Laracon US 2017 is now over, and it was another fantastic event to meet up with old friends and meet new ones in the community. This year it was held in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York at a venue called New World Stages.
“I attended my first Laracon in person and I have to say I really enjoyed the experience — maybe more than I expected to.” said Sid K. in his Laracon Recap, “It was well organised and the talks were diverse, informative and actionable.”
Photo by [Bill Condo](https://www.flickr.com/photos/billcondo/sets/72157686819512445/)In my opinion, one of the best features of all Laracon’s is that they are held in some of the nicest venues around in the heart of the city. No hotel or airport convention centers here. The benefit to this is during the down time you get the chance to tour the city and see new places.
Ready for the Central Park JogFor example, Daniel Abernathy setup a Central Park [morning jog](https://twitter.com/dabernathy89/status/884407006613975043) and had about a dozen people come out to run. It was great chance to meet new people and see the park.
Photo by [NinjaParade](https://twitter.com/ninjaparade)This year for the first time, the event featured two tracks, the main talks, and a science fair. The science fair is unique in that it allowed people to showcase what they’ve been working on and for those new to speaking, talk on a smaller stage than the main track.
The keynote is always the highlight of the event and this year Taylor covered some of the new Laravel 5.5 features and then announced Laravel Horizon, which combines a beautiful dashboard and code-driven configuration system for your Laravel Redis queues.
