Since moving to Las Vegas, I’ve joined the PHP Users Group. Overall it’s been a great experience meeting people in the community and hearing about more PHP stuff. Since I’ve been there I’ve given a few talks and figured I should list them here.
First up, a talk that was an introduction to CakePHP. Probably my best talk out of the three listed. It was informative, with lots of questions and I knew the material really well (one would hope considering it is my day job).
Next was a talk on Ember.js, this one didn’t turn out so well. I under prepared for it, and it showed. It also didn’t help that I mostly based my talk on a co-worker’s slides. Overall this was novice hour for me. Moral of the story – don’t give talks unless you know the information and don’t try to base a talk using someone else’s work.
Last presentation was one on PHPUnit, which went ok. I knew the material better than the Ember stuff but there were a few weak areas. Overall I think it went pretty well but it could have gone better.
Some random thoughts on public speaking
Public speaking (of a sort) is something that I used to do much more often, it’s been good to stretch that part of my brain over the past few months and get a handle on delivering talks that deal with technical information for a generally technical audience. It is definitely something I want to do more of in the future and to get better at.
Not everyone may want to do this type of thing, but if you are interested in it, I would urge you to give it a shot. It is easier than what you think. I would suggest pick a topic you are very familiar with and can answer questions on the fly about. Feel free if you get a question that you can’t answer to say so, rather than present imprecise information.