CFUnited Europe 2008
Mission accomplished - I spoke at CFUnited and survived.
Charlie Arehart was nice enough to give me some tips and help me rearrange and improve my Powerpoint presentation for the 2 hours before my talk.
With minutes to go, I saved my Powerpoint and suspended my laptop, then headed upstairs to the conference room. Now this was my first time speaking in front of more than 6 people and I was extremely nervous.
I get to the conference room and there are a few people in there already. I head up to the stage, laptop in hand and start setting up... I hit the power button to restore my laptop and.... what the hell... my laptop is rebooting, not restoring.
OK, not too bad, I'll just have to start ColdFusion, open the presentation and Firefox windows again. My laptop takes an age to start up.
So I am 3 minutes into the presentation and still waiting for my laptop to warm up. Fortunately there are still a few stragglers filing into the small conference room.
I double click to open the presentation and wait. And wait. It is taking ages to open. My laptop is being projected onto the 8 foot screen; everybody in the room feels my pain when Powerpoint reports that the file is corrupt and asks if I would like to restore it. Hell yes, restore that thing and fast.
I start the presentation. My freyed nerves are shattered but the show must go on. I start into the slides and notice something strange on the "About Me" slide. It's not exactly right.
Then I get to the "Contents" slide and notice that all the changes Charlie helped me make have been lost. Now this is a major curveball - there were entire topics that I had dropped, new sections I added and the whole thing had been rearranged.
Next disaster. The first section in my presentation should have been the last - it's all about "Source Control". I ask for a show of hands to make a point - "How many people in this room use source control". I had expected about 4 hands. I am dismayed to see that of the room of maybe 35 people, only 1 does not have his hand up.
Anyhow, I persevered and bluffed my way through the rest of the presentation. I'd like to thank everybody who was in the audience for their support. As promised here is the real presentation. Hopefully you all got something from the rest of the presentation. Topics covered:
I learned a lot from this experience and i'm sure that next time, i'll be more prepared and much more confident. It was a great experience all-in-all.
Charlie Arehart was nice enough to give me some tips and help me rearrange and improve my Powerpoint presentation for the 2 hours before my talk.
With minutes to go, I saved my Powerpoint and suspended my laptop, then headed upstairs to the conference room. Now this was my first time speaking in front of more than 6 people and I was extremely nervous.
I get to the conference room and there are a few people in there already. I head up to the stage, laptop in hand and start setting up... I hit the power button to restore my laptop and.... what the hell... my laptop is rebooting, not restoring.
OK, not too bad, I'll just have to start ColdFusion, open the presentation and Firefox windows again. My laptop takes an age to start up.
So I am 3 minutes into the presentation and still waiting for my laptop to warm up. Fortunately there are still a few stragglers filing into the small conference room.
I double click to open the presentation and wait. And wait. It is taking ages to open. My laptop is being projected onto the 8 foot screen; everybody in the room feels my pain when Powerpoint reports that the file is corrupt and asks if I would like to restore it. Hell yes, restore that thing and fast.
I start the presentation. My freyed nerves are shattered but the show must go on. I start into the slides and notice something strange on the "About Me" slide. It's not exactly right.
Then I get to the "Contents" slide and notice that all the changes Charlie helped me make have been lost. Now this is a major curveball - there were entire topics that I had dropped, new sections I added and the whole thing had been rearranged.
Next disaster. The first section in my presentation should have been the last - it's all about "Source Control". I ask for a show of hands to make a point - "How many people in this room use source control". I had expected about 4 hands. I am dismayed to see that of the room of maybe 35 people, only 1 does not have his hand up.
Anyhow, I persevered and bluffed my way through the rest of the presentation. I'd like to thank everybody who was in the audience for their support. As promised here is the real presentation. Hopefully you all got something from the rest of the presentation. Topics covered:
- Quick Tip: AJAX debugging
- Supporting Different Timezones
- Foreign Language Support
- Advanced File Uploading
- Quick Tip: CSS Hacking for IE6
- Working with Multiple Domains
- Database “Sharding”
- Source Control.
I learned a lot from this experience and i'm sure that next time, i'll be more prepared and much more confident. It was a great experience all-in-all.
This is the latest CF9 prototype (codename MoHawk):
Tags:
ColdFusion
Comments [9]
Peter Coppinger aka Topper is a neurotic web monster who spends most of his chaotic life developing ColdFusion web applications when not drinking himself into a stupor and scheming his plans for world dominance.
