If you have spent anytime talking to people in either the Montreal or Toronto WordPress communities, chances are that at some point you have heard the name Brendan Sera-Shriar, or as he is more likely referred to, Digibomb.

www.phug.ca

A bit of history
When PHUG initially launched back in 2006 we were a small group of Seneca College students and faculty. The idea was simple, let’s get together once a week after class and geek out. Originally we wanted to start a PHP user group in Toronto, but soon realized we could, and wanted to, do more. So began PHUG, an open source community whose focus was to bring students and professionals together through free workshops on all things open source.

Success soon followed. Our workshops went from 10 people a week to 70 in a few months! Membership on the on the blog went from 50 users to over 4000 in less than a year! PHUG became known in Toronto as one of the hottest open source meetups to attend.

We eventually began organizing large events like WordCamp Toronto 2009, where we doubled numbers from the previous year.

With all this success why did we stop? Unfortunately, like most open source communities and projects, we ran out of money and those involved in organizing events and meetups had less and less time to devote.

That’s the past.

New design, new features, and a new vision
I felt it was time to bring PHUG back from the dead. So I connected with some ex-phug’ers, colleagues, and community organizers to see how we could re-invent PHUG. This time around our focus is to bring you the most current information on all things open source from events, workshops, communities, projects, tutorials, and more on our new site. Based on years of user feedback and ton of great advice from seasoned community leaders we have decided to completely revamp the site into what you seen now.

We have decided to go with a forum instead of a blog, but not just any forum. We are using Vanilla Forums, a powerful and sexy open source technology that meets all our needs.

With a forum every PHUG member has a voice! Feel free to start discussion, share your thoughts, connect with other members. Post an event, a tutorial, useful links, and more.

Together we can build a strong community and a better PHUG!

So, let’s get PHUG’in!

The events rundown:

• #DEVTrain (aka #nerdtrain) from Toronto to Montreal on the VIA Rail with http://devtrain.ca GPS tracker – Sponsored by Microsoft
• MonDev Open Source Demo Camp – An evening of ignite style presentations!
• WebCamp – Is a group of webheads, passionate individuals living and working with/in/on the web.
• StartUpDrinks Montreal – Is a monthly freestyle networking event hosted in pubs and bars by startup community instigators from coast to coast.
• Make Web Not War – Canada’s first cross-platform conference showcasing the latest techniques and technologies available to the ever-evolving web community, jointly sponsored by Microsoft and Open Source communities across Canada and PHP Quebec.
• CodeFest – Run by devLAB Montréal, PHPQuebec & Windows Azure
• FTW! Coding Competition – showdown featuring #findahome, #tholus, #taxicity
• Twitter Wall – A very cool app built by Jet Cooper
• After Party at Jello Martini Bar & Lounge – catered by Schwartz & sushi

For a first run the week went well, since I only had to organize one night I hope to get more communities in Montreal involved for next year and put together a full schedule of events.

Huge shout-outs!

• Arun Kirupa – Web Not Wat
  
• Angie Lim – Web Not War
• Marc Laporte – Tiki
  
• Yann Larivee – PHP Quebec
  
• Robin Ahn – StartUpDrinks Montreal
  
• Renoir Boulanger – DevLab
  
• Jeremy Wright
• Jenna Hoff – Web Not War
  
• The Vanilla Crew
• The Web Not War Crew
  

If you want to get involved for next year let me know!

make sure to follow the Vanilla progress on twitter and facebook, plus I will be uploading screenshots of the new themes on flickr soon…

I’ve been working on some experimental Vanilla themes and can’t wait to release them. I’ll publishing a ton of new tutorials here and on the Vanilla blog soon.

I have also been planning a few events, most importantly MonDev which starts next week! I’ll be organizing and presenting at MonDev Open Source Demo Camp next Tuesday May 25. Mark will also be a doing a presentation on Vanilla 2, so make sure to check that out. I’ll be at StartUpdrinks on Wednesday May 26th, come have a drink with me and the Vanilla crew. Thursday is Make Web Not War, I’ll be doing a presentation on WordPress on Windows, plus I am looking forward to the truce party that night!

More to come…

I will also be helping organize WordCamp Montreal this year and a few Vanilla events (can’t say anything yet)

If that’s not enough … I still have the next issue of creer to work on and I am hoping to finally re-launch PHUG! Maybe I’ll build it using Vanilla this time.

The next few weeks are hectic, but I am looking forward to meeting up with old friends and and hanging out…

Here’s how it all started…

Google has a special logo up on the Google home page today. The Google logo is made up of legos, to celebrate Lego’s 50 year birthday.

Google’s culture has always had a special place for Lego. Google’s first servers were “modded” up with Legos. The Google founders have admitted to having a special “fondness” towards Legos, and we all know that computer geeks can’t get enough of their legos. Google has Lego art in their offices. Lego fans have built Google logos in Lego, and so have Googlers themselves.

If you visit Google.com, you will see the logo. You won’t see it after you do a search on Google, so there won’t be a small Google lego logo (or at least not at the time I am writing this). Google UK has the logo, and so do Google France, Google Mexico, Google Israel, and Google Denmark. In fact, it appears all Google country-specific sites may have the special logo up for the day. That doesn’t happen with all special logos, so this is truly an international celebration!

Lets see yours!

I can’t wait to test it out!

Some other features included:

• CSS inspection
• Integration with Adobe Browser Lab
• PHP custom class code hinting
• Subversion support
• Site specific code hinting (for example WordPress)

Read more here