Well, it's official: My IT Manager convinced those in the upper echelons (well, considering it's a non-profit with only around 20 employees, that meant the president and the CFO) that (1) he and I need to attend a PHP conference, (2) due to the amount of work we've been putting in to bring money into the organization, cost shouldn't be too much of a deciding factor, and (3) php|Tropics isn't too expensive, especially considering the sessions involved cover some of the very issues we've been struggling with the past few months (PHP/MySQL/Apache and clusters, PHP5 OOP, PHP Security, test-driven development, Smarty, and more).

So, we're going to Cancun in May!

This is incredibly exciting! I've never been to Mexico, nor even a resort, so I'll finally get to find out what my wife and friends have been talking about all these years. Plus, the conference is top-notch — many of the presenters are well-known in the PHP community, and have blogs I've been following for the past year. (I only wish that Chris Shiflett's PHP Security series wasn't running head-to-head with the PHP5 OOP Extensions and PHP 5 Patterns sessions; I suspect Rob and I will have to do a divide-and-conquer that day.)

Drop me a line if you'll be attending — I'm looking forward to meeting other PHP junkies!