Tag Archives: speaking

30 Nov
2009

Speaking at PHP Benelux 2010

I’m delighted to announce that I’m speaking at the inaugural PHP Benelux Conference, to be held on Saturday 30th January in Antwerp, Belgium. The talk will be “Passing the Joel Test in the PHP World”; I gave this talk PHPNW09 in October and it was well-received there, so hopefully I can bring the same insight and inspiration to attendees at this new event as well!

On a personal level I’m very pleased to have a reason to visit the Low Countries – Ibuildings is a dutch company and I’m already making plans to link up with my colleagues there by extending the trip by a few days. I’ve also never been to Antwerp so I’m hoping I’ll see something of the city while I’m there, if time allows. The benelux user group contains many friends so I’m looking forward to what I know will be an excellent event and catching up with all the friends who will be there.

If you are attending, or thinking of it, let me know – and come and say “hi” to me on the day :)

20 Nov
2009

Conference Biography Help

I’ve been updating my conference details recently, in order to submit my talks for php|tek in Chicago (the call for papers closes on Monday – get your submissions in!). One thing which I struggled with is my biography, I used to have a paragraph which sort of said “Lorna is a PHP Developer and involved with PHPWomen”, and I used that same entry for every conference for a year or more. However, just like speaker photos, biographies do date. I’ve taken on more responsibilities at work and I’ve been doing more things in the community as well so it was time for a refresh.

I’m quite happy with my new bio:

Lorna Jane Mitchell is a senior developer who speaks, writes and blogs on a variety of technical topics. At Ibuildings she runs the PHP Academy, meaning she’s involved in managing and coaching trainers, hosting seminars and conferences, building a training programme and representing Ibuildings within the PHP community. Lorna is the Editor-in-Chief at Ibuildings techPortal and blogs regularly at lornajane.net. In her spare time she is the European Representative of PHPWomen and is an organiser of the PHPNW user group and conference.

Getting This Far

To get to this point, I started with a list of things I should include. My job, my blog, my community activity, my technical interests. There’s definitely scope for including unexpected information here, I’m seriously thinking of adding my knitting hobby into this paragraph!

I then turned my points into sentences, and emailed the result to a few people to read. Even if you’re secretly hoping someone else will write your bio for you, its often easier for them to criticise something you have written than to start from scratch themselves. I always take this approach even when I know I’m probably making a hash of it, if I’m asking for someone’s input, I take the time to attempt it myself and send them the result. I’m enormously grateful to everyone who has reviewed my biographies and talk proposals, and I’m always happy to do the same for others when I can find the time.

Proofreaders can pick up spelling mistakes and help you put your best foot forward, it might be embarrassing to write about yourself but is it more or less embarrassing than having a lame biography printed in a conference programme?

03 Nov
2009

PHP Barcelona 2009: Round-Up

I spent the last few days in sunny Spain at the PHP Barcelona conference as a speaker. Happily the most reasonably-priced flights gave me some time while I was there to get into the city, I was very keen to see it because I haven’t been before. The trip was made much more enjoyable by our gracious hosts who transported us between the venue and hotel most nights (and it was a very nice hotel too!) and arranged a speaker dinner that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The conference itself was excellent – I spoke about “Working with Web Services” which is basically an overview of everything you need to know to be able to consume web services. The slides for that are online at http://www.slideshare.net/lornajane/working-with-web-services.

I also saw some great talks from the other speakers there, some were people I often see at conferences, others were familiar names, and yet more were people I’d never heard of but I certainly learned a lot from all these groups. One thing that struck me was that the majority of the conference talks were in English – my experiences from looking at these events in southern Europe is that they tend to be held in the local language which of course makes them much less useful to me. This event was predominantly in English, the introduction and (most of) closing session were in English, and most of the talks were too. Whether this signifies a shift in the culture of technical events in Spain or whether this was simply a nice decision by the organisers I’m not sure.

I also made it out into the city which was beautiful. When I publicised my trips, so many people sent me information about their favourite places to go, trips to take and so on that I dubbed Barcelona “city of memories”! I didn’t make it to very many of those this time around but I’ll definitely return to the city in the future – its simply breathtaking.

Parc Guell

Congratulations to the organisers – I’m looking forward to the event in 2010 ;)

23 Oct
2009

Speaking at Bradford LUG

Next week I’m taking the plunge and attending a LUG (Linux User Group) meeting for the first time when I attend the Bradford LUG meeting on Wednesday as a speaker. I’ll be giving my talk “Working With Web Services” which I’ll give at PHP Barcelona a mere 36 hours later (Wednesday is the dry-run, let’s hope it goes well!). I’m excited about this topic and looking forward to meeting a new group of geeks – if you are in the area then I hope you’ll pop in and join us.
13 Oct
2009

PHPNW09: In Conclusion

Last weekend was the second annual PHP North West Conference, held at Manchester Conference Centre and attended by 200 people. We kicked off our weekend on Friday night, with a pre-conference social in a pub near to the conference venue. There wasn’t really enough space but it contained geeky things and sold actual beer, which seemed appropriate. Saturday morning saw the delegates arriving bright and early, ready for our Keynote from Kevlin Henney “The Uncertainty Principle”. He had a whole room full of developers laughing along with him in the early morning – what a great session :)

Next up it was my turn to speak – speaking at a conference that you’re also organising and doing the paper selection for has been a bit of a strange experience, I’d never say “never again” but both things detracted from the other slightly. My talk was “Passing the Joel Test in the PHP World”, which is a re-take of the Joel Test, adapted for web development – its a nice opportunity for me to get some of my thoughts across on a range of best practices and the slides are available online. Once I began speaking and my nerves got out of the way, I almost enjoyed myself – I got some great questions from people in the bar in the evening as well, hopefully I’ll be giving that talk again some time. We used joind.in to allow our attendees to leave feedback – they were great and the comments are still coming in. I was blown away by the feedback on my own talk however – conference organisers please take note!

The rest of the day was a whirl of organisation, chatting with people in the hallway, and catching a few bits and pieces of talks – I did see more talks this year than last year though which I was very pleased about. At the end of the day we had a session with some content from our premier sponsor Microsoft, a whole bunch of giveaways, and I was able to take the microphone once more to thank the organisers, particularly Jeremy and his team from Solution Perspective Media – after which it was time to party. The food was excellent all day, and Sun had put money behind the bar which took us almost all night to drink, they definitely financed some sizeable hangovers!

This year for the first time we also had an informal day on the Sunday, this was something I was deeply involved with organising and I think it went pretty well. Arriving ten minutes before the start time to find speakers, attendees, and a venue with the cafe already open was a welcome surprise before 9am on a Sunday morning! The five speakers that morning were a mix of experienced speakers, new speakers, core PHP topics and a few allied technologies. Plenty of people dropped in to hear a session or two and explore MOSI through the morning, I think it was a nice addition to the schedule.

All that remains is to extend a huge thanks to our speakers, helpers, sponsors and of course the attendees – if you were there I hope you had a great time!

25 Sep
2009

Speaking at PHP Barcelona

I’m delighted to announce I’ll be speaking at the PHP Barcelona Conference in October. This is a new speaking topic for me, although I’ve been working and blogging in this area for a while, with a talk entitled “Working with Web Services”. Its a very technical session looking at different types of services and the tools available for working with them. We’ll also delve into overviews of how these services actually work and how we can troubleshoot when things go wrong. I’m really excited about writing and delivering this talk topic, and equally excited about my first trip to Barcelona and meeting lots of new people in the PHP community in Spain. If you are going – hope to see you there, come and say hi :)
21 Sep
2009

Dedicated Talks Page

With increasing numbers of speaking engagements, I’ve decided that its time to add a dedicated page to this site just to list talks I’ve given and wil be giving, and link through to slides, blog posts, and perhaps some photos of me speaking (not sure about that last one). So if you’re looking for material from a talk I’ve given – take a look at the talks page, you can find everything there.

I’ve added all the past talks of note (made much easier by my tendency to blog and tag all these experiences!), let me know if you have any questions or comments!

04 Sep
2009

Speaking at PHPNW09

I have experience of PHP conferences from all possible angles – as an attendee, as a speaker and as an organiser. At PHP North West this year I will be taking this to new heights and combining all three roles into a single one-day conference. I have a speaking slot at the event entitled “Passing the Joel Test in the PHP World”, which I’m very excited about. Its a talk that I think brings together the best ideas from a general software engineering world and puts them into the context of PHP development. If you’re wondering what the Joel Test is, then you can read about it on wikipedia.

Having spoken at a few different events now, some local and some quite high-profile PHP conferences (OK, so php|tek – the event of the year!), I’m really delighted to be bringing my ideas to the local conference that I help to organise and attached to a user group full of bright and interesting people. The experience of launching a call for papers, submitting my own abstracts, and then trying to figure out where it fits in when evaluating the CfP was a bit split-personality but with Jeremy’s input we decided this was a good fit – and I’m looking forward to delivering it!

The event itself is in Manchester, UK on Saturday 10th October and there is only one week remaining on the early bird ticket price!! So all those people who think its ages away and you’ll sort out arrangements nearer the time – you have been warned. The schedule is world-class (quite literally, these speakers do speak right around the world), and the price is pocket money (50 GBP + VAT until 11th September). As well as the technical content you get a fun weekend in Manchester, plenty of social activity, there’s more geekery happening the following day and all attendees get a 12-month subscription to php|architect magazine to keep them learning all year long. Now you’re persuaded – you can buy you tickets here and let me know to expect you!

PHPNW is the highlight of my year – I hope to see you there :)

09 Jul
2009

Presenting with a Netbook

I’ve been giving a few talks in the last few months and I’m increasingly realising that although I love my thinkpad, its overkill for anything where I don’t really need the hardware, or where I don’t want to be carrying a full-size laptop all day. So I’m increasingly taking just my netbook, which is an acer aspire one with 512 MB of RAM, and using that along with some xrandr skills and my much-loved Kensington Slimblade Presenter Mouse (its the multimedia version, has extra controls on the underneath).

Presenting Setup

The netbook is easily up to this job – it happily runs the open office presenter program, I don’t have the presenter view plugin installed on it yet but just use the screens mirrored and use the netbook screen to see the current slide rather than having to look at the screen. This saves me either having to look away from my audience or from being completely floored by slides WAY too big for me to read when I’m standing in front of them (I presented at the FOWA roadshow, great venue but slides so big I didn’t dare look round at them!). The netbook screen is small but font sizes on slides should be quite big and I’m kind of long sighted so I can read the text at a distance of 6 to 8 feet without an issue.

The presenter mouse has a little USB dongle and then controls for controlling the presentation, with a laser pointer and a button to turn slides to black – once I begin I don’t need to be back within reach of the computer at any point. Which is really useful if you get one of those awkward spaces where the dock for the laptop is in a corner you don’t want to be standing in (I see this a lot at the informal geek events). Just start it going and get into position – and present from there. Of course this relies on knowing the presentation well enough to not need your slides or notes or having a paper copy you can refer to.

Don’t be fooled that you need great hardware or particular equipment to give a talk – anything with a monitor socket to talk to the projector is good enough, and if you can get a remote of some kind then all the better. Other accessories that might help is a stop watch (or use the timer on your phone and put it somewhere you can see it), so you know how you are doing for time, and some notes on index cards that you can easily hold without rustling. Above all, take a step away from your computer and look your audience in the eye – they’re here to see and hear you.