PHPers Summit 2024

In June 2024, I had the pleasure of speaking at the PHPers Summit, in Poznan, Poland. My talk was about the quick wins available for backend developers who need to improve front end page speed. It was an updated version of a similar talk which I did at PHPUK 24, and a great experience all round!

Speaker experience

The team did a great job of reaching out and making sure things were all set for speakers beforehand. It was my first time travelling to Poland, and Łukasz Chruściel had the patience of a saint! He was exceptional in making sure things like accommodation, travel, and speaking conditions were all clear and sorted well ahead of time. The conference was a mix of Polish and international speakers, and we had a great chance to mingle ahead of time at the speaker's dinner, in Apollo right in the heart of Poznan.

The Conference

My talk was first up, so I got there early, signed in, and started to set up. An interesting choice here is the participant badge - rather than laminated plastic, each badge is paper, with a small seed attached to take home and plant. It's a nice touch that I've not seen organisers go for before.

Eco-friendly conference badges

Once signed in, I got set up in the room, and thankfully my talk went pretty well! The talk was an adaptation of one I'd given previously, helping backend developers to improve frontend page speed - quick wins, low-hanging fruit, all the good stuff. I'd given the core talk a couple of times before, so was a bit more comfortable delivering it. After a couple of runs in front of an audience, you get a much better idea of which bits are landing well, which ones are a bit drawn out, and can hone the talk down. In this case, I was also able to include a locally-appropriate section on Ireland's worst driver, Prawo Jazdy, which went down pretty well in the room on the day!

Getting into the swing of things

Once my talk was done, I got to enjoy plenty of the other talks. There were a number of tracks in Polish, with an international track happening in parallel. Florian Engelhardt's talk on processing one billion rows in PHP was a particular highlight, with just the right mix of low-level optimisation and fun story telling. Definitely one to check out if he's doing it anywhere near you in future! And Mathias Arlaud's talk on improving the Symfony serializer was a great insight into the amount of work core contributions involve in popular frameworks - some really exciting optimisations coming down the pipeline there!

The conference itself had a great energy between talks. Many of the sponsors set themselves up with interactive games, rather than straight sales booths. Shooting toy guns, answering PHP questions in Polish (dziękuję, Google Translate!), playing oversized chess - there was a great energy to the whole event. It was mentioned numerous times through the day and is certainly true, the PHP community in Poland is certainly a vibrant one!

Towards the end of the day, Poland were playing in the Euros, so a group watching event was held in the main conference room. Over the course of the day, numerous people mentioned to me that every Polish tournament had 3 games - the initial optimism, the soul-crushing defeat that seals elimination, and the final futile-yet-spirit-raising gallant defeat. This was unfortunately match 2 of 3, and went pretty much to plan, as Poland crashed to a 3-1 defeat to Austria, effectively eliminating them.

Prepared for disappointment

Bowling at the after party

Poznan

St Martin's Croissant

I'd never been to Poznan, and was lucky enough to have a little time to act as a tourist. There's a lovely old city square worth exploring, which is beside a croissant museum. A what? Yes, Poznan is home to St Martin's croissant - a rich, cake-like version of the croissant. It's one of those foodstuffs with EU protection, meaning a genuine St Martin's croissant can only be made in Poznan. It's a celebrated local delicacy, and even has its own festival day!

Lego castle

One other must-see if you're in Poznan is Historyland. As a history nerd and lego nut, this ticked a lot of boxes! It's the story of Poland, told through over a million Lego bricks> It goes all the way from early rural settlements up to Lego Lech Walesa in the dockyards of Gdansk. I would highly recommend this to any similarly-nerded person with some time to kill in Poznan!

Lego docks

Strong recommend!

Overall I would strongly recommend the PHPers summit. The Polish PHP community is an active and engaged one, the conference is really well-run, and it's in a beautiful part of the world. Definitely a couple of days well-spent!

Conference swag