'ProTalking' your way into Open Source

5 Thumbs up, without a doubt. The strongest point in the whole talk, for me personally, was not the information that was given. Pretty much every topic that was handled technically I was well aware of. The interaction in the audience was the most exciting part. I myself took quite a pro-active role in this and so did others. You created a stage for constructive and helpful information, given either by you or a spectator. The audience was included, but not forced to do so. The witty remarks were timed well and although you could notice it was new for you, there was a relaxed feel to it. You responded well to feedback from the (well informed) crowd. I'm looking forward to your next talk.

Thanks Frank for leaving no room to comment. Your comment says it all, exactly what i felt about the talk. Except you didn't mention the great shoes she was wearing.
Ow well, one more thing to Michelle, you forgot to promote Protalk. You left us in the dark what the project is about. Well some extra search queries for Google then.
Thanks for travelling all the way to Amsterdam to inspire people about contributing to open source.

Got to agree with above. I also like presentations for Amsterdam PHP (and similar sized events) that give lots of chance for interaction and discussion from the floor. The structure was good too with a good clear progression.

At one time I'd have liked more specifics - about ProTalk the project and how the community works there. Different projects have their own community so hearing about how contributing and encouraging contributions works elsewhere is good to know. At the same time I, at least, could have had less on the specifics on actually handling the code - using github itself.

For resources for the future, and comparison, this is the 'Drupal Ladder' http://drupalladder.org/ladder/ee503327-50be-1904-8d04-9499098cad64 which is (just a) part of a project to get more people contributing to the core of the project. [For Drupal the 'contrib' is quite healthy, and there is a big supportive community generally, but actual core contributions aren't proportionally so high.]

Thanks for the talk, it's good to get more people thinking and involved in actually contributing.

5 thumb for a great talk. It was a good solid and easy to follow talk. The interaction with the crowed mades this talk great and really interesting to watch. Especially because the subject itself wasn't new to me. The stand you gave cause several very interesting discussions and I've pickedup a new thing or 2 because of that.

Thank you for your awesome constructive feedback, this means a lot to me! <3

As for ProTalk, I indeed didn't mention much about the project itself! I can't believe how that slipped my mind, so I'm mentioning it now. ProTalk is an awesome project with awesome people who are the most friendly to new contributors you can possibly imagine. Are you looking to contribute the first time now after my talk? Or for a new project? Choose ProTalk!

ProTalk is also a very interesting project about putting all the recorded talks/screencast online in one common place so that you can go there, and learn further, therefore it's a project that I'm passionate about and very close to my heart.

You're more than welcome to join ProTalk! :)

This talk was very well done and delivered. It was even better because it was done in a UG setup where people are really ready to engage and discuss, as a organizer i was very happy for all the discussion it sparked up and felt it really contributed to making a better community.

I really like the layout of the talk, the flow and the way technical information was presented in a subtle way while focusing on showing you the flow of github contributions. If you have a crowd of people who do not do Open Source yet, this is what they need to see.

Michelle presented like a champ, some nervousness was perceivable, but she still lead the discussion very well. If this talk is done in a conference setting it may need to reduce the crowd interaction a bit and incorporate more of the discussions into the slides, but it will still work great. The only moments of hesitation are easily solved by practice and more time in front of a crowd.

Bravo. This is proof that if you do something with passion it can only come out great.

Agree with everything said before.

Great talk, loved the interaction. I think it really allowed you to involve the audience and tap into their collective knowledge and experience, making this talk all the better.

If you ever choose to cut back on the interaction (for this talk or another), you'll have to rely more on your own presentation skills. You might want to work on keeping your voice up (although that wasn't that much a problem at this venue) and be more expressive when you speak (more expressive body language, and don't be afraid to open up or move around).

In any case with the format of this talk these things weren't really that much of an issue, and I'm sure when you get more comfortable with speaking all these things will fall into place. :)

You're on the right track and did a great job. Especially considering that it was your first time speaking.

The presentation itself was very well prepared, slides were awesome, positive attitude and engagement of the speaker as well. I give only four thumbs because the topic was presented a bit too much in a "for dummies" way, I always expect from this kind of meetings to learn something new, discover the unknown :)
Breaks for questions after each part of the presentation were definitely a good idea (that is how the discussion has raised), you should follow this route.

Everyone above has already told what is relevant about this talk So I will not write too much. The structure of this talk was really good and the way she made the presentation was really new to me. She was able to reveal some nice tricks for those too who already do love open-source.