At PHP Brasil '08, one of the themes I saw was community involvement. You've probably already read my previous post about Felipe Pena as a role model. Rafael Dohms gave a talk about getting involved in the PHP community and becoming more professional. In post-conference conversation, Luke Crouch (SourceForge) and I touched on what is gained from attending conferences, and how quickly technology is picked up in Brazil.

So, one thing I specifically did during the conference was to encourage the organizers and presenters to make the English speaking world more aware of their activities.

Guilherme Lacerda has taken up this challenge and translated his talk abstracts to English:
http://guilhermelacerda.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/php-conference-brasil-2008-descricao-das-palestras-em-ingles/

Like several people I met in São Paulo, Guilherme wears many hats. He is CTO of Apoena Software Livre http://www.apoenasoftwarelivre.com.br, coordinator of the Information System course at FACENSA Faculty http://www.facensa.com.br, and is also teaching a postgraduate course at UniRitter http://www.uniritter.edu.br. In community work he is a co-coordinator of a group discussing eXtreme programming and Agile methods. Phew.

Let's hope we see more north-south hemisphere cross over with this big and exciting part of the world.