Midwest PHP 2015
14 - 15 Mar 2015 at University of St Thomas

For me, this was serendipity. I didn't know that this was what I needed to know. Gemma spoke at the right level with a great perspective.

It is SO refreshing to hear the voice of real-world experience. One can advise "do such and such" all day long. Nobody listens. But when Jeremy can stand there and explain, "When you don't, THIS is how badly you get screwed, within seconds, because the wolves scrape the RSS feed," well, that's the voice of experience I can appreciate.

The talk was rock solid, proper level of coverage, but it's Jeremy's real-world experience which shined through.

I've known it's real for decades but never really understood from the woman's perspective. The final question/answer is what I've least understood: That ongoing inner dialogue. Thank you.

From a technical standpoint I give the talk five stars. But more importantly Elizabeth expressed the sense of community and camaraderie which is, or can be part of, PHP Extension support and development. I'm intending to take on the challenge this summer, even though I don't have any new extension in mind to write.

These are usually my favorite presentations. Those that mix a real world example all the way through the deck while sprinkling in knowledge and helpful links to get going on your own. Thanks.

Great presenter, open minded...covered my expectations precisely.

Thanks for all the great feedback everyone!

RE: getting more into the weeds, this was an intentional decision upon discussion when first invited to speak. The idea of the keynote was to set the tone and inspire people. Keynotes don't usually get too much into code.

RE: Being more about PHP. Accessibility is more of a front end issue than backend. It's still relevant because if you're a PHP dev, you're going to be dealing with Front End one way or another. And most importantly, the goal is that members of PHP projects put more of a focus on accessibility. From wordpress to magento to Joomla, etc...

RE: underestimating the audience, I don't think so. Many people came up to me afterward and said that although they raised their hand when asked what accessibility is, they had never seen a screen reader in use by a real user and found the videos enlightening.

Thank you all for the feedback, it is especially helpful as I continue to design and mold this talk and I take each comment to heart and will be utilizing this information to improve this talk for the future. I certainly enjoyed giving this talk and again I cannot state how much this feedback is helpful.

@Jesse - I apologize on the delivery and will work on that for the future. I can see where you felt this way and appreciate you pointing it out. I will certainly bring some more depth to what we are solving on each level. You are also correct in that this talk was more of an introduction on aspects of SOA and DDD than it was on the deeper levels of it. I will look at balancing this more in the future.

I particularly liked hearing about what the maintainers of PHP really value. for instance all the "small" (easier) ways people can help and how they need code maintainers they can trust. Once it was said, it all seemed obvious but there were several things I hadn't considered before.

This was very helpful. Some of the concepts later in the talk were tricky. Maybe you could have spent less time on "the bad old days" and a little more time on where MVC and Service Oriented Architecture were different.... and I'm afraid of needles.