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22
NZ PHP Users Group reaches 300 members
Filed Under PHP - March 22nd, 2007 9:55am
3 years and 10 months ago - back in May of 2003 - I met with one of my PHP development clients Stephen Thoms at Byzantium cafe in Ponsonby, and we decided to start a user group for PHP developers in Auckland and around New Zealand. I left that meeting and set up a list server, and emailed invitations to my other clients and developer friends. Within 6 months we had 50 members, had found another couple of dozen friendly developers through Jochen Daum’s group at Meetup.com, and were getting together in Auckland every month that we could scrape together at least 3 or 4 starters.
Fast forward to today and we’ve just this morning reached 300 members on our shiny new Google Groups list server. There are well-attended (sometimes 30+) meetings in Auckland on the first Thursday of every month (thanks NatColl!) and regular meetings now being held in Wellington too. We’ve got good relationships with other related groups (NZ Web Developers in particular) and the future looks bright with new developers joining daily and initiatives such as Ben Ramsey’s PHP Groups coming on the scene.
The list has seen a few bad times (spamming, flamewars, etc) along with the good, but mostly it’s been a great new channel with opportunities for asking questions, providing knowledge and feedback, seeking work, finding PHP candidates, making contacts, and when things were slow just shooting the breeze with fellow coders. Everyone on the list should be proud of the community they’ve created - I know I am 
Wow, March 22nd! It’s been a while since you posted anything in your blog.