sought feedback

I feel funny.

I was going to say, "I don't like to toot my own horn." But that ain't quite right.

I clearly do the toot but I feel a little embarrassed or self-aware. 

The adjective self-aggrandising means promoting oneself as being powerful or important. 

That's not what I'm after.

Of course, I like to know what I do is well-received. But I hope this doesn't seem like I'm show-boating.

While I enjoyed delivering my talk to Halifax on Saturday, at the time, I felt a little on edge. The prevailing thing in my brain as that, "they all know this."

Obviously, I couldn't see the people in the physical room. Nor could I see all the peoples watching in the Zoom session. Judy was nice enough to give me feedback when I polled for people with certificates and pursing them.

Anyway, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was preaching to the choir and I wondered what value I was offering. Was I re-hashing.

I hate the idea of boring people. They've heard this all before. I don't want to waste people's time. Valuable time.

Along with that, I wanted to know about the technical aspect, the sound quality in particular. So many of my talks were marred with bad and garbled audio. In the end, I think that was my bad uplink rate when I was in Bradford. Yesterday, on a wifi link to a public shared institutional service, I really didn't know what was gonna happen.

My capital-Q thing. My Quality bar. How I always want to be the best I can be. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Quality. But that's a rabbit hole we best avoid right now.

So, after the session, I reached out to many, to get some feedback. Here we go.

"It was very clear. I had trouble hearing the person you were talking to who asked a question." 

"Love that you acknowledged the original occupants of the land."

"Quite the CV."

"I really appreciate how you speak calmly and you know so much about all of this. I liked the bit about how to log or observe. It was very helpful and I will read Paul’s article."

"I thought you did a great job of breaking down the observing certificates and making them sound accessible and approachable for new members. And explaining how to log."

"I think you did a wonderful job, audio and video was fine."

"I also want to thank you for presenting the RASC observing rewards to the detail you did. I’m sure many of our members don’t have an appreciation as to the programs offered, and to the variety of programs offered. FYI, there were three new members on our in-person audience today."

"Nice presentation today, all the more so because of the location where you gave it!"

"Good talk! I really liked your repeated phrases about recording observations! More is better in this case!"

"Thanks for the excellent talk at our meeting!"

"That was a great presentation last Saturday. Halifax looks pretty good for certificates on both observing and imaging fronts, plus we’ve supplied a lot of volunteers and directors over the years."

I did also note positive responses in the Zoom chat window, in situ. Not captured.

So? Yes, I'm chuffed. Yes, I'm happy. But again I hope I don't seem pompous. I just wanted to know it worked. I learned it did. And it feels the quality was higher than a lot of my past stuff. "Great success." Still not explaining it well. Validation? Yeah. Some nice accolades along the way? OK, I'll take 'em.

Bottom line?

I'm so glad it worked.