Sunshine PHP 2014

Due to uncertainties in my work schedule, I decided this year not to submit to the Sunshine PHP 2014 conference. However, the schedule turned out such that I was able to attend the conference. Many thanks to my awesome employer Blopboard for providing the time and funding to make this possible.

I was a speaker at the inaugural Sunshine PHP conference in 2013 and enjoyed that experience, but being able to just be an attendee this year was a nice change of pace. I've enjoyed the awesome content presented by excellent speakers.

With this year's Sunshine PHP came a new member of the elePHPant family: Sonny, the yellow elePHPant. The process of obtaining your very own Sonny was a rather novel idea thought up by the hosts of Sunshine PHP. Attendees were given a bingo sheet where each space was branded for a sponsor and would visit the sponsor's booth to get that space stamped. Once all spaces were stamped, you could turn in the bingo sheet to get Sonny.

In going through this process, I spoke with some very friendly guys at AppDynamics. I was able to learn more about their product, which is an alternative to the New Relic service I currently use at work for monitoring the performance of our product. I noted that AppDynamics isn't currently listed in the Heroku add-on marketplace, but they clarified for me that it can still be installed on Heroku and pointed out related documentation.

The interaction was great and I'll certainly be checking out the product further, but this quest to get Sonny is what instigated that conversation, which I think is awesome. Many thanks to Zend for sponsoring this fun activity within the conference.

Thanks to everyone who made Sunshine PHP a spectacular event to attend. I hope to see you again next year.