Update -- Canadian Thanksigiving 2022

Update -- Canadian Thanksigiving 2022

by Bob Bloom

category: "meet-ups"

Hello PHP-ers && Artisans,

Unfortunately, our Laravel Toronto meet-up at Maple Online Health at Spadina/Adelaide had to be postponed, tentatively, for November.

I am very happy to meet-up somewhere else this month. It's been just way too long since we've had an in-person Laravel Toronto meet-up. Speak up if you are interested. When and where?

We can do a "coffee-and-code" kind of thing. We can meet at a pub. I can look for a community centre space like we've done for York Region PHP -- hey, it's been a while since we've seen a hockey game after the meet-up (for those who remember that). What do you think? I am very interested in what you think about this?

I set up a GitHub Organization for GTA-PHP. I am pretty well decided to set up websites for each group with GitHub Pages. Using the Hugo static site generator. Right now, I am considering adapting a TailwindUI Template to Hugo. There is an ongoing "discussion" at our GH org site, so take a look. I am appreciative of all your opinions and counsel, as it's all new to me. But, looking very good.

MailCoach Online was released recently. I signed up for the trial, and I like it as an email list thing. It's a Spatie SASS. I just sent an email to MailCoach with a few questions, but I expect to sign up shortly, and get email lists set-up there-after. I think this is such a great sponsorship opportunity that I am going to sponsor this one. However, the TailwindUI looks like it's up for grabs as a sponsorship opportunity, if anyone is interested ☺

So, at some point in the near future you are going to be asked to sign up for the Groups' emails. Right now, I am thinking that I am going to do up a form, but instead of that form interacting directly with MailCoach, I am going to then manually enter emails into MC myself. I am thinking that I can then match people on meetup.com with sign-ups. Just a way of keeping the bullshit off the lists, by manually intervening.

The Saturday "PHP Day" meet-up is a great idea, but the money involved is ridiculous for a venue for what it is supopsed to be. The research has been intriguing and eye-opening as a prelude to organizing a "real" PHP Conference. I still think I am crazy, but I am still seriously considering organizing a "PHP Day Toronto 2023" in the fall of 2023. We'll see. Not a lot of in-person PHP conferences going on. There's Longhorn, and PHP Tek is in Chicago in May 2023. What are your opinions about "PHP Day Toronto"? Start a topic in the "GTA-PHP" GitHub Discussions.

I also put proposed meet-ups on meetup.com. 

That's my quick update ☺
-Bob