My adventures with Pluralsight

Last weekend, Saturday September 13, 2014 to be exact, @Pluralsight tweeted out a teaser for the upcoming Play By Play video I did with John Papa.

#PluralsightVIP winner @KenCenerelli got some quality time with @John_Papa! Look out for their Play by Play soon! http://t.co/g50F8F96Y9

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Pluralsight (@pluralsight) September 13, 2014

I got a lot of congratulations, profile views and Twitter follows from this tweet. But the biggest question was “How did this happen?”.

So, here is the story of how I got to work with John Papa.

Back in the spring of 2014 Pluralsight was running a contest to celebrate their 10th Anniversary. The rules were you had to state what your favorite Pluralsight course was and why through a tweet. I chose one of John Papa’s courses as my entry.

My favorite @Pluralsight course would be @John_Papa's The Art of Public Speaking and Effective Presentations #PluralsightVIP

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Ken Cenerelli (@KenCenerelli) April 26, 2014

After all the entries were cast my name got pulled from the pile. Needless to say I was ecstatic.

Congrats to @KenCenerelli! You've been selected as our #PluralsightVIP! Check your DM for more details on your epic VIP access to a course!

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Pluralsight (@pluralsight) April 28, 2014

The next step was to choose which author I wanted to meet and where. I naturally went for John Papa in his hometown of Orlando, Florida. The final step in the puzzle was to choose the topic to discuss. After much discussion we decided to do an Intro to AngularJS talk modeled on the excellent introductory Pluralsight course AngularJS: Get Started by Scott Allen.

We then decided to meet in Orlando in August. We filmed the video in a hotel room at the Swan and Dolphin Resort in Walt Disney World. There was a lot of activity that day but Pluralsight arranged for everything to go smoothly. We had three cameras and two lights for our taping. As you can see in the behind the scenes photo below we had a blast making the video.

After the taping was complete we all went out to a fine French restaurant in Disney’s Epcot Centre to celebrate.

After touring around Epcot we watched IllumiNations, the nightly fireworks display.

In all John was a gracious host and a fun person to work with. I learned a lot about AngularJS and what makes it a great framework. My wife and I had a great time and we even made it over to Universal Orlando for part of our trip.

So, watch out for my upcoming video from Pluralsight with John Papa with should be available shortly.