Pusher and Twilio sponsoring PHP UK 2013 Hackspace and Hackathon

We’re stoked to announce that we’re sponsoring the PHP Conference UK 2013 hackspace and hackathon with our friends at Twilio.

This is the 8th Annual PHP UK conference where 600 delegates, speakers and sponsors are thrown together to learn and share about PHP and related web technologies. The hackathon and conference take place at The Brewery in London (is there a better place for such an event?) on the 22nd and 23rd of February.

Pusher & PHP

Traditional PHP web stacks (LAMP/WAMP/IIS+PHP) were built with HTTP in mind. They work very well with the request/response paradigm, but don’t cope well when it comes to maintaining persistent connections to many clients. This can make it difficult to build PHP applications that meet user demands for web applications that delivery frequent content updates or interactive experiences – Realtime Web Applications.

Our service offloads the need to create and maintain your own scalable realtime infrastructure which means new applications can be built on traditional PHP web stacks and still offer realtime functionality. It also means that existing applications can easily be upgraded to offer realtime features.

Hackspace

We’ve teamed up with Twilio to sponsor the hackspace and the hackathon. We’re opening up the hackerspace to all conference attendees. Whilst we’d love it if you would get involved with the official Realtime Communications hackathon we also want the space to be used by everybody to do some hacking – even if it’s just on your own projects.

The Hackspace before the storm (it won’t be purple)

So, please come along to the hackspace to chill out on beanbags, work in groups on the tables provided, grab a Red Bull, munch on snacks and talk tech with the other attendees or anybody from Pusher (Syl, Rich, Olga and Phil (me)) and Twilio.

Realtime Communications Hackathon

Those that want to get involved with the main Realtime Communications hack have the opportunity to win lots of swag including Raspberry Pis, AeroPress coffee gadgets, Pusher plans, Twilio credit, 1 month free on the 3-month or 6-month subscription to Bean & Ground Coffee a bunch of other swag.

The Web is now much more than a static set of entities representing unchanging information. It’s now our main communication platform with the ability to integrate realtime messaging, voice, video and much more.

For this hackathon we want to see the web used as a true realtime communication platform. By using your PHP skills along with Pusher and Twilio’s awesome APIs we can’t wait to see what you build.

You can start planning your hack now and when you are ready be sure to sign up to the PHP UK Conference Hackathon.

Prizes Anytime

You don’t even need to enter the main hackathon to win a prize. Simply build something cool with the Pusher and/or Twilio API and we may give thanks in the form of swag.

Realtime Web Talk

I’ll also be giving a talk about the use cases for Realtime Web technologies. I’ll provide some general information about how the technology can be used, some solid examples of where it’s being used now and we’ll also get to have a play with some demos. My talk involves the use of a 2nd Screen application, which complements my talk. It should be lots of fun, so please make come along.

Ready for PHP UK 2013?

There are still a few tickets available so it’s not too late to snap one up and attend.

Be sure to sign up to the PHP Conference Hackathon Hacker League and start thinking about the type of Realtime Communications hack you’d like to put together. If you’re looking for inspiration why not have a look at the Pusher blog (here), the [Pusher PHP library](https://github.com/pusher/pusher-php-server, the Twilio blog and the Twilio PHP library to see how you can use these two awesome realtime communications technologies to win some prizes, but more importantly have lots of fun innovating and creating.

Look forward to seeing you and PHP UK 2013 and please don’t hesitate to get in touch before the event if you’ve got any hack ideas you’d like to soundboard.