Some of you may have been wondering, why is a PHP group doing an event like OpenWebVancouver 2008. The reason is that we have held very successful conferences in the past and we would like to do more. As a volunteer run, community based group, we are a group of dedicated people who would like to bring in new people into our community who share our common interest in Free Open Source Software.
PHP Developers always have to be aware of so much more than just PHP. We have to be well acquainted with the whole LAMP stack and much more. This is also the case with our colleagues who code in Python or Ruby on Rails or who are designers - they have to know much more than what their discipline represents. And hosting an event that would focus only on PHP while interesting to us, would not serve the purposed of exposing ourselves to new information.
It is time we felt, for people in the different areas of Open Source to come together and be more aware of each other. Vancouver has over 20 user groups for different technologies. The number of groups is necessary for the specialization of interests, but we all share the common interest of ideas that embrace the Open Web. Our event is a call for less fragmentation and to have strength in numbers. We all distribute software using the GPL, we deploy on systems that use it, and for the most part access a common family of tools to produce our work. The products of our work are distributed on the Internet and World Wide Web, and therefore we all depend on open and unfettered access to it.
Bring your open minds. See you there.
