Attending a conference without attending it
It's been just over a year since my last blog post and I'm sure holding breath has become somewhat difficult for some of you... I thought it was worth sharing an interesting experience that I had when for the first time (for me at least) I gave a keynote in a conference, without actually attending it.
Last Saturday, the first PHP-centric web conference has taken place in Istanbul, Turkey. A couple of months ago a guy name Sidar Sahin touched base with me, inviting me to give the opening keynote in that conference. I've been to PHP conferences in many countries, mostly in Europe, the US and the far east - but I've never been to a conference in my own 'neighbourhood', and I have to admit I had little knowledge or interaction with that community beforehand. I happily accepted - it seemed like a great opportunity.
And then - all hell broke loose. While things are rarely completely and entirely quiet around here, I have to say the timing, from my personal perspective, was astounding. After it became clear that this wasn't a short crisis, and after vocal protests spread out around Turkey, it became clear that coming there at this time might prove to be dangerous.
We debated what we could do. I've had situations where I couldn't attend a conference due to a last-minute issue - even as recently as the last AFUP conference in December, but they've always been in places where I had local Zend colleagues that could back me up - and in this case it wasn't an option. We considered using a Skype video conference, but my past experience with it was that is unreliable, and the quality is nothing to write home about. Eventually, I decided to simply videotape the keynote (a shortened version of it), and send it over. Doing it was slightly more challenging than I expected - given that I wanted to show both myself and the background slides in the same video; But I think I managed to create an OK compromise, where both myself and the slides behind me were reasonably bright and in focus. Having a camera with a large sensor and with lenses that absorb a lot of light definitely helped.
Video quality aside, I was worried that a 'passive' presentation in the form of a movie will have a hard time catching and keeping the audience's attention, but after the conference I was happy to hear from Sidar that it went very well, well enough that some of the attendees actually still want to meet me in person
I'm still hoping that when things settle down I'll get another chance to come over there and actually meet with the people face to face.
I got one photo from that conference (so far), and I found it amusingly similar to the Steve Mobs presentation from the Simpons' Mapple parody (unfortunately I could no longer find the whole piece online because of copyright issues). I'm certainly not Steve Jobs, so at least I only got closed-captions and not dubbing by Bart...
I'm curious if anybody else has similar stories where you ended up presenting over a video or over the web? Also - if anybody who actually attended this conference can share your experience and/or photos that would be great.
Last Saturday, the first PHP-centric web conference has taken place in Istanbul, Turkey. A couple of months ago a guy name Sidar Sahin touched base with me, inviting me to give the opening keynote in that conference. I've been to PHP conferences in many countries, mostly in Europe, the US and the far east - but I've never been to a conference in my own 'neighbourhood', and I have to admit I had little knowledge or interaction with that community beforehand. I happily accepted - it seemed like a great opportunity.
And then - all hell broke loose. While things are rarely completely and entirely quiet around here, I have to say the timing, from my personal perspective, was astounding. After it became clear that this wasn't a short crisis, and after vocal protests spread out around Turkey, it became clear that coming there at this time might prove to be dangerous.
We debated what we could do. I've had situations where I couldn't attend a conference due to a last-minute issue - even as recently as the last AFUP conference in December, but they've always been in places where I had local Zend colleagues that could back me up - and in this case it wasn't an option. We considered using a Skype video conference, but my past experience with it was that is unreliable, and the quality is nothing to write home about. Eventually, I decided to simply videotape the keynote (a shortened version of it), and send it over. Doing it was slightly more challenging than I expected - given that I wanted to show both myself and the background slides in the same video; But I think I managed to create an OK compromise, where both myself and the slides behind me were reasonably bright and in focus. Having a camera with a large sensor and with lenses that absorb a lot of light definitely helped.
Video quality aside, I was worried that a 'passive' presentation in the form of a movie will have a hard time catching and keeping the audience's attention, but after the conference I was happy to hear from Sidar that it went very well, well enough that some of the attendees actually still want to meet me in person
I'm still hoping that when things settle down I'll get another chance to come over there and actually meet with the people face to face.I got one photo from that conference (so far), and I found it amusingly similar to the Steve Mobs presentation from the Simpons' Mapple parody (unfortunately I could no longer find the whole piece online because of copyright issues). I'm certainly not Steve Jobs, so at least I only got closed-captions and not dubbing by Bart...
I'm curious if anybody else has similar stories where you ended up presenting over a video or over the web? Also - if anybody who actually attended this conference can share your experience and/or photos that would be great.
US Airways dumped me at Charlotte that day.
