mattgrayisok

I've written a lot of practical articles on running Craft CMS in Docker and the most common feedback I receive is that, although they help developers to get set up, they don't really explain what's going on in the background.

What's docker actually doing to offer the benefits it claims?

This becomes a problem when developers encounter errors which are caused by how docker works. Often there's an easy fix, but without the background knowledge needed to understand the issue that solution can be difficult to find.

This talk, presented at DotAll 2019 in Montreal, takes a high-level look at how docker works under the hood and why that causes the most common issues with Craft in Docker. Without needing any examples written in C 👌

Video: vimeo.com/365649309.

Slides (slightly mangled due to conversion): https://bit.ly/CraftInDocker

Feedback

I was a little surprised at the very positive response I received - not simply because this was my first conference speaking gig, but because of the juxtaposition between the low-level technical content of the talk and the obvious front-end focus of the majority of the other technical talks. Perhaps this made my attempt stand out a little more.

@LindseyDiLoreto summed up what I was trying to achieve (and it seems I was successful) when, in the DevMode podcast, he said:

He was really getting down to the nitty-gritty with the Linux kernel and process IDs, but he was doing it in an digestible way. It was very understandable. Up to this point I've had a lot of fear of Docker [...] because it was this nebulous thing, but I'm now much less scared of it than I was.

Others had a similar reaction which is always nice to hear.

After the talk I had two primary things that I identified as wanting to work on personally:

• Body language
• Flow

I'm not a natural speaker so I have to force myself to not look like a weirdo when stood in front of other people. I usually manage to pull off something on the right side of approachable but it could be a lot better.

Regarding flow, I think this probably boils down to preparation. Thinking in advance about the mental journey a talk will take the audience on and then practising until the presentation becomes inspiring as well as informative. Most talks I've seen in the past really do contain some exciting ideas, but the delivery only half conveys that. I'd like to work towards complete conveyance of excitement.