A word on Conferences

Hi, I read the discussion on news.php.net and Marco's very long mail. Just my 2 cents as Head of Chair of the International PHP Conference: I recognize the point that conference news might be very long and "disturb" other important news like new PHP releases. Organizing a Conference has the following important items: - Call for Papers: at least 4-6 months *before* the Conference happens + special announcements on the mailing list + personal invitations to known speakers. We're all lazy and it's good to have an announcement so long before (also, because advertising in print publications for the conference means doing this some months before to get the right audience there) - while it may be a good idea to show the upcoming conferences this month on the php.net calendar on the front, this will only help to get a quick overview about current conferences. The problem is, though, that the CfP happens months before - I respect the decision of moving conference news on an extra page, but I hope that we/you can search for a better solution - I totally agree with Andi's points - wouldn't it be better to have some sort of front page which only shows the first 3/4/5 news of each category grouped by the categories? Something like this (although I'm interested in listing my conference on a prominent place, I think the first and foremost interest is PHP itself, so of course PHP releases/security fixes/etc. are the first news category to display): +---------------------------------------------------------+ | PHP releases: | | <1st news> | | <2nd news> | | <3rd news> | | <a href>See more at PHP release archive...</a> | -------------------------------------------------- | | Upcoming PHP Conferences around the world: | | <1st news> | | <2nd news> | | <3rd news> | | <a href>See more at PHP Conference archive...</a> | | -------------------------------------------------- | | Your PHP book library: | | Mastering Regular Expressions - now with PHP coverage | .... | | ... | .... ... ... | | <a href>See more at PHP book library archive ...</a> ? -- Mayflower GmbH / ThinkPHP schotte@mayflower.de Pleichertorstrasse 2 Tel: 0931 / 35965-0 97070 Würzburg Fax: 0931 / 35965-28 * http://www.mayflower.de/ * http://blog.thinkphp.de/