Hello Folks! Last week Łukasz and I attended SymfonyCon 2018 in Lisbon. And it was stunning! I would like to share some thoughts about this amazing event with you. Are you ready for a flight?
This year SymfonyCon took place in Lisbon, in the magnificent Lisbon Mariott Hotel. This place is huge, but it has to be, as almost 1000 people attended the conference! Can you imagine so many programmers in one place?
Three tracks (Beginner, Advanced and PHP), during 2 days of the conference, contained 26 presentations with additional unconference talks and 7-minute-long lightning talks. So much information, so little time. Sadly, we could not attend all of them, but even though the amount of knowledge we received was astonishing. Of course, main topics concerned Symfony (the base of Sylius and, we strongly believe, the best PHP framework in the world). Not looking far away, lectures about reloaded Local Web Server or Symfony Messenger component boosted us with a solid bunch of programming knowledge. We also had a chance to confront our experiences about Behat and Event Sourcing, as well as get some more ideas about possible integration with API Platform. So many interesting discussions we had!
But conferences are not only about learning new things – the other important part is meeting interesting people. We had a chance to spend some time with wonderful people from Locastic and Netgen. What’s more, we drank a beer or two with guys from our another partner – Les-Tilleuls . With all our gratitude, we gave a Sylius mug in exchange for #ZiggyTheHydra we received last year on Polycon Barcelona (what you could see on Twitter recently :)). I can’t even mention all the amazing people we met during these few days, but want to thank all of them, for creating such an extraordinary atmosphere.
However, this event was not only about learning but also about teaching. On Wednesday, we conducted a workshop named “Create an eCommerce website with Sylius”, focusing on basic Sylius architecture and customization possibilities. We had too little time to do everything that we had planned, but nevertheless, we finished with working PoC of “paid options” in Sylius. These six guys were rocking with Sylius as if they knew it for ages. Thank you!
You know what is great in attending programming conferences? You can not only learn something, teach something or meet someone, but also visit marvellous places. That was my second time in Lisbon, and, as a year ago, the city charmed me with its climate along with terrific monuments. We spend at least a few hours, just walking around the city (or driving fantastic electric scooters!), feeling its atmosphere and admiring the views. It was for sure a great place to spend a week in December – especially that temperature was around 15°C higher than in Łódź 🙂
What can I write more? That was a great time, we spent long hours talking about Sylius and Symfony with many interesting people, in a beautiful venue, in a beautiful city. We have no doubt, this conference is an obligatory point on our “Sylius tour map”. Moreover, SymfonyCon 2019 has been announced in the last talk, and it will happen in another amazing city – Amsterdam. We will for sure not miss it. Will you join us there?
