Nitai Heeb

At the end of February 2025, I attended the deRSE25 conference, which took place at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The event brought together researchers, software-developers to discuss current trends, and innovations in the field of Research Software Engineering.The journey to the conference was quite enjoyable, as I joined a carpool with colleagues from the JSC.

The conference program itself featured a wide range of talks covering various RSE topics. Some presentations felt less engaging to me, either because they were too dry to retain my attention or because they were too similar to previous talks. However, some presentations still provided interesting insights into how different developers tackle different problems.

One of the more valuable aspects of the conference was the generous amount of break time between the sessions. These breaks allowed for conversations with other attendees, giving me the opportunity to train my English small-talk and to meet other RSEs from around Europe.

A particular highlight was the evening poster session, where different teams presented their projects. This more dynamic activity allowed me to ask questions and gain in-depth knowledge about specific topics. Another key social event was the conference dinner, which created a relaxed atmosphere for conversations.

As part of the conference, I also conducted a workshop titled "How to achieve FAIR software publications with HERMES", representing the SoftwareCaRD project. In this workshop, together with my colleague Sophie Kernchen I introduced around 20 participants to the HERMES tool and demonstrated how it can be used in combination with Git for automated software publications.

Another strong point of the event was the catering. Each day, we were provided with surprisingly good and varied food, making the breaks even more enjoyable.

Overall, while some of the talks were not particularly inspiring for me, the deRSE25 conference offered a unique experience and left a positive impression on me.