Ohio Linux Fest Recap

Well, my Joomla! presentation at Ohio Linux Fest went off as planned, with some minor technical glitches arising from my unfamiliarity with my fiancee’s laptop. (I’ve never owned a laptop, and plan to avoid owning one as long as I can!)

In total, 141 people attended my presentation. I had a drawing, as planned, to give away two sets of both Hagen Graf’s “Building Websites with Joomla!”, and “Joomla! Cash”, co-written by myself. Congrats to Sherif Rashad and Alan Phillips, who will be receiving their copies of the books via Royal Mail from Packt Publishing, as well as twelve and six-months’ free website hosting. (Sherif will also be receiving a free Joomla T-shirt.)

All in all, while I was disappointed with the attendance, as well as the fact that my presentation got cut a tiny bit short at both ends, I’m quite happy with my first outing as a public speaker before a large audience. There were glitches, but I soldiered on, and wasn’t as anxious as I thought I’d be once I got on stage.

Content wise, there was a lot of topics I wanted to cover off-the-cuff, but time constraints put a big crimp on my ability to do so. As it was, I pretty much had to stumble through my last eight slides in a big hurry.

But, overall, things went well, and I was proud to be out representing the Joomla community, even in an unofficial, independent capacity. I was evangelizing a worthy project, and it was easily worth the effort and expense on my part.