I got some very kind words of encouragement in my journal entry on the Perl Review and my first article. I started to write a response, but it got way to long so I saved it for later and a real journal entry.
When preparring my talks for YAPC::Europe in Birmingham, I did something I have not done before when preparing presentations, and that was writing an article at the same time. This worked out quite well for me since delivering things in a article make you focus very much on how you explain things, do you get your message through and you often come up with some good sentences you can use in your presentation.
I often think that these YAPC's lack proper papers, it is not because I am an academic or scholar or similar, no I just simply feel like brian d foy; Longer conferences tend to wear me out, not so much from the activity as for the information overload (ref: The Perl Review v3i2) - articles are good for when you need to follow up or some thing you overheard, attend or even missed.
So I really really wanted to contribute with articles accompanying my presentations. Unfortunately I got a very busy gig - and the conference was almost colliding with our deadline.
So I am not pointing fingers at anybody, I just recommend articles as a tool to make better presentations - and yes to get a wider audience.
My presentations are not by any means super, but they get better and better and perhaps my articles are better than my presentations, who knows - they never got published, since they where never really finished. But they helped me out.
Another thing. English is not my first language, so I really need to work hard both when doing presentations and when writing articles - even journaling here. Everything require that I keep working with my English, which is good since my English has been kept alive since school.
I have not worked abroad, I have only worked in danish companies, but the Perl community keeps pushing me for improving my English.
I tend to feel I almost learn a new english word everyday and sometimes this is even true.
And the actual word of today takes from a comment in Module::Build::Base, line 3994, current release: ameliorate, a very beautiful word and the reason why I love english, the multitude of words.
Well I just think we could have more articles, articles are good because they can be read whenever you have the time. A fellow Perl monger of mine inquired about technical articles on Object Oriented Perl and we where unable to locate any.
There are plenty of books and man pages, but sometimes a small article with some good examples, a few jokes and a story are so much easier to digest. Of course there is a difference between articles and papers, but then again our community is not academia, so when writing your next presentation for a YAPC or similar consider writing a paper, throw in a few jokes and we will read it and laugh - when we get the time.
Re:English
jonasbn on 2007-03-14T20:18:07
Thank you very much. I am all out of words, Danish and English.
jonasbn
