 I'm going to start this session with some group participation. You don't have to stand up. All I want you to do is put your hand up. So it's not too much hard work, but we're going to get some arm exercises in. Great example right here, please. Follow us along. What I want you to do is answer a couple of questions and we're just going to test from this. You'll see every so often I'll ask you to put your hand. So, to get started, how many people in the room are at their first PHP conference? Wow, that's amazing. Welcome. All right, another question just to make sure that we're all alert. How many people here attend a local PHP use group? That's even more of you. That's fantastic. I did some research for this session and within the UK there has been 26 different user groups that I am aware of. And I say I'm aware of because obviously things might have happened and the internet doesn't exactly keep a history of things. So let's have a look at this timeline. Can anyone guess? And to the people who helped me do the research, don't answer because I know they're at the front of the room. Can anyone guess how long we've had a PHP user group in the country? Anyone? 15 years? You're close. 14 years. 2004 was the very first year that we had. At least I found a user group in the UK. It started in this city, London, which is pretty amazing and it's still going today. In 2005 we have two user groups in the UK, PHP West Midlands. To put this into context, this is the year that YouTube was founded. Which makes us all feel really old now, I'm sure. And it's also the year that Facebook opened their doors to universities only in the UK. So that's a long time ago and also yet it's not that far ago. Jump three years later we have PHP North West. Feel free to cheer if you're from one of these user groups, because literally there's a lot. 2009 we get PHP East Midlands. And then in 2010 we get six user groups in total. What's interesting at this point is that they're all still based in England. 2011, that trend keeps going. In 2012 we have Brighton on the Seathfront joining us. And in 2013 we have 13 different user groups across the country and Northern Ireland has joined the ranks. Now 2014 is an interesting year. It's the year Scotland came to the group. Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow all had their first meetups that year. Which is pretty cool. And by 2015 that's 23 different user groups across the UK. 23. Now 2016 we didn't get any new user groups but we did see one call it a day. 2017 a few more called it a day. But we also had last year PHP Essex and PHP Milton Keynes being the latest ones to join the family of PHP user groups in the UK. And to be honest with you this is really impressive. And it doesn't even stop there. This month if you are in the Birmingham area a big shout out to Brun PHP who are basically bringing back PHP West Midlands and have renamed themselves. So if you're in the Birmingham area it's at the end of the month they're called Brun PHP do check them out. Because they are going to be the latest user group to join the PHP community in the UK. Why am I telling you all this? I mean it's pretty impressive for one, slides look pretty. But for two, what I find more impressive is that all those user groups are run by volunteers for the community by the community. It's a method of contribution that we see encode quite often. We could argue that it's the open source way. It's even more closer home the way that PHP is built. If you think about it all those people who have volunteered their time to build a language we use daily and many of us use our day jobs. And it's not just PHP but it's also the frameworks, the ecosystem and the libraries around that. All volunteer driven to help us in our day jobs. I think that is pretty awesome because it means that as a community we don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you want an auto loader you go to the symfony auto loader and copy and paste. That's pretty handy. The other thing about our day jobs though is that PHP is not the only thing that we work with. In fact PHP is part of the technological mashup that allows us to build the solutions for both our clients and our products, whatever kind of work you're doing. With each of these technologies comes a community, a community of code, a community of add-ons and plug-ins and a community of events. In a mega city like London it means that you can go to a user group almost every working day of the week throughout the year. Now I know this is not the case in everywhere in the UK but it does bring up a good question. Why do we choose to go to our local PHP user groups? I'm a co-organiser of PHP Barcha. We're based in Reading and last meet-up one of our attendees came up to me and Chris, one of the other co-organisers and thanked us for the work that we'd been doing. They explained that we had opened the doors for him but what was even cooler was that the reason why he was explaining it to us was because unfortunately he had switched jobs, which is a good thing, right? But it also meant that he wouldn't be able to make it to our user group, which is a bad thing, at least for the fact that I like to hang out with this person. But as a quote, he basically told us how those putting up a meet-up about PHP on meetup.com in their local area meant that he could learn things that he didn't even realise existed. He'd been doing PHP way longer than I had but didn't realise there was a community there. Yet when you look around this room there is definitely a community. The things that they learnt at the user group were instantly able to improve their daily job, which is really cool. I mean, who doesn't want to be lazier at work? I mean, I know I do. Like with code, the community events are a series of features compiled together. So what I want to do is take this moment to go backstage at a user group and see what features it takes to build a user group. And this can be applied to many other PHP events and actually other events that are being built around technologies. This is not a complete list of things that every organiser does, but it's a pretty good list. This has to be done every month and this list is only the things that are about time and effort-based. It includes things like finding venues, finding sponsors, speakers, thinking they're even just trying to work out what topic we should be talking about next month, what's hot, what's not. But then when you look at the financials as well, because there is a financial cost, depending on the meet-up that you're running, the financial cost can go anything from the meet-up.com fees because meet-up.com is not free, all the way down to paying for food and drinks to encourage attendees to turn along. If we put some numbers around this, and some of my colleagues told me that my original numbers were a bit too high, but maybe I'm just used to London, meet-up.com works out about £11 a month. It's $14.99 USD, so obviously it depends every week how much it costs. Domain registration, if your user group has a domain that obviously costs money, if you can't have a free venue that costs money, and so on and so forth, it means that, roughly, just looking at these numbers, it could cost you a meet-up per month around £207. Now, I don't know about you, but I know I can do something else with that £207, like go shopping. So why is it that user group organisers spend this money to do something that they're doing for free? They're literally losing money from you and a user group, which is absolutely mind-boggling. I circulated a survey on Twitter, because Twitter is the answer for all things, and I put together a set of questions to ask PHP-related events organisers, both past and present across the world, to share their experience of what they have learnt from winning an event. So we're going to have a look at the results of that survey. One of the questions I ask is, why do you organise your event? Why do organisers put in this time and effort? Lee, from PHP Southwest, basically starts off by explaining he wasn't an attendee at first, and then gains so much that organising was a way to pay it forward to keep it going for other people. Danny, at Aberdeen PHP, moved to the city and wanted to meet people to enjoy talking about tech. Somebody else wrote, initially, to improve their resume, later, the feeling of contribution kept them going, but currently, obligation. The word obligation is an interesting word, at least for me, it has a sense of they feel they have to do something, and considering this is volunteering, you shouldn't feel like you have to do something, surely. Like with code, there are issues which can be sorted into both books and features. Ultimately, it comes down to the priorities of the community, which one they are. One of the questions I ask in the survey is how many groups and how many events went on a break. Just under 37% of groups have been on a break. That's quite a lot. The most common reasons for those include lack of speaker, organisers not being available or nobody else offering to host the event, and a lack of venue. There were some groups that have been disbanded, and they said that their reasons for disbanding and stopping included the organisers getting too busy, no support from other people, or just simply moving away from that location. One of the other questions I asked, because you can't do a survey like this without asking it, is what do they struggle with? Now, this is a list of things going from top left down, and then onto the second column, in order of which were the most popular answers. This was a chat box-style question, so they could pick multiple things. Both attendees and speakers were joined first. This is what user group organisers are struggling with. Let's get those arms going. How many people here have a fear of speaking in front of a group? It's a fair amount of you. I should put my hand up too, but I'm on stage, so if it's weird. Organisers know this. Nick from Glasgow sums it up pretty nicely. A lot of tech-focused people don't like to speak in front of clouds. Nick also points out that a lack of time from an organising point of view means that they can only spend so much time looking for speakers. I met a guy called Matt. He's actually speaking at this event. I noticed that Matt had been going to quite a lot of user groups in the UK speaking about various different topics, and I asked him, why did he spend so much of his time doing this? This is the answer I got back. I've been going to user groups and giving talks where I can improve my confidence in speaking in groups both in public and at work. It has resulted in me being better at my job. I think what's even more interesting is that this was something that he agreed with his boss as a way to improve his professional development. I think that's such a cool way to look at speaking. Now, I know, just because Matt tried it and it worked, he's not going to work for everyone, don't worry. I'm not encouraging you all to speak, but secretly I really do wish you will. We've all been at user groups or even talking to our colleagues and we've heard someone having something interesting to share. If you know somebody who has an interesting story to share or even a great bug that they've managed to find and how they conquered that bug or even sometimes not conquered that bug and they're still trying to figure it out, why don't we just introduce them to the organisers? Why don't we just make that no group link? It means we don't have to speak, we're just getting someone else to do it. I think that's called delegation. Another common issue was venues. Venues are always tricky to sort out. Simon mentions in PHP Cambridge that they even found a commercial venue that was free which sounds fantastic. That's £100 saved right there. But the commercial bookings soon pushed the user group away. Yes, a lot of us work in offices that might have a meeting room. Why are we not offering those up? I asked the user group organisers and I feel like this was a rabbit hole that I was opening up. What they wished people knew about event organising? Finding the right theme, subject, topic for the audience is never easy and at times finding speakers proves a challenge too. Antonis from PHP mines in Nottingham. It's true. The concept to just figure out what people want to hear. We're literally going like, I'm trying to be telepathic right now, I'm not sure I can do it. But then it made me think. Why aren't we as attendees not just telling our organisers, hey, I'd like to hear about this? I think Andy from PHP Essex would say it's quite lovely. That's a fair bit of hassle to get much thanks for. So please join me in thanking all the user group organisers because I know there's quite a lot in the room for all the hard work that they've been doing over the last 14 years. Organisers, what would make their life easier? Then it's no surprise that some of the answers included something as simple as more help. People stepping up as speakers and co-organisers. I mean, this is the dream for organisers, honestly. People just coming up to us and saying, can we do this thing? I will be amazed if you get the answer, no, because usually the answer is yes. This is another arm movement exercise. Working a company that sponsors their local meetup. This is the smallest group of people that have put their hand up. It's a tiny amount. Yet Ben from PHP Warwickshire points out that having sponsorships is actually an amazing thing because then they could pay for venues and stuff like that. Maybe if a speaker lives quite far away, they could at least pay for the train fare. Because at least in the UK, that's expensive. I didn't even realise this, but Ben and the Warwickshire community are splitting the payments between themselves to keep things going. That's how determined they are to keep PHP Warwickshire going. And I feel really bad because I didn't even think about this. One of my co-organisers have been paying for everything and I've basically not given him anything in return, like any money. So I felt really bad. But I think it's amazing that people are literally willing to split the costs and keep our user group going. And how many of us actually contribute? A few of you? I'm not sure if I'm contributing. That's cool. I'm not sure who wrote this in because I did allow people in the survey to write in anonymously. It gave me some very, very blunt feedback. But if people contributed more to the user group, it would have made this person's life so much easier. And they sum it up quite nicely. It's quite similar to Open Source, the way we contribute to our code. And a user group lives by its contributors. And it can be both the developer, yourselves, and all the companies that we work for. Things that we can do to make a difference. We asked the organisers if they could remember a time when someone at their group had helped them out. And what actually happened. Rowan from Brighton PHP mentions how an attendee who then turned co-organisers started by helping out informally. All they did was engage in conversation whilst they were having discussions. They helped to break the silence in a group of people. How many people here have helped set up an event? You turn up to the meet up a bit early and you see people doing things. The few of you, the few of you. Craig from PHP London remembers how people who turn up early help handle the drinks, making sure the drinks are cold by putting them in the fridge before everyone else turns up. And setting up the tables. That's pretty easy to do. I think it's easy to do. If you are going to user groups, how many of you help clean up afterwards? That's good, we're getting there. Fedrick from PHP Antwerp mentions people who help clean up are cool. Everyone who just put their hand up, you're cool. And I totally agree. My favourite thing is at PHP Berkshire is an attendee who then turned co-organiser because I didn't really give them much of a choice. At the beginning of the year, we always do this post-it matrix where we get people in the user group to say what things they want to learn about or even discuss. It's all on post-it notes, which is great, and then we organise them and put them on the wall and it's all nice and pretty. One of our co-organisers took a photo of it and then threw it up on meetup.com where there was something. And what was amazing was that the next morning I get sent a link to a Google Doc where all the post-it notes had been organised as it was in the picture and written up. About five minutes beforehand, I'd been like, oh, I really need to write up those post-it notes. It's going to be such a bore work. And then just getting that link and hey, that has been done for me. I was like, oh, this is easy. Copy and pasting, I know how to do that. It made my life so much easier and I was so thankful for that. Small acts can have a big effect. We've already seen how some of the people in our local communities are doing just small things but how organisers do notice. It can go further than this. If you are part of a Toastmaster community, which I'm not, then there is a thing called a greeter and basically it's the person who is at the front of the door and invites you in. That's a really polished, condensed version of what it is, so I went on Toastmaster and actually got the official thing. The greeter's role is to welcome everyone to the club meeting, particular visitors and people who are new to Toastmasters, making everyone feel welcome at our club. It's important as this may be the start of their Toastmasters journey. Now, if you get rid of all the Toastmastery stuff, it still applies to the PHP community and to other communities too. Having a greeter role say, hey, my name is, in a certain name, just knowing that you're in the right place is a big relief when you're going to somewhere new. This could be all of us. Literally, I quoted you all. If you don't want to be the greeter because you don't want to be the first in line, that's cool, then start a conversation with the people around you. I know, as a group of people, starting conversations with strangers is scary. I mean, I do it a lot and it's still scary to me, and I practice a lot. Now, there is a trick to this. Anyone I've talked to this morning will probably have seen me do this already, so I feel like I'm opening and sharing a big secret with you. Are you ready? Conversation starters. Go to questions that you can literally pick up and ask anyone, and it's pretty much fault-free. Asking anyone how they're travelling was in the UK pretty much guarantees a response of how bad the public transport in the UK is, so it's a wide-known recognition that you can just acknowledge and feel some kind of companionship between them. These are good questions for this event, but also, if you're at your local user group, or any group for that matter, most groups happen on a weekday, which means most of us are at work, so just asking the question, how is work? Is a really nice way to start a conversation with a lot of people. There's a thing called the Pac-Man rule. How many people here know about it? There's a few of you. Well, all of you are going to know about it now. It was popularised by a gentleman called Eric Holster, and his definition is, when standing as a group of people, always leave room for one person to join your group. The idea being that, if anyone wants to join your conversation, there's a space for them to be able to just stand right in. If you want to remember it quite simply, stand like Pac-Man, and I don't mean like this, I mean like standing as a round in a circle as a Pac-Man, leaving that one gap for that person who might be here on their own to be able to join a conversation and get to know you all. Now, these are quite active things to do. So, what about some inactive stuff? Most of you have phones. I've seen a few phones go up already. Retreating and sharing event information is probably one of the organisers' dreams, because it basically means free marketing and reminding other people without them being too nagging. So, if you're going to an event, treat that you're going. It's quite simple. You know, I'm going to this. I was talking to one of my colleagues last night, and they mentioned how it was actually through Twitter that he was reminded to go to events because he'd always forget because you know, work. So, I'm tweeting about it. Even if you have two followers or a thousand followers, it doesn't really make a difference. Just tweet. You're like a little reminder, because it's from different people, it sounds less nagging, and that way the organisers of the events kind of appreciate it. If you have ideas, opinions or feedback, share them. Share them with your local user group, organisers. You can share them with the organisers of this event. You can share them with speakers, but more importantly, share them with each other. In conclusion, there are many different ways we can all help out. Some of them take a lot of effort, some of them don't take a lot of effort, but more importantly, you can pretty much forget all this, because all I want you to do is have fun, and have fun at PHP UK for the next two days. Thank you.