Reflection¶

Date: 2026-01-22
RSE Tools, 'GitHub Actions'

Already before the talk, I was disturbed: my pull request to the main repository had feedback. I did not ask for feedback. I disagreed with the feedback. I felt sorry for the person that was maybe asked to give feedback. It was a sad situation. Apparently, the group has a procedure to merge pull requests after the talk. This would (I would realize during the talk) that there was no link to the exercises I could share.

Even though I think my talk was good enough and I adapted well enough, I was not happy with it, as I had higher expectations. Or: I did not fulfill my goals:

[Unsure] Understand what GitHub Actions is
[Unsure] Understand why GitHub Actions are important
[No] Practice to use GitHub Actions

My expectation was:

Interactive, i.e. be able to talk to most of my colleagues 1-on-1
Active teaching, i.e. let the audience actually find out what it is
Many questions in small groups, i.e. no 1 person asking questions in big groups. I do this commonly in breakout rooms

The reality was:

Reasonably interactive: even though there was a recording (I was against this), there were still around 8 colleagues (out of around 20) willing to interact.
Passive learning: because my pull request was not accepted, as per RSE Tools routines, my exercises were not live on the website. I did not see that coming. It meant I had to do the exercises myself. I hated that.
Few people asking questions in a big group

Evaluation results¶

I am happy that there is 1 evaluation response:

Very nice talk, you clearly know how to teach stuff. Can you share the link to the exercise?

Thanks!