Now we celebrate the second anniversary of the PHP Usergroup Dortmund. 2 years of geeky and professional exchange, interresting talks, nice events like the php weekender and most important - the FRIENDSHIP.
2 years ago when I was searching for a usergroup in Dortmund and near surrounding there was none. But I couldnt believe that there are no PHP People in Dortmund at all. So I browsed phpug.de, but except one post in the forum nothing raised like this. So I decided that I want to change that and find others that share my interrests.
So I talked with Thomas Weinert on IRC and asked him to add a UG Dortmund to the page to get people together. I contacted the people from which I know they might be interrested and posted on the forums and so on.
The first 3 or 4 meetings we consistet of only 2-3 people (and around 5 interrested people I was aware of). In between by fortuity I read on Toby's blog that he is moving to Dortmund. After a bit searching I found his ICQ Number and contacted him, if he would like to visit us as well. He aggreed and helped by setting up a mailinglist for better synchronization. Soon after that more an more people registered to the list. Jakob (which I knew before over the web) also joined. And on the fifth meeting we consisted as far as I can remember of 5 or 6 people.
That was also the first day I meet Kore. I looked at his website when he registered to the list. And I first thought "OMG" when I saw that he tried to generate 3D with php. On one of the following meetings he also presented shortly was later became Image3D. It was impressive.
When I founded the UG in March 2005 I only hoped to find some guys which like to talk a bit about php. I never dreamed of the cool thing it became. A group of nice and friendly geeks with a high level of php knowledge.
I want to thank all of them for making this a success. The support with organization and hosting made the ball rolling very quickly.
I also want to thank eZ Systems for providing us with hardware and rooms for our meetings.
Seeing them every week (yes you read right, sometimes more often) at the meeting is always a thing I await happily.
Update: Toby also blogged about it.
