Speaking at PHPNW

I'm speaking at PHPNW next month. This will be my first time speaking at a conference. I've spoken at weddings and in team meetings at work before but this will be the first time that people can choose whether to hear me speak, or not.

I'll be speaking about Phalanger and compiling PHP to .Net. Jadu have been using Phalanger for a number of years now and it saves us a lot of time and effort in maintaining a product supported on PHP and .Net stacks. My talk will be about how Jadu came to use Phalanger, why it's right for us and an introduction to mixing PHP and .Net.

The thought of doing the talk has become less daunting over time. I submitted the paper fairly close to the deadline and didn't really hold out much hope of getting it accepted. Lo and behold it was accepted and I felt the most nervous right after finding out. Could I coherently talk for almost an hour and get across how useful Phalanger can be?

After giving the idea of actually having to do the talk a couple of weeks to settle in I started to plan what I was going to talk about. I had approximately three months to prepare. I had a general plan to spend a month researching and putting together a first draft presentation. I would then practise and refine the presentation for a month and spend the final month practising, practising and practising.  Three months feels like a long time but it soon flies by. Having a plan and sticking to it as well as the process and feeling of progression over time has really helped to ease the nerves and get used to the fact that I can do it.

I'm now into the final month and it's mostly practising with a little refining here and there. It feels like it's been a long process and I sure will be pleased when I can come home at night and not think about, plan or have to practise any more. While not particularly nervous about having to do the actual speaking, after all the time I have put into the presentation I hope it at least goes reasonably well and that people get something from it.