Industry Focused PHP Conference
 

Hey all,

I thought I would post here because it's probably the best way to reach a large portion of the industry regarding something we are planning to coincide with the AVNs in Jan 2014 - a PHP tech conference geared toward the needs of the adult industry called PHPx.

The conference as I said would be held in Vegas around on during the AVN awards and would present itself largely as an edgy mainstream conference but our audience would be adult industry companies. The conference would be broken down into two major segments, the breakout sessions presented by top-tier PHP talent on technical issues that are valuable to the sites the industry runs such as those related to performance, security, architecture, etc. and an executive-level networking event that will give industry technical executives an opportunity to discuss the latest in technology provided by mainstream companies.

Firstly, is there interest in such an event within the industry? Pricing has not yet been finalized but we will be putting together our sponsorship package soon and looking for industry sponsors interested in developer recruitment, etc. so if you represent an interested company please let me know.

Secondly, any feedback any of you have on the concept is much appreciated. From the types of technical issues that would be valuable to have more education on, to format, to anything else on your mind. The goal of this conference in my eyes is to provide the same quality of technical exposure and corporate networking as is available to other industries.

Cheers!

I'm sorry, but no .. this is ridiculous. First of all, the AVN show is over. Second, there are so few skilled developers in adult (saying 10 in the other thread was being nice .. there's really like 3 of us that are truly senior-level) that you'd have to charge us each $20,000 to turn a profit. What would we talk about that we don't already on Skype?

If you don't realize, those of us who are very good turn away WAY more work than we ever take on. It's just not hard to get contracts, and to make very good money if you have the least bit of communication skills and are a VERY good developer.

Like I said in the other thread (I won't keep cross posting and keep it in the right forum), this conference isn't necessarily so much for the senior level guys -- it's for the guys who want to be senior level. I'd love to have you speak at such an event about your experiences if you wanted to submit a talk but the concept here is that there are a lot of adult shops with PHP staff that could be better and might find it valuable to send them to such an event and learn something.

So I'd be interested in hearing what your thoughts are with that in mind, coming from the mainstream side of things I am always hearing about larger adult-focused shops starving for quality development skills (or an opportunity to recruit quality skills).

I think you may misunderstand the state of adult development. Adult as an industry attracts a lot of "last resort" type of folks. Most of the developers are unable to consistently deliver on milestones, or lack the skill to even work with object-oriented code. Forget design patterns, MVC principles, or unit testing -- 90% or higher just don't do it. It's good for the top 5% or 10% of us (my rate is $225/hr), but the possibility of "growing" some of the junior-level guys into senior-level guys is nearly nil.

I don't want to rain on your parade (really, I don't), but after almost two decades of developing and hiring developers in adult, I can tell you that the guys who need the conference are too broke to come, and the guys who don't need it would see no value in attending. Believe me, I'd love this ... but it's not like the top of the food chain needs MORE contracts, we're all turning business away as it is.