Today was the first time I have given a talk since my honors thesis over three years ago. I’ve attended a few conferences in the past few years and I’ve really grown interested in becoming a presenter, sharing my experience and ideas. I’ve heard that BarCamp is a great place to start sharpening your presentation skills, so during a couple of free evenings after work this week I threw together a quick presentation. My talk was titled WordPress as a CMS and discussed how to sell clients on using WordPress as a CMS and how I managed to use WordPress’s custom fields to fit content into a complex design while still allowing the site administrator to edit all of the content.
I think my talk went pretty well, though I think I should have spent more time going into detail about how I used custom fields with GoHave1.com instead of talking about how to sell WordPress as a CMS to clients. Then again maybe not, it’s hard to say. If you were there, I’d love it if you left a comment or sent me an email letting me know what you thought of the presentation.
As for my first BarCamp experience, it was fantasgreat! I really enjoyed the informal nature of the talks. It was a lot more collaborative and the presenters seemed to make more of an effort to engage the audience to participate than the commercial conferences I’ve been to. I will have to make more of an effort to engage the audience throughout my talk next time. Brendon Wilson‘s talk was particularly interactive and entertaining.
Thanks to Rebecca and Duane for organizing the WordCamp track and to all the other BarCamp organizers who made everything run so smoothly. Great work folks! Oh and thanks to Automattic for sponsoring BeerCamp at lunch time, free beer is always appreciated.
I’ve shared my slides below, but be warned, they’re pretty boring without my sexy voice.