On the 7th and 8th of December we were in Brussels for the long-awaited SymfonyCon Brussels 2023. This year the fantastic international Symfony community gathered in the Belgian capital for another conference full of inspiring talks and two days of fun. Relive it with us!
SensioLabs, Diamond Sponsor of the conference
After a very successful SymfonyCon at Disneyland Paris last year, SensioLabs, the creator of Symfony, once again supported the event as a Diamond Sponsor.
We couldn’t wait to meet Symfony developers from all over the world. This year, more than 1,200 attendees gathered at the Square Center Brussels conference center, located in the heart of the capital.
During the breaks, participants discovered the SensioLabs booth. We welcomed them with our goodies and our unmissable SensioLabs University Platform challenge. Many attendees tested their knowledge of the framework and then shared their results with each other. After the challenge, the best participant went home with a JBL wireless headphone. The other participants with similar results received a SensioLabs branded sport bottle. The competition was tight!
To celebrate the event and treat the participants, we offered a pyramid of Belgian chocolates during the lunch break on Thursday. The tasting was a great success and took less than 30 minutes!
Our favourite talks
Like every year, it’s hard to choose between all the fabulous talks! Here is a selection of our favourite talks:
- Guillaume Loulier, developer at SensioLabs, talked about “Need to search your data? Have you heard of Meilisearch?” Guillaume described MeiliSearch, a Rust-based search engine, and how to integrate it into PHP / Symfony. In his talk, he showed us how to use it and how to search through our data to extract the most of it.
- Antoine Bluchet presented “A serverless Symfony playground”. In his presentation, Antoine described “WebAssembly”, a technology that allows programs to be compiled and run in the browser. Antoine showed us how to compile PHP in WebAssembly and how to run Symfony directly in the browser without the need for a (PHP) server.
- Our third talk was by Christophe Hertel with “How to use GPT with your Symfony application”. In his talk, Christophe took a closer look at the basic concepts of GPT, the relevant models and how to use them effectively in your Symfony application.
A fantastic social event !
Thursday evening saw the fabulous SymfonyCon evening, hosted by Symfony. The event took place at the Belgian Comic Strip Center, an iconic and historic venue in the Belgian capital. A unique setting accompanied by a group of musicians 🎶, for a skilfully orchestrated mix!
Between the adventures of Tintin, the world of the Smurfs and the legendary Marsupilami, some of us returned to our childhoods. Others discovered the story behind the creation of some of the literary masterpieces. After this cultural moment, the evening ended at the museum’s restaurant, immersed in the atmosphere of the place.
With the SensioLabs team, we took advantage of this event to meet some of the developers working in remote and share some convivial moments outside the conferences. Together, we discovered the local gastronomy, from delicious waffles to the unmissable Belgian fries. Finally, we also visited the wonderful Grand’place in Brussels, decorated in Christmas colours.
It was a pleasure to sponsor SymfonyCon again!
Congratulations to Symfony for organizing this conference, which is always a highlight, and to the speakers for their talks! You can watch in replay all the talks by purchasing a ticket on the Symfony conference website.
As for us, we look forward to seeing you next year at…. Vienna (Austria) 🦅 for the next SymfonyCon 2024!
See you soon 👋
