When I returned home after PHPCamp, my younger sister asked me what was my benefit in organizing the event when I did not gave any talks.
I thought that their would be others who would like to know about this, so here are 10 things I gained at PHPCamp without giving any talks.
1. Do Something.
It reinforced my belief that if you need something and it is not available, then go ahead and create it. Don’t wait for someone else to do it, changes happens when you do something about it. When I was thinking about an un-conference dedicated to PHP, I didn’t know what to do about it. When I talked with few people they sounded interested in the idea, but not willing to do anything about it. Once I created PHPCamp website and announced about the event, everything fall in place, And not only that it become the biggest un-conference in India with more then 700 campers participating out of 1212 registrations.
2. Meet people, I knew online
When I started PHPCamp’s Google group many people pitched in to talk about different aspect’s of organizing the camp. At PHPCamp I met them for first time. Some of them are Dipen, Rohan, Jignesh, Nishit, Shantanu oak, Sandeep, Ashwin and Bipin.
3. Photo in Pune Mirror
I had never thought I will get in news papers, but thanks to PHPCamp I got pictured in Pune Mirror and guys this is not the best part. ‘PHP’ got mentioned in a Indian News Paper without job ad, that is the best part. Before this, I had never seen PHP being mentioned in a daily newspaper.
4. Chance to meet old friends
In last 3 years I worked with lot’s of people. They moved on to bigger and better careers, while I stayed. Thanks to PHPCamp, I got to meet some of them again after long time like Tejas, Amruta and Ramakrishna.
5. Chance to make some new friends
I make friends with people when I work alongside them. PHPCamp gave me a chance to work with SICSR volunteers and I made friends like Varun, Abhishek and Manish.
6. Chance to be part of un-organizing Barcamp Pune 5
This one happened thanks to Priyank, he roped me in. I am glad to be part of un-organizers for BCP5. I hope I will be able to add some value to it.
7. I got an Idea about importance of RAM and Disk I/O in scaling web applications. This was the only session I was able to attend. It was given by Vaibhav Arya.
8. Chance to meet COO of Persistent Systems Dr. Srikanth Sundararajan, thanks to campers who assembled at 4th floor lobby. He forbid the use of lifts for going between 4th floor and 7th floor, citing the fact that they are green company.
9. I got a PHP(pretty hot programmer) T-Shirt distributed by Directi, thanks to Varun.
10. Finally, I got a good exercise by walking the stairs between 7th floor and 4th floor trying to manage campers.
All in all it was one of the best day in my life, and I would like to thank Speakers, Volunteers and Campers for making PHPCamp Biggest Un-conference in India.
This is what i gained from PHPCamp, leave a comment below and tell us what you gained from PHPCamp.