Talk comments

This was my first Drupal Camp ,however I am privileged to have heard Emma speak before at one of the Drupal Yorkshire meet-ups in Leeds where I do my Apprenticeship in Web Development.
This opening talk really set the tone for the rest of the day I felt. It was well structured and presented, leaving the room with a very warm feeling.

The content on this presentation, was very close to me personally and I think that Emma has done a brilliant job. I always love listening to her talks. Thank you Emma !

I am an Apprentice web developer based in Leeds. This was my first DrupalCamp. I chose this talk as in office I do a lot of QA related work. I found his presentation extremely easy to follow with informative slides. I use PHP Storm quite often in my work and from his talk, I learned a great deal more about it than I had known previously. This will go on to help me with my own coding in the future.

I also loved how there were great examples given by Dave Liddament to enhance his talk. I was able to follow these examples easily, making the strength of the talk very solid.

Overall, an excellent presentation that I was glad to attend.

Rose Nichols at 11:34 on 3 Jul 2017

I was really interested in this subject and would welcome more PHP-focussed talks at Drupal conferences. The content was confidently and clearly delivered, and points made followed a logical progression which I was able to follow. Well paced throughout. I'm a big fan of seeing development principles demonstrated and explained using code samples. I took away a number of practical points and have an idea of areas where I can improve.

For next time: I was on board with the talk's premise after about 2.5 minutes (everyone wants to introduce fewer bugs into their code, and catch them earlier) so the intro could be slightly curtailed in my opinion. I liked the visual representation of this with the bars, but I think you explained it twice in the intro. Use the extra time for the conclusion, and/or to introduce more areas where we can code what we mean.

I also think you should double the amount of time you give people to digest all code examples (good and bad, but particularly the "bad" examples). Allow people to draw their own conclusions before giving them the answer, I didn't always have time to do this. It might seem like a long time to you as the presenter, but it really isn't! Maybe you could gauge it based on how many people are still looking at the screen vs. looking at you, generally if I'm looking at the speaker I'm happy for them to move on. Also, for those of us who don't have as many years of development expertise as yourself, leaving a slightly longer pause after making one main point and moving on to the next will give us time to absorb the point just made.

When taking questions from the audience, it can be useful to repeat the question for the room, in case some didn't hear it.

Always great to hear from Jam. I think what I particularly like is that this talk addresses the community aspects of Drupal head on, warts and all. I'm sure this talk will spark a lively debate in the audience if it's repeated at Drupal Con Vienna!

on Keynote

Really interesting to hear the history of how an agency arrived at Drupal. It's a great story to tell and shows just how powerful the Drupal CMS is. Good talk well executed!

Johan Gant at 09:56 on 3 Jul 2017

I really like seeing talks use real world examples and, where possible, can show what's working well and what could do with some improvement. A well put together presentation and an interesting insight into how Lee's team work together over physically separate locations.

Johan Gant at 09:51 on 3 Jul 2017

Firstly, well done Ana for taking the time to share something in a talk - it's not always an easy first step :)

I feel the talk itself might have sat more comfortably as a BoF with a more interactive element to it, but in any case it was really useful to hear how Ana works, what tools she uses and where she sees things progressing.

I hope the few small stumbling points won't put her off sharing more in future.

Johan Gant at 09:47 on 3 Jul 2017

I haven't seen George speak before but a few things stood out for me:

- The quality and detail of the presentation: the best of the day in my opinion.
- The level of knowledge crammed in: I learned a lot and didn't necessarily expect to.
- The delivery: A really professional, smooth delivery.

Owing to the volume of material, I think this talk might have benefited from a longer slot at a different conference... or even being broken into a few separate smaller talks or blog posts.

Johan Gant at 09:43 on 3 Jul 2017

Really enjoyed this talk both from the subject matter - I love seeing people illustrate real problems and how they managed - through to the delivery itself which was well put together and had a relaxed pace.

Thumbs up!

Johan Gant at 09:40 on 3 Jul 2017

A well delivered and put together presentation and I think I learned a bit in terms of PHP 7 syntax changes. Separately, I've seen a few TDD talks delivered now (PHP and non-PHP) and I think a really interesting/challenging subject might be a look at how TDD has been introduced into a real life project, or even a Drupal 7 project where it can be difficult to understand how to get the best out of it... instead of the more general/idealistic talks about TDD.

Swinging back to the talk itself, I think the section explaining the reasons why bugs need to be trapped early/often was particularly well illustrated. Nice one!