Last night I gave a talk to the Portland Silverlight User Group.

http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15

And I survived (which you should have probably already figured out since you’re reading this post AND that’s what I titled it…)

Really though it was a fantastic time and I had a lot of fun!

I was a little nervous getting ready for it, but I’m always a little nervous getting ready for things. I had the game all written,  I knew the general flow for what the talk was going to be. I read over Scott Hanselman’s 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical presentation (which has become something I do EVERY time I’m preparing for a talk). I gave myself a brief list of points I wanted to make sure I covered or worked into the talk. But then I was ready and I waited. I hate the waiting. It makes me nervous.

Once I was up in front of the room though with my laptop open and some XNA code in front of me, my nerves go away. Then I’m ready. I know XNA, I love talking about XNA and I love sharing what I know and hearing questions that make me think. And hopefully that came through while I was talking. I had a freaking blast.

The swag went quickly (and I was even able to hand out some XNA 2.0 books that have been around forever!) and the pizza was been gobbled down. I started the talk at about 6:10 and managed to cover a very brief intro to programming against the game loop (it’s a different concept and one that seems to trip a lot of people up getting started with game development) and then rolled into making a basic 2D game for Windows Phone 7 using XNA. And I finished the whole thing before 8:30. Wahoo!

I’m planning on posting the source code and assets on my site so those should be coming soon. And to make things even better, they recorded the whole thing on video so everyone will get to see me pretend I can speak!

Just wait till you hear the new song I wrote for this talk…