Laravel Live UK was a one-day conference held on 12th June 2018 by the team behind the Laravel London Meetup – and it would be my first proper training conference. I was slightly apprehensive and unsure of what to expect, but also excited about the possibility of meeting some of the incredibly talented presenters and conference-goers. And what better place to host the event than the impressive British Library.
As attendees collected their name badges and giveaway t-shirts then grabbed their seats, conference organiser Jonty (@jontybehr), took to the stage to welcome us. He started by handing out a few free PHPStorm annual subscriptions which were very gratefully received.
We then settled in for some great presentations. Here are a few of my highlights:
Matt Stauffer
Matt (@stauffermatt) helped me answer a question that I’ve previously been posed on numerous occasions – is Laravel really up to the task of taking on the enterprise world? The answer? Of course it is! He then provided a great overview of why Laravel is a suitable pick for enterprise projects due to being secure, flexible, easy to upgrade and offering an array of excellent built-in and third party components. He rounded off the presentation nicely with a comprehensive list of success stories.
Matt also proposed that when developing our apps and websites we shouldn’t waste undue time prematurely anticipating what might happen. We need to ensure that our code is modular, extensible and updatable, but we should develop for now.
Cross that bridge when you come to it – code for change
Steve Popoola
Steve’s (@stpopoola) talk was a fun and light-hearted look into his experience of “Leveraging Laravel Notifications”. His detailed demonstration of converting an awkward, eight-step process involving Slack, SMS and e-mail messages into a re-usable, neat three-part process was really eye-opening. The talk only improved as technical gremlins affecting his mouse threw the entire demo into a spin: “my mouse is independent of my movement!”.
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
Franz Liedke
Franz (@franzliedke), a veteran Laravel contributor, provided an excellent insight into extending and modifying the core components of Laravel through a series of custom service providers. His talk was impressive, but his live coding at the end is what really stole the show.
A great conference and atmosphere
The conference obviously had a whole lot more to offer than what I have mentioned above, but I hope this gives you a flavour. The atmosphere was a friendly and welcoming one; Jonty and his team did a great job in organising. I picked up a wide range of new skills and knowledge from many different backgrounds and I look forward to more from Laravel UK in future.
