PHP for Grown-Ups

I added my slides to this talk, for those interested!

A short reflection on my first User Group talk:

Could have gone better, could have gone worse! If I had to do it again (which might happen), I would probably make it a bit shorter, improve the examples and improve my speaker notes so that I actually know what each slide is.

The silences while I was figuring out what I was looking at were a bit embarrassing and will definitely be avoided next time ;-)

Any further feedback is really appreciated! See you at the next Meetup!

Hey Andreas thanks for the presentation it was very educational.
Here are some pointers I think you could use for future presentations, I don't know if other people agree but I'll just put them here:

- Speak louder and articulate, I know circumstances dictated you had to present in a crowded venue and that there was a musical interlude halfway but despite that your voice was a little on the soft side, and it was sometimes hard to follow your presentation.

- Don't answer questions during your talk, leave the question time for after your talk since you might answer a lot of questions later on in your talk, also it's breaking the momentum of your presentation.

- Repeat questions for the audience before answering, if you get a question read the question back to the audience in your own words. This way you get a little time to think about the answer and the rest of the audience gets to hear the question better. This is great for avoiding the same question getting asked multiple times.

- Improve your stance, again circumstances made it a bit hard, but it's custom to stand next to your presentation so that the audience can clearly see the presentation. Also try to assert a active stance when giving your presentation.

Some things you did well was:

- Giving examples of code, and explaining why said example was good/bad.
- Repeating tricky concepts by rephrasing, it made your -for me difficult- presentation easier to follow.
- Use simple slides, the slides in your presentation were well made, and backed up your presentation as intended. Instead of just being a print-out of your whole presentation.


About your own reflection:

Don't worry about the silences, just cover them up by taking a sip of your drink, and it is indeed a very good idea to learn the order of your slides by heart.

Sorry I couldn't tell you these things at the event itself, I was in a bit of a hurry to leave since I was late for my next appointment, due to the presentation being postponed by technical difficulty.

Thanks again for the presentation,

Sander Kastelein

Hi Sander,

That is great feedback, all of your points are spot on!

Thanks a lot for your feedback and for coming to the talk. Don't worry about not sticking around, hopefully you can stay a bit longer next time!

Andreas