Turing-way appreciation post

[KDrakoulaki]

Hi, here's my idea of how the project has helped me (based on our interaction here).

Thanks for suggesting this!

@malvikasharan @fedenanni

How the Turing-way Project helped me

Disclaimer: I'm a humanities person, turned clinician, turned researcher. I've had to learn a lot of things (programming, statistics) later in life, after having had to believe that I can actually do it. A bit more about myself here.

Turing-way for me

I originally came across the Turing-way Project sometime on Twitter. I had read some of the chapters trying to figure out what Open Science was, but I did not give it much thought. I was still at a point where data science and data handling (to put it in a more friendly way) were still unreachable to my mind.

Then the Frictionless Data Fellowship for reproducible research came in my life. I read a lot of the chapters, both as things to do during the weeks of training, but also as resources for data management during my PhD. It suddenly became a resource that provided many answers for my research-related questions.

What the fellowship helped me understand, and by extension the Turing-way project, was that many of the issues I was facing were not because of my lack of abilities and knowledge. They were shortcomings of the way postgraduate education (and research) works: you are expected to magically know how to handle your data, clean it, save it safely, analyse it and communicate your results. Especially when your background is not data-focused these things can feel intimidating, both in terms of your understanding but also in terms of your mentality toward tackling data issues. So, of course when I came across at the resources I tried to follow what was possible, and made my life easier in the process!

Chapters that have come in extremely handy:

• Open Research
• Version control - as well as their link to learning more about the command line.
• I can't tell you how many times I've shared the data organisation in spreadsheets page both in presentations and in supervising undergraduate students.
• As I work more with code, I'd like to delve more into code quality.
• Sharing my work is still something that I need to catch up with.

I still refer to the website regularly, either because I need to check what their suggestions are, or because I want to learn something new.

Turing-way for me and others

The whole PhD process has been life-changing, but learning more about data science, data management and dissemination and open science has certainly accelerated my thinking and my skills. I've gone on to talk about open science in a few invited talks and have almost always referred to the Turing-way as an excellent tool for both undergrad and postgrad students. Also, I've used it in two other circumstances: supervising undergraduate students and when founding the Athens PyLadies chapter. I've truly been inspired by the collaboration and co-working chapters and can't wait to read more.

Chapters I've used or want to use in the near future:

• I will probably use the Getting started with Github chapter in our PyLadies meetings, as I think it's a non-intimidating way to start getting acquainted with git and Github!
• I really want to learn more about managing a community and how co-working events can work for a community. Honestly, every time I check the website I want to check out something new!

Turing-way for me in the future

I've only been following the community on Twitter and I've felt a bit jealous of the community they've been building. I've always seeked to work within a community and what they're doing seems very friendly, approachable and fun! Now that I'm thinking of it, I may have to engage more!

[welcome]

🎉 Welcome to The Turing Way! 🎉 We're really excited to have your input into the project! 💖

If you haven't done so already, please make sure you check out our Contributing Guidelines and Code of Conduct. If you need to connect more synchronously with members of The Turing Way community, please feel free to chat with us in our Slack workspace, or you can join our Collaboration Cafe for mentored contribution or co-working.

[malvikasharan]

This is such a generous gesture. Thank you so so much @KDrakoulaki for posting it here. Let me cry a bit (out of happiness) and come back to considering where we can host it in the book. Have a lovely week. ❤️️

[EKaroune]

This makes me very happy to hear how our resources are being so well used. Thanks for writing this. 😊