Re-add old blog posts from Astro

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+---
+title: Reflections on speaking at UnifiedDiff
+date: 2012-09-06
+excerpt: Yesterday evening I went along and spoke at the UnifiedDiff meetup in Cardiff.
+tags:
+    - speaking
+---
+
+Yesterday evening I went along and spoke at the
+[UnifiedDiff meetup](http://www.unifieddiff.co.uk) in Cardiff, having offered
+previously to do a presentation providing an introduction to Drupal.
+
+I'm an experienced Drupal Developer, but not an experienced public speaker
+(although I have done several user training sessions and Drupal demonstrations
+for clients previously), and I think that some of the nerves that I had
+beforehand were apparent during the presentation, and being the first speaker
+for the evening probably didn't help, although I did get a
+[nice tweet](https://twitter.com/craigmarvelley/status/243418608720543745)
+mid-way through.
+
+Initially, after aiming for a 20-minute presentation plus Q&A, I think I wrapped
+up the presentation in around 14 minutes, although I did about 6 minutes of
+answering questions afterwards including the apparently mandatory "Why use
+Drupal compared to WordPress or Joomla?" question, some Drupal 8 and Symfony
+questions, as well as an interesting question about the White House development
+project after I'd listed it within a list of example sites. Next time, I think
+that some more detailed presenter notes are needed. Typically, as soon as it sat
+back in my seat, the majority of things that I'd managed to remember beforehand
+all came flooding back to me and I thought "I should have said that whilst I was
+up speaking".
+
+Overall, considering my inexperience at speaking to this type of audience, I was
+fairly happy with my presentation, although I'm sure that I'll change my mind
+once I've watched the video of it on the UnifiedDiff website. Regardless, I
+think that it was a great experience and I enjoyed doing it, and I'd like to
+thank the organisers of UnifiedDiff for having me speak at their meetup. It was
+great to have a more relaxed conversation with some people after the other
+speakers had been up, and having introduced Drupal I would be more than happy to
+come back and do a more in-depth presentation if there is an interest for me to
+do so.