It's with a heavy heart to announce that we've decided to disband the San Diego Laravel User Group (@sandiegolaravel) in 2018. I enjoyed our Laravel Meetups over the years, and the group was a personal project of mine to strengthen the Laravel community in San Diego. We started the group back in April of 2015 and saw our membership grow to 284 Members. Friends were made, a lot of knowledge was shared, and three LaraconUS conferences were held during that time in which several members of the group attended and hung out, we even met some new members. We had some fantastic highlights within the group as well including Hangouts the creator of Laravel Taylor Otwell (@taylorotwell), Laracasts Jeffrey Way (@jeffrey_way) and Adam Wathan(@adamwathan). We also had a couple of great sponsors over the years in Cari.net (@CARInetInc), PayLease(@PayLease), and the DiegoDev Group (@diegodevgroup) all of who we will always appreciate the support they showed us. Finally, there are the others who helped me organize the group Thomas Rideout (@realrideout), Marcus Moore (@marcusamoore) and John Congdon (@johncongdon) all of whom without this group probably would have never even started. But the reality of it is that interest in the Laravel group seems to have been on a decline all year long. Even though we have some fantastic Laravel developers and companies doing exciting things with Laravel in San Diego, the interested in the social aspect of User Group meetings just wasn't appealing. We have a strong core of regulars in the group, but their interest also overlaps with the SDPHP (@sdphp) Meetups. Hence we decided to merge SDLUG back into SDPHP where the idea initially began. What does this mean to people interested in Laravel in San Diego? Well, I am hoping very little. We will be lifting the "embargo" we had on Laravel presentation for the SDPHP, meaning there will still be talks on Laravel, we will also continue to have the weekly Co-working "coding, coffee, and crepes" event for anyone who would like to show up and talk Laravel with me or anyone else in the group. If you were a member of SDLUG, or even if you weren't, we will be having one last social event in November which will be a mixer. No presentation, just socializing and having a few cocktails. The details will be posted on the SDLUG Meetup page in the next couple weeks. Hope to see everyone there. And please remember you are always welcome to reach out to me (@shocm)

On Wednesday, Darryl Rettig presented at the SDLUG monthly meet up on the topic “Row and Attribute Level Security in Eloquent - Protecting Data in an API”. It's always great to be able to have Darry present and we always look forward to hosting him. Also, it's very encouraging to see members of our community come to these meetups to share ideas and interact with each other. If you weren’t able to make the meetup this month, our next one will be on November 15 at 7 PM at our new location at PayLease. We currently don't have a presenter scheduled so, if you would like to present at a SDLUG meetup, let us know and we'd love to have you. Also, join our MeetUp page to be updated on our monthly presentations and other opportunities to work with us. Row and Attribute Level Security in Eloquent - Protecting Data in an API  

On Wednesday, SDLUG hosted Norm Katz as he presented the topic "Running Laravel on Containers". It was a great presentation and it, as always, was amazing to see the people in the community get together and be able to learn from each other. If you weren't able to make the meetup this month, our next one will be on October 25 at 7 PM at our new location at PayLease. Join our MeetUp page to be updated on our monthly presentations and other opportunities to work with us. Running Laravel in Containers

On Wednesday, a small group of people joined with SD Laravel to here Eric Van Johnson give a talk on Laravel models. Thank you everyone who was able to make it this month to the meetup. If you weren't able to be here this time, but don't want to miss the next one, we will be meeting August 23, same time (7 PM), same place (CARI.net). Join our Meetup page to be updated on our monthly presentations and other opportunities to work with us.  

Huge thanks to everyone for another great meetup!