The first ever PHP Stoke has come and gone – and what a big success it was!

Last week, Aware hosted the inaugural Stoke-on-Trent PHP meetup, bringing together PHP developers and industry experts for an evening of insights, socialising and (of course) pizza and beers.

We couldn’t have been more excited for it and the evening certainly didn’t disappoint, with more than 40 people descending on Genr8 Smithfield Works in Hanley.

Joining event organisers James Brooks of Laravel and Andy and Rich Jones of Aware were three fantastic speakers in Oliver Davies, Christopher Miller and Luke Browne, all of whom gave some fantastic insights.

We’d also like to say a special thank you to our amazing sponsors DotDigital and JetBrains for making the event possible and contributing some great swag!

All in all, it was amazing to see so many of you there and we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did!

Recap: Our Brilliant Speakers

The evening kicked off with a welcome from PHP Stoke’s organiser James Brooks and Andy Jones.

Our first speaker of the night was Oliver Davies, a Freelance Software Developer, Consultant and organiser of PHP South Wales, who gave his talk titled “Things to know about PHP,” providing a great overview of the main platforms and frameworks.

Next up, Luke Browne gave his talk “Ship every day, fail every day.” Luke is the Lead Software Engineer at Wealth Wizards and organiser of Brum.js and TechMids.

Last but certainly not least, Christopher Miller from Jump24 spoke in detail about “Clean, concise, collaborative code.” 

There was an opportunity after each talk to ask questions and get more information on anything discussed.

Naturally, we also found time to tuck into some tasty pizza. It wouldn’t be a developer meetup without it, right?

As promised, the left-over pizza was donated to Brighter Futures, a local charity supporting people with homelessness, mental health and other complex needs.

Thank you again to everyone who came along and made the evening such a great success!

Already looking forward to the next PHP Stoke? Us too! Visit phpstoke.co.uk for more information and follow us on Twitter @PHPStoke.