WOW! 65+ attendees at our last meeting. Another record for BostonPHP! It's great to see the PHP/OSS community thriving in Boston.

Thanks very much to:

Steve Zimmerman - Optaros
Gabe Ricard - iMax Websolutions
Max Carlson - OpenLazlo
Adam Peller - IBM

For their fantastic presentations on AJAX and its related technologies. The take-away? Web 2.0 continues to hurtle toward the thick client feel of traditional client/server while maintaining the small footprint we've all come to know and love (can you say browser-wars?). And while AJAX definitely gets us closer, there are still outstanding issues of accessibility (508c), security, and of course the umpteen flavors of JavaScript, jscript, and jib-jab supported today (can you say browser-wars?) that need to be addressed. All that said, it's definitely the direction to provide the rich user experience that the consuming public is looking for.

Products/Proposals/Press Releases - announcements during the meeting

Both IBM and OpenLazlo made announcements during the February meeting: Max introduced and demonstrated OpenLazlo's ability to generate and support AJAX for all the major browsers (read more here). Adam introduced the AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF). The ATF is a proposed open-source project to be incubated within the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) Project (read more here).

IBM and OpenLazlo reinforced their commitment to "Open Ajax" , an initiative to drive collaborative innovation to make the web easier to use (read more here).

For those interested in accessing the presentations, please visit the BostonPHP AJAX SIG.

BostonPHP at LinuxWorld

We're excited to announce that BostonPHP is a media sponsor at the April LinuxWorld in Boston. In addition to co-marketing agreements (e.g. banner/email blasts), BostonPHP member will receive a 20% discount on admission. Please visit the Discounts Programs to access the registration code. ALSO, we will have a booth at the show. If you would like to help out with booth duty, please send an email to linuxworld-at-BostonPHP.org.

For those living under a rock for the past 10 years, here's a brief description of the event: Discover how developers and line-of-business professionals like you are using open source technologies to transform every part of the enterprise. This year we are not only expanding the LinuxWorld conference, we are expanding beyond Linux with OpenSolutions World, all-new conference within LinuxWorld Conference & Expo offering an expanded focus on open solutions in the enterprise.

The BostonPHP UG line up in the month's ahead

• April BostonPHP user group: Mitch Pirtle will return to delve deeper into Joomla! Tentative date, April 4th at 6:30 PM at the IT Division of the State of Massachusetts;
• May BostonPHP user group: Chris Shiflett returns to talk about either: more PHP Security, the Zend Framework, or PHP testing (please vote your preference in our poll at http://www.BostonPHP.org) at Optaros;
• June BostonPHP user group: Josh Eichorn will discuss AJAX further during his book tour on the East Coast at IBM

Out-of-town PHP excitement

The New York PHP Conference & Expo 2006 (June 14-16, 2006 ) is taking place in midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the historic New Yorker Hotel. There will be three full days of sessions, tutorials, exhibits, and networking events. Please visit http://www.nyphpcon.com/ for more information.

The PHP Quebec 2006 conference will be held at the Plaza Montreal Hotel from March 29th to March 31st. This year, PHP Quebec will have three distinct tracks of sessions:

* Advanced Techniques, the latest developments on the PHP platform.
* Professional, tools to make you more efficient during the development.
* Database, different solutions that can be used with PHP.

Please visit http://conf.phpquebec.com/en/ for more information