From A to Li!
Lithium (aka li3) is the result of the CakePHP hackers spin off targeting PHP 5.3 and using the best it offers.
We'll go from the simple stuff to the hack we are using at QoQa.ch (and the others linked shops). Many gist of codes.
The slides are there: http://yoan.dosimple.ch/misc/li3/slides.html
You may find other presentations very usefull too: http://www.slideshare.net/tag/li3