Learning how to learn

I feel like it was a great intro talk to the conference

Great opening session for PHP Midwest.

Cool insights, couple of humorous lines to wake us up. Great start!

very helpful

Great insights ! Definitely somethings to think about and try

Joel,

Nice Work. Thanks for not using verbal crutches and for speaking like you were comfortable. You didn't rush and spent just enough time on each topic/concept to be useful but not overwhelming (being the first of many technical sessions). The pace was dead on for a larger group.

If i had to critique anything it'd be that in many cases your slides contained the words you used almost verbatim. This isn't bad per se, but I always enjoy talks where the speaker interacts with their slides instead of reading them or at the very least SEEMS to be reading from them.

All in all, great job! Great information that can't be reiterated enough. I really appreciate the extra mile getting the coupon code from PragProg.

Thanks again.

Great kickoff to the con!

Nice intro, great info and references to other resources.

One of the most thoughtful and original talks I've seen. Thanks, Joel.

Really great material, and presented really fairly and completely. The only reason for the 4 stars instead of 5 is that I felt for an opening keynote it could have been a little more energizing and motivating. But the content and talk were excellent...

Nicely done. Especially when you told us all to take LSD.

Seriously though, some good nuggets to think about, and unlike many keynotes it wasn't trying to sell us anything.

More energy for an opening keynote would be good though.

Have to remind to not work during the weekend.

Great info, interesting book recommendations

Very nice opening session, with useful tips to learn more effectively. +1 to the organizers for selecting this talk for the keynote.

One of the best keynotes I've seen. It was a perfect intro to the conference.

Great keynote. The conference attendees as parasite-ridden sheep analogy was hilarious, and the points about learning strategies were very interesting. Joel's keynote was a perfect start to our collective dipping experience.

This was an excellent talk. Joel nails several points which are essential to being a developer. Always learning. I really appreciated the thorough information.

Excellent talk. Your 9 techniques are a wonderful list. I'm aware of most of them and am glad to see this information at a technical conference.

I joked with Joel that his talk could be summarized as:

"You're sheep for thinking you can learn at conferences and should be taking recreational drugs to make you a better programmer".

The desire to keep learning new things is the difference between programming as a job and programming as a career. Great talk.

Great talk, really enjoyed it and perfect way to get the conference started!

good to start off the conference thinking about how to use the information that's going to be presented.

I greatly enjoyed Joel's talk - it really set the tone for the conference!

Great motivational talk on how to learn. Was a great start for the conference.

Great kickoff to the conference!

Nice Job. Good talk.

Nice, engaging intro to the conference. Thanks!

I like the research you presented and the multitude of techinques one can employ to enhance retention. The slides were useful and your slower talking allowed us to ponder points during the presentation. A great way to start the conference.

Great talk to put everyone in the right frame of mind before starting the conference.

This was a perfect intro to the conference!

Really enjoyed this talk and am looking forward to implementing some of the ideas discussed!

Good motivational talk to engage everyone at the start of the conference!

Thank you. Great talk.

LOTS of stuff to be taken away from this. Definitely going to be using some of the ideas that were discussed.

Great start to the conference.

Really liked it. A meaningful and coherent compilation of useful facts, tips, and lessons about how to learn efficiently, with a brilliant delivery. Sometimes you'll think "hey, I knew that!" but then remember the same instant that even though you knew it, you weren't really putting it into practice, and having it re-stated explicitly is a great help :-)