I’ve recently watched Rasmus Lerdorf’s presentation at Etsy, and I highly encourage you to watch it if you are a PHP Developer and want to know where the language is going.
There were many take aways for me. The biggest was the list of gotchas, Rasmus has noticed while working with different start-ups over the years. Another great part is his explanations of PHP 5.4, including traits, closures, and stuff that is no longer supported. He does a very good job at explaining the intricacies of those new features.
It is a pretty long video, but worth it. Make sure to stick around for the QA as well.
(Source: brandonsavage.net)