Arne Blankerts is the next speaker we’d like to announce for our CodeWorks tour! Arne will be with us for all seven cities, and we are sure you will benefit from his vast PHP expertise. Welcome to CodeWorks, Arne!

We are proud to announce that John Coggeshall will be joining us for CodeWorks 09. John will be taking part in the first three cities of the tour: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Dallas. We are very glad to have John with us!

We are thrilled to announce that Stefan Priebsch will be taking part in CodeWorks 2009! Stefan is a consummate professional and has been solving IT problems for over 25 years. He will be joining us as a part of our Tutorial Team and will be here for all seven cities of the tour! Keep reading and we’ll tell you some interesting facts about Stefan that you may have not known.

Developers are notoriously self-confident in their ability to write code that is better, faster, cleaner and better-smelling than everybody else’s. In today’s environment, however, the focus is on producing immediately useful code—and, given the richness of today’s frameworks, those who eschew them in favour of home-grown solutions are forever running the risk of reinventing the wheel for no good reason. We have enough wheels—start building some cars.

GOTO in PHP? Is that possible? It turns out that it is. GOTO is poised to make its official debut in the upcoming 5.3 release of PHP—and the comments are flowing around the Net. We caught up with Sara Golemon, who introduced the construct in PHP, and with Timothy Boronczyk, who made one of the rare level-headed comments about its use, to shed some light on how GOTO will affect the world of PHP

The next CodeWorks speaker we’d like to announce is the incomparable Cal Evans! He brings so much to the CW table, both in terms of technical know-how and real-world experience. Cal will be with us for all seven cities of the tour, so read on to get a hint of what topics he’ll be covering.

Ed Finkler (aka Funkatron) will also be joining us for the second half of the CodeWorks tour. You’ll be able to catch up with Ed in Atlanta, Miami, Washington, and New York City. We are very excited to have Ed on board for CodeWorks; he brings 13 years of experience on a variety of PHP topics to our tour, and is an all around very cool guy. Keep reading to learn more about Ed’s background and what topics he’ll be speaking about.

Today, we’d like to announce that Sebastian Bergmann will be joining our tour for the full seven cities, as a part of our Tutorial Team. Sebastian brings to CodeWorks his vast knowledge of and experience in PHP unit testing, quality assurance and best practices. We are very happy to have him on our tour! Read on to learn more about Sebastian and what he’ll be speaking about.

Fourteen years ago, Rasmus Lerdorf released the first version of PHP. It’s been a long journey from there to where PHP Is today—with many bumps along the road, a few flat tires and some great scenery. The question on our mind, however, is this: how is the PHP community growing up and evolving?

We are thrilled to announce the first of our fantastic speakers for CodeWorks 2009! Derick Rethans will be joining us for all seven cities. Derick is a well-known and well-respected PHP expert who has spent years actively contributing to the PHP project and spreading his PHP knowledge to others. He will be speaking on the topics of Xdebug, date/time specifics, and improving your development process. We are very excited to have Derick on tour with us!