PHP London

Matt Zandstra and I share a long history of attempting to drop in on the London PHP user group's monthly meeting, usually thwarted by either cash tragedies (mine) or parental duties (his). This month I finally made it in following a frenzied exchange of email with Matt, who wanted to go but was suffering from an ear infection brought on by (as far as I can figure) the aforementioned parental duties. Bribery, threats and whisky remedies having had no impact on his 'headful of hurty concrete', I went alone. But that was OK, because this month Rasmus Lerdorf was speaking there - there would be at least one person in the room I already knew, if not a bosom pal.

I arrived late-ish - around 9pm - and half-expected the proceedings to be over already. They weren't. I grabbed an extremely cheap (in London terms) pint of cider from the bar, then meandered down to take a look at the downstairs room, having been pre-warned that it would be filled to capacity. I could see Rasmus' hand waving in front of his APC slides above a roomful of silhouetted heads and decided it'd be an uncomfortable moment for me to walk in just then, given my Zend connections, so I left him to it for a bit longer.

Half an hour passed in pleasant small talk with one of the barmaids and some gay bloke with a lot of facial furniture. Then someone with an unmistakably geek t-shirt hove into view. I asked him if there was enough room downstairs for me to join them. He thought there was, and invited me in.

Standing at the back of a room always reminds me of school. Can't imagine why. It makes me want to chain-smoke and giggle and pass notes. There was someone with similar issues on the back-most seat, which cheered me immensely. Don't get me wrong, we were both listening intently - Rasmus had moved on from APC to talk about the many things that could be done with SOAP and the wonders of REST by then. I mumbled something about not understanding ning to the rebel guy. He looked up at me and said, very gently, 'Have you ever heard of a scripting language called PHP?' I nodded dumbly. He went on to explain who Rasmus was... which was kinda sad, I was hoping he'd explain what ning was for.

Later I asked whether Rasmus had had time to look into 'that ning thing' yet. He had, but had been left as blank as I was over it. I guess we're not Andreessen's target audience here.

My rebel friend glanced at me and said, very carefully, 'ning - right?'

The chatting time came, the rebel friend left, Rasmus was inundated, and I hung out at the end of the room where laptops had suddenly opened. They were a good bunch of guys - proper geeks, but not nasty about me using doze, and able to cope with criticism about their own code. I made an ill-advised rush to get another pint of cider before closing time - ill-advised because the group had already, unbeknown to me, decided to stroll on down to a late bar. I made a worse-advised decision to grab a plastic glass and join them there - worse-advised because it led directly to my missing the last train home.

There were some good conversations, but everyone else cleared off when Rasmus went back to his hotel, leaving me alone to psyche myself up for getting home the interesting way. It was probably best that it happened like that, but I have to say that finding the Edgeware Road (a very straightforward road to leave London by) was the most difficult part of the journey home. Two Iranians and a Greek later, I fell out of a truck (trying to protect my laptop, I normally throw baggage out first) at the Baldock services (ok but I love that site) with a 2.5 mile walk ahead of me, and it was well after 6am when I got home.

Still it was worth it, if only to see how Rasmus coped with everyone speaking the way I do - I haven't met anyone yet in the whole of php.net that can understand a Brit accent from scratch :) OK so I didn't meet the people I'd hoped to meet - the PHP London crew are organising a full PHP conference in the near future and I'd hoped to meet someone prepared/able to discuss their plans for that - but even so it was a proper geek night out. The only one I've ever joined in my own country, and it felt just like the German version (ok, but I love that conference).