PHPCon 2002

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 9, 2002

For more information contact:
Monica Ortiz, 415-990-5513, monica@mktgevents.com


Web Scripting Language PHP Takes Center Stage

Linux Magazine and PHP Journal announce the emergence of PHPCon 2002, the
first US based technical conference to focus on this popular, open source
scripting language for the web. PHPCon 2002 will be held at The Clarion
Hotel SFO in Millbrae, California on October 24 and 25, 2002.

PHP, a recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is a freely
downloadable, server-side scripting language that creates dynamic web pages
and is particularly applicable for e-commerce. Its friendly interface with
nearly all the major platforms in use today has made it one of the fastest
growing web technologies, in use by nearly nine million domains and over one
million IP servers in the world.

“PHP was designed for web development and it does the job exceptionally
well,” said Jeremy Zawodny, Engineer at Yahoo! Finance and a speaker at
PHPCon. “There are tens of thousands of PHP users today and there’s little
sign of a slow-down in growth for PHP. A conference like this is overdue.”

Although it has been in use for nearly a decade, PHP has never before
enjoyed the spotlight at a technical conference in the United States. PHPCon
2002 seeks to change that through a robust three track technical conference:
Enterprise PHP, Applications Development, and XML/CMS. The program has also
attracted some of PHP’s heavyweights such as PHP Inventor Rasmus Lerdorf as
keynote speaker, authors John Coggeshall and Christian Wenz, MySQL Community
Advocate Zak Greant, Rackspace’s Dirk Elemendorf, and ActiveState’s Shane
Caraveo.

PHP’s popularity stems from its application to a variety of platforms, its
flexibility, and ease in which it can be learned. Its syntax is similar to C
and Perl and its platform neutrality makes it possible for dynamic web pages
to draw tailored customer information directly from databases or other
internal sources, making it particularly suited toward e-commerce. PHP is
widely used in conjunction with Apache, Microsoft’s SQL Server, MySQL,
Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and ODBC.

“PHP simplified the web problem to the point that the people with the actual
problem have a shot at solving it themselves as opposed to hiring
professional programmers to do it for them,” said Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP
Inventor and PHPCon 2002’s Keynote Speaker. “PHP does not hide the
intricacies of either the problem or the solution, allowing people to learn
to program along the way. Other web development tools solve only a subset of
problems you might encounter on the web. Once you hit the boundaries of that
subset, you are stranded and have no idea how to go beyond that point. With
PHP, the learning curve is fairly shallow and there is no upper boundary on
how complex a system you can develop using it.”

Like Linux and GNU, PHP is the progeny of the vigorous open source community
and enjoys extensive development and technical support. Bugs are found and
repaired quickly and the code is continuously updated with improvements and
language extensions that expand PHP’s capabilities. Like the community it
represents, PHPCon 2002 focuses on the prevalent technology and topics,
offering attendees tips and tricks from the experts as well as practical,
timely discussions on MySQL, SOAP, PEAR, Rapid Applications Development with
Dreamweaver, Benchmarking Techniques, and PostNuke. Attendees will also
appreciate the informal atmosphere of the conference and the opportunity to
meet and mingle with web development veterans.

“People who like to learn directly from the people creating the technology
should enjoy the highly technical talks at this conference,” said Lerdorf.
“They will pick up more tools and different approaches to solving the web
problem. A lot of speakers and attendees, like myself, have been doing this
for about 10 years now, which translates into a lot of little tricks of the
trade that don’t show up in books or magazine articles.”

PHPCon 2002’s technical program and registration information is available on
the web at http://www.php-con.com. Members of the press are entitled to
complementary access to all technical sessions and attendee events. To
register for a press badge, log on to www.php-con.com/2002/press.php or
email Monica Ortiz at monica@mktgevents.com.

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PHPCon 2002
October 24 - 25, 2002
The Clarion Hotel SFO
Millbrae, California
http://www.php-con.com
_________________________________
Monica E. Ortiz
Marketing & Events Consulting
www.mktgevents.com
monica@mktgevents.com
415-990-5513