PHP Hampshire November 2013 Meetup
13 Nov 2013 at Oasis Conference Centre

Thanks Kimberley for the follow-up comment. Everyone here is entitled to their view and rating. I believe that if I'm not told where I am making mistakes or where I could do better, then by not knowing I'm not going to know how to improve. So thank you everyone for your comments. Apologies folks for not being able to attend the December meeting. Hope to see you in 2014.

Hi Rob,
I was probably being picky then: Now I've re-watched the section near the end I remember liking the look of the layout options and the demonstration with the moving sections was appealing to try out. I wanted to see the home page of a couple of different sites made with Drupal (perhaps webpage example is a better term!) to see different ways the tools had been used for different appearances. (Also, ignore my Vagrant comment - I will refrain from trying to analyse anything when way past my bedtime and a bit viral. That was a good introduction, but I agree with other commenters it could have worked separately and expanded upon - perhaps this could happen for a future talk?).

Hi everybody, thanks for your comments. It was probably obvious from the start that I was completely thrown by the set up. I had expected to have been in the driving seat, looking at what was being shown and interacting with the site, rather than standing up, facing out and failing to hold the microphone. The whole point was to demonstrate that the documentation of the PHP code for the WordPress plugins was being generated (partially) on the fly, direct from the latest source.
I was just as disappointed with the outcome as you were.

Hi folks, here are the slides - couldn't upload them directly to joind.in as @phphants requested - couldn't see the link or whatever in my account settings on here, so here's the slides available for download from the Southampton Drupal site:
http://sodrupal.org.uk/sites/default/files/Drupal Presentation Slides 2013 11 13 29 FINAL.pdf

Thanks for your feedback agree with it - all useful for next time, my responses:
- presentation style - yes, agreed - useful feedback - will improve for next time
- a little too brief - yes, agreed, but there is a limit to what can be covered in 15 minutes!
- turning around Drupal's reputation, appreciate if there are concerns but I think there are challenges, particularly with getting 8 released but also not alienating Drupal 7 users. However, I think Drupal's reputation is good enough for royalmail.com eurostar.com ticketmaster.com BBC WorldWide Specsavers Whitehouse.gov Sony BMG etc. -- All big names, blue-chip organisations which don't seem to be concerned about reputation as they choose it. I didn't want to disagree with the point about reputation in the Q&A as I like to explore with people the opinions but I think we'd probably want to visit this again to bring out the key concerns and how we can all help.
- Kim asked here for live demonstrations - I did briefly do some demos at the end of the talk - see the video - on the Drupal Panopoly and Recruiter distribution - did you miss this? Or did you mean something else.

Thanks folks I really appreciate the comments, useful and thoughtful. I also appreciate the opportunity to speak at the event and those who organise it.

Please keep your comments coming! All welcome!

Sorry about my own self-rating - I had to click this to be able to submit this comment

An easy to understand overview but I felt something was missing. I think a couple of live examples would have rounded it off for Drupal generally. I'm not sure I remember where Vagrant fits in exactly so that could probably have been a separate topic for another time.

I found it confusing and wondered if it would have been better focused on a smaller part of the process. It was a little complicated to take in if you had not gone under the hood of that particular part of Wordpress. I think I got the gist of it by the end. I hope to see more from Herb, structured differently.

Pretty interesting stuff & sparked some challenging questions for Rob at the end. It's good to see Drupal are trying to turn around their reputation, even if they're still experiencing hiccups. The talk itself was a brief introduction to Drupal itself, but tried to branch into Vagrant a little, which would've warranted a talk by itself really. Rob - talk to the audience, not your slides! :) Overall pretty good though.

I can't help the feeling Herb is overcomplicating what seems to be a relatively simple problem. Mic issues aside, I'm not sure the WP-based slides worked very well (stick with PowerPoint / Impress etc.), but it was a good effort for what seems to be Herb's first talk.

Tips for future: be confident, don't waffle, speak loudly, slowly and clearly, and focus on a specific topic - there didn't seem to be a focus for the talk at all, and there really needs to be.

I didn't enjoy this talk. I found it to be quite unfocused and meandering with a focus on bespoke Wordpress hacks, rather than actual Wordpress. Perhaps I misunderstood the point of the presentation. With "wandering mic" syndrome it was hard to hear clearly the whole time. I also found the actual presentation to be over complicated and it didn't communicate things in a clear and concise way.

A little too brief for me. It felt more like a quick skim over the top. Some more in depth usage examples and live examples of modules would have been handy.

I also felt that Rob was a bit nervous, but could have spent more time facing and addressing the audience, as he was stood sideways talking to noone most of the time.