Over the last few years I've given a lot of presentations and I like to think that I am quite good at it. Or at least that's what people tell me. What they say behind my back I don't know.
Unfortunately I've also seen far too many bad presentations so I thought I would take this opportunity to present my purely personal tips and advice.
At the end of October I had the great honour to present the keynote session at the first ever Joomla!Day Denmark. It was a fantastic event with almost 200 people attending over 2 days in the picturesque city of Kolding.
The venue itself was the IBC school which was unlike any school I've ever been to. If my school had provided such a relaxed atmosphere perhaps I would have concentrated harder.
During the Joomla!Day West event that took place at the beginning of October the Community and Production leadership teams were able to get together for several days of discussions, planning and team building.
I've been keeping an eye and ear out for some sort of reports from these events on joomla.org but haven't seen anything yet.
Suffering from JCD (more about that in a later blog post) I've managed to gather some information from the event to share here.
I've just returned from travelling to the USA where I attended a meeting of the Milwaukee JUG and Joomla!Day DC where I had the opportunity to meet many friends, old and new, some of whom I've previously only met online.
One of the great things about meeting in person is to share stories and adventures, consider new ideas and of course get to know the real person behind the avatar or nickname.
Over the next few days I'll be writing several blog posts as a direct consequence of the trip but before I do that I wanted to share a small story about my adventures travelling to the USA this trip.
Perhaps the greatest things that has happened to me by being part of this amazing Joomla! community is that I have met so many people from all over the world.
Of course I'm not alone in that and probably every one of you reading this blog will have made new friends as a result of your involvement in Joomla!
But making online friends is only the start of it.
Several months ago the "new" OSM board published a set of accounts.
At the time many people in the community questioned the amount of money that was being spent on Legal and PR agency fees.
Today I saw that OSM have published an updated set of accounts and I'm really pleased with what I saw.
The amount of money being spent on Legal and PR have been drastically reduced. Thank you OSM for listening to the community and taking action.
On the 5th anniversary of the release of Joomla 1.0 I have decided to launch a new web site.
Suprisingly it is probably only about the third or fourth site I have ever built just for myself and not a client.
HiddenJoomlaSecrets.com is the new home of all my presentations and videos, which I hope to be adding to considerably in the coming weeks and months.
You enter a crowded bar and across the room you spot a beautiful person. They're dressed in the latest fashions and they have a welcoming smile that draws you across the room to say hello.
We all know that beauty is only skin deep and that it's what's inside that really matters and yet despite that we are still attracted to the one with the stunning looks.
I thought long and hard about what to write for this Birthday blog post.
I started to look back at the early days, back in September and October 2005, to see if the aims and ideas of the co-founders have come to fruition.
Then I realised that we had no grand aims of world domination just a desire to work together with a wider community to build something special.
