What about a local PHP user group?

Last week I met with a local businessman who was interested in finding a local PHP expert/consultant for a project that he’s expanding. He already has a long-distance PHP guy doing work for him, but also wanted someone local. This got me to thinking; aside from myself and a few isolated individuals, and Alpine, who are the PHP people for Central Oregon? Are there any PHP-specific shops or consultants who are available for this kind of thing? If not, why not? And how would anyone find out about them?

My next thought, invariably, was We need a local PHP user group for exactly this kind of thing. A local organization where any and all of the PHP programmers/users can get together, and perhaps build a directory of services and maybe even host events.

Would this be of interest to anyone? I’m actually pretty ignorant about the user group thing (it’s probably been close to a decade since I’ve been anywhere near a user group type of function), so I may not actually know of which I speak. For instance, is there already a Central Oregon PHP user group that I’m totally unaware of?

I’d be interested in getting involved one way or another. What says the community-at-large?

6 comments

  1. Sign me up! I’m no whiz, but I’d like to play like one 🙂

    (and I remember that there used to be a Bend PHP Meetup group on meetup.org — and I was one of 2 folks on it, so I wouldn’t use that service)

  2. OK, so we were it — but there’s got to be others (I know there’s a local *nix user group that Mark is a part of, so maybe some of those folks could join up).

  3. I am just getting started with PHP, but am pretty proficient with HTML and ColdFusion… please let me know if you start a Bend usergroup for any of these. PDX is just too far for an evening meeting! Thanks 🙂

  4. I started a PHP user group in Atlanta that’s over 300 strong now. I don’t know if there’s quite the demand here…

    But, I’d show up if we started meeting…

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