Official joke

Miranda: “Why does a software engineer say it works on my machine?… It’s a regular expression…” 😛

Lightning Talk Q&A

Question for Lippi - “Have you considered that you might use demos of people who are using your resources well or in a cool fashion to improve the engagement of new users?”

  • They have a monthly meeting that is informational in some sense but some of the 10K users contribute topics and content for these meetings
  • It would be interesting to have shorter calls or meetings that are more informal but still collaborative
  • Tips and Tricks channel on their Slack - some users contribute things there as well

Question for Lippi - “How do you create safe spaces for users to ask “silly” questions?”

  • We haven’t fully yet. There is Slack, and they have looked at Discourse (but not Discord) but haven’t found a good solution yet.
  • We (NERSC) are one of the first institutions that have a code of conduct for users, which does allow for
  • Dan: culture probably more important than technology. Also consider seeding the space with some “examples” of reasonable online discussions
  • Miranda notes - humor is a key part of this. There is an #rsememes channel that helps to create community and culture on the USRSE slack.

Question for Andrew - “How would HPC Carpentries fit in with existing SW Carpentries projects?”

  • It would be a peer of SW Carpentry

Question for Phillipe - “What is your vision for the EIGREP group longer term in terms of community?”

  • For ACM, it is about money
  • Regular newsletter is a start
  • How do we create and maintain community with the correct forums? Slack doesn’t seem like it would be a good resource for us. They have a mailing list.
  • Phillipe asks - “do you have a good experience with Slack?”
    • Miranda notes that you may have to pay for it (can be expensive) to have the best experience.
    • NCAR experience: Slack fatigue from 10 different Slack workspaces with similar purposes, but different enough that they can’t be combined.

Question for Dan - “What’s the next collaboration between USRSE, IEEE Computer Society following the career guidebook?”

  • From IEEE CS perspective: Other customized versions for different communities
  • No particular plans from the US-RSE side
  • Follow-up: “How do we build on
    • USRSE Outreach working group - how do we communicate to people in secondary school
    • Education and training workgroup from USRSE should also consider questions
    • David B notes
      • People in the RSE pipeline drop out early in the process
      • Talk about what is computational science. Talk about how this advances science.
    • NSF may be interested to fund a group in this area; there may be resources available if people want to pursue it

Question for Radovan - “How do you plan to get support from your day job for the Research Software Hour?”

  • Some support from work for 1-2 hours bi-weekly or monthly is probably not a large request
  • Miranda follows up - how can we collaborate to do cool things?
    • Radovan notes - it’s important for us to advertise and share what we are working on it
    • Important to make it casual, so that people are not afraid to share unfinished/unpolished work
    • Ask developers to share their tools and tricks in the research software hour
    • Education and training working group does

General Discussion

Sustainability of communities focused on best practices - how can we trigger that transformation from a small group of dedicated volunteers to a widespread effort

  • Jamie did a lot of retweeting of related efforts which helped to improve the engagement; advertisement and recruiting are key!
  • Alain notes that contributors to a tool are using the tool in their environment
  • Radovan notes - trust people and promote them quickly to positions of leadership
  • Neil Hong (Edinburgh) notes that there are multiple generations of contributors
    • 1st - leadership of initial effort
    • 2nd - rewarded and valued
    • 3rd - doing it because it needs to be done not just because of the reward and value
      • need to pay community members at this point!
  • Miranda - there are many introverts in our communities (“the silent majority”). How can we enable this group to do small things that don’t require being socially engaged?
    • Updating website, running the job board, taking notes/etc.

What kinds of things might we want to build out into larger communities? How many people are engaged in…

  • training activities for RSEng topics?
  • organizing seminar/webinar series around scientific software topics?
  • information about RSeng practices?

A fair number of people raised their hands for each of these. Can we build on things like this? Share, work together, collect and advertise?

Question about this BoF series: “What’s the role of such one-time (annual) events in building the community?”

  • Primarily a venue for people to get people together and talking
  • No particular “product” promised (apart from notes and maybe blog article)
  • Would be happy if people met at one of the BoFs and started doing something together (haven’t tried to track this, though)
  • Fellow organizers suggest interesting lightning speakers, many of whom David hasn’t met before

Where are you collecting resources that are useful for the community?

  • Many collect/publish for local group/institution
  • Neil - publishing across multiple platforms, Zenodo, joint publishing with BSSw, work with CC-BY materials
  • German project Helmholtz Hirse
    • Various useful resources
    • Just added Research Software Hour!
  • BSSw.io
    • “Curated content” – pointers to useful resources hosted elsewhere
    • Blog series – both volunteer and solicited articles, cross-posting welcome
    • Events
    • Contributions via pull requests (or just contact the editors)
  • Project mentioned in Best practices in HPC education and training workshop to collect (not create or deliver) and share information about resources.

Is there one good, introductory resource for new entrants to scientific computing?

  • It would be nice to have a “resource of resources”
  • David notes that BSSw points to SSI guides and resources
  • Maybe (national) RSE organizations could help collect these resources?
    • Ian says that US-RSE does some of this but we need to make sure that links work and sites are up-to-date. Put in a pull request!
  • Carpentries.org is a hierarchy that then leads to lesson incubator (contributors)
  • Helen says we need to find the right place for our audience.
  • For example, Handshake (https://joinhandshake.com/) could be a place where we could get career path information for RSEs to students - available across all (US) universities
  • Jamie asks a follow-up question - who uses these resources?
    • Seems to be self-selecting to those who curate resources. Do we need a search engine?
    • Sometimes it’s unclear which resources we should use and where we should start!
    • Miranda mentions that when she finds new resources that are useful, this is when she typically adds it to such a list or shares it as a resource