Today I Learned (TIL)

We started doing a regularly scheduled "Today I Learned" or TIL session with the team a few years ago and it was a great time to encourage continuous learning and push people to fight their imposter syndrome just a little bit.

Below is the write-up I put on our team Confluence explaining the purpose of the event. Try this out for your team!

What is TIL?

Once a week we get together as a team to learn something new. It could be related to a project we're building or a library we use. It could also be completely unrelated to our work and just something interesting you want to teach everyone else about.

This is your time. Blocked on the calendar, during the work day, and open time to learn something new and interesting.

Past topics we've done:

• Golang Design Patterns
• Using Software Defined Radio to collect and decode encoded digital voice transmissions
• Ember Data

Don't Be Scared!

Anyone at any level can, and is encouraged to, give a TIL to the team. It's a great time to practice your public speaking in a safe and controlled environment among a small group of your peers. You may feel like you don't know anything in depth enough to teach it, but you would be mistaken! There are constantly things we learn every day that others would find useful. Additionally, if you really don't know what to teach, just pick something you don't know and prepare for it. Nothing motivates you to learn more than knowing you need to teach others about it in the near future.