Q: What is RSE?
Research software engineer movement started about 10 years ago in the UK to create visibility and career paths for people working on the research software.
Q: What can the community do to increase diversity, including geographical diversity? How to reach out to people from Africa and other countries/regions not being represented at conferences and events?
Having more virtual/hybrid workshops and giving people the opportunity to present is important. Mentoring and financial help is also crucial.
In general, many people are not aware of different opportunities. We are often not aware of how little people know about our work, so we all should be ambassadors of our work and different opportunities.
The existing initiatives and organizations should/could be ambassadors and help create similar networks and initiatives in other countries and regions. The existing initiatives should also work more together, to make sure our efforts are combined. And to make it easier for people to find jobs in different regions and sectors.
There are also RSE workshops, and meetings for people involved in similar initiatives and/or wishing to be leaders in their local communities.
UK and USA RSE have separate slack workspaces, and people are not always aware of other sources/channels.
There is a need for a global organization. There is the council of RSE but not many people seem to be involved just yet.
There is also a Nordic RSE group.
Q: What is the relation between CodeRefinery and the software carpentries?
The training offered by CodeRefinery builds on the content taught by the carpentries. In future CR might also become Carpentries member/lesson program.
Q: Does the CodeRefinery have a similar program to train instructors as the carpentries?
Yes, there is a lot of community training going on and a number of workshops being organized. One coming up soon: https://hackmd.io/@coderefinery/community-teaching-2022-summer Train the trainer model is also being used. Lots of material in CR manuals: https://coderefinery.github.io/manuals/
Comment: People are trying to address the diversity issues and to ‘fix things’ in a couple of years. But it should really start with the way we teach our children, and the division we create when kids are growing up. It needs to start early. We as a society need to change our attitude towards science and in general, otherwise we are just limiting ourselves.
Q: Software is often not considered as a risk in projects that are focusing on experimental science - would the change in thinking help with the current issues?
When someone gets an RSE involved in their project, they know they are taking a conscious step towards better software. Software can be a safety risk for large experimental facilities, and people are not really thinking about it. Things are slowly changing though.
Comment: Risk doesn’t have to mean security issues but also the risk register. People should think about how software and related risks can impact the overall development of the projects.
Different groups are trying to develop different practices and increase the awareness of different issues, and people are not ignoring the issue anymore. So it is important to keep the momentum going.
Q: What resources are good to learn more about good documentation practices, and general practices that should be implemented for sustainable code development.
BSSW is a good website to start. There is also an ACM badging initiative. SSI also has a lot of documentation for good practices, surveys and other resources.
It might be a good idea to curate some guidelines and good practices documentation that is easily accessible and finable to people.
Everyone is involved to become a part of this conversation. We are still a new community and it is important for everyone to get involved so that software gets the recognition it should have had from the very beginning.