come. Events like these raise the profile of web development in the country, and fosters growth in what could be a major skills export sector for South Africa.