Every great talk you've ever seen at a conference started the same way: someone decided their experience was worth sharing. Not because they had it all figured out. Not because they were the smartest person in the room. But because they'd fought a battle, with a framework, a legacy codebase, a gnarly bug, a career pivot, and figured that someone else in the audience was fighting the same one.

That someone could be you. The PHP Tek 2027 Call for Presentations is officially open, and we want to hear what you've got.

Submit your talk idea →

You Know More Than You Think

Here's the thing, almost every first-time speaker gets wrong: they assume they need to be a world expert to stand at the front of the room. They don't. The best conference talks aren't lectures from on high, they're one developer turning to another and saying, “Here's what I learned the hard way, so you don't have to.”

You've shipped something. You've debugged something at 2 a.m. that had no business being that hard. You've adopted a tool, migrated a system, wrangled a queue, tamed a test suite, or talked your team out of a bad decision. You've got opinions about PHP, about architecture, about the parts of this job nobody warns you about. Every one of those is a talk. The trick isn't having rare knowledge, it's being willing to share the knowledge you already have.

And if you've never done this before? Even better. First-time speakers bring a freshness and honesty that seasoned presenters sometimes lose. You remember what it's like to not know the thing yet, which makes you a far better guide for the people in the audience who are right where you were a year ago.

What You Get Out of It (Besides Nerves)

Let's be honest about the nerves; they're real, and they never fully go away. But here's what's waiting on the other side of them.

You learn your material like never before. There's no faster way to truly master a topic than to prepare to teach it. Building a talk forces you to understand the “why” behind every “how,” and you'll walk away a sharper developer than when you started.

You get seen. Speaking puts your name and your work in front of a room full of peers, hiring managers, open-source maintainers, and future collaborators. Careers change because of a single talk. Conversations that start in the hallway after your session have a way of becoming job offers, partnerships, and lifelong friendships.

You earn the gratitude of the community. The PHP community is one of the most welcoming and generous in all of tech, and it has enormous respect for the people who give back by teaching. When you share what you know, you're not just filling a time slot; you're paying forward every talk, blog post, and Stack Overflow answer that ever helped you. People remember that. They'll come find you to say thank you, and they'll mean it.

We've Got Your Back

We know that getting on stage is a big ask, so we work to make saying “yes” as easy as possible. As a PHP Tek 2027 speaker, we cover some of the essentials so the cost of sharing your knowledge doesn't fall entirely on you:

• A basic flight to get you to the conference. (Heads up: baggage fees and travel to and from the airport are on you, so plan accordingly.)

• Hotel accommodations for one night, plus one additional night for each presentation you agree to give. Most of our speakers deliver two talks, which means three nights covered.

• A full conference ticket, so you get to enjoy every session, workshop, and hallway conversation right alongside the attendees.

In other words: bring the ideas, and we'll help handle the logistics.

What We're Looking For

PHP Tek has always been about the full stack of a developer's life, the code and the career. We want deep technical dives into PHP internals, frameworks, testing, security, performance, and architecture. We also want the human side: leadership, mentorship, communication, team health, and everything else that makes us better at the job beyond the keyboard. Beginner-friendly, expert-level, or somewhere in between, there's a seat for your topic on our schedule.

Don't self-reject. That talk idea you just talked yourself out of because “someone's probably already covered it”? Nobody's covered it the way you would. Your perspective, your war stories, and your voice are exactly what make a talk worth attending.

Ready? Let's Do This.

Submissions are open now, and spots on the schedule fill up faster than you'd expect, so don't sit on that idea. Whether you're a veteran speaker with a dozen talks under your belt or someone who's never held a microphone in their life, we want to read your submission.

Take the leap. The community is waiting to learn from you.

Submit your talk for PHP Tek 2027 →

We can't wait to see you on stage.