Minutes from the monthly meeting (2018-10-23)

[mingfangwu]

1. Review the RSE workshop and BoF at the 2018 eRA conference.
2. Sam looks for some feedback / suggestions on how to do things better next time (eRA19/C3DIS) and how AeRO can support the RSE community going forward

Here is the minutes from the RSE workshp.

[rowlandm]

Kerri's slides from BoF
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lhhZQcdTu-J43j28vbySfCrE_DwYqBza3sNCX9Dm68U/edit#slide=id.g44fe97d406_9_7

[kerriwait]

You beat me to it @rowlandm! I've just removed the link to the attendance sheet from the slides, I have it stored elsewhere.

[mingfangwu]

Participants: Mick Golding, Nick May, Rowland Mosbergen, Kerri Wait, Keidi Perrett, Mingfang Wu

Summary from the RSE workshop and BoF:

• RSE workshop (about 18 participants) - followed agenda well, need a follow up action to summarise what discussed and captured from the workshop.
• BoF - good participation (about 45 participants) and discussion, would like to have more time for discussion.
• Support for several tiers: first tier - researchers who code (perhaps main focus of this group?), supporting staff, professional software engineers in academic - to skill up to a specific domain.
• Involve Ryan from UNSW to start NSW f2f
• Didn't get to elect steering committee, need to get more people involved, for now, we have to keep going on volunteering base.
• Heidi/Nick/Rowland to send email to all participants, acknowledge their contribution and invite them to the committee and volunteer to future activities.
• Need to identify avenues to promote the RSE-au and engage people.
• Prepare a little (information) package to distribute.

AeRO

• allocate more time to BoF next year
• support for regular meetups - advertising, providing pizza and drinkings.

Others:

• have an informal RSE gather up after techtalk
• how to make it easy for people to connect and stay with the RSE community?
• how not to burn up the interim committee
• features RSEs in AeRO or ARDC newsletter

[kerriwait]

Lessons for the next BoF:

• Have people sign in first! Not at the end

[HPerrett]

Actions to initiate from BoF and Workshop:

• start promoting community in existing communication channels - HackyHour, Software Carpentry, newsletters, meetups etc.

[rowlandm]

Rowland Notes:

1. Need to keep the current interim steering committee as we are still in embryonic phase. We need to grow our community first and foremost. We need to ensure no one burns out from interim steering committee.
2. RM to email RSEs from BoF who didn't write down their name. Email content to be worked with HP
3. RM to get final email list of people from pre-conference workshop to HP
4. HP to email all BoF and pre-conf workshop people. Content with RM.
5. NG to email colleagues in UNSW around NSW meeting. Need to agree on a month (eg. Feb)
6. RM to email Luc from UNSW about NSW meeting
7. NM to write up content for RSE website of what has happened at eRA
8. No-one assigned: Local meetups, maybe tied to Tech talks, use Zoom and potentially have to hire room and food
9. No-one assigned: Perhaps create postcards for RSE via Aero to work with Hacky Hour
10. No-one assigned: Make it easy to be a part of the community and engage as a new member.
11. No-one assigned: Potentially a Humans of RSE. "generalist, researcher who codes or SE in research", one sentence for cool project. One sentence for pain point.

[smoskwa]

Sorry about the late notice on this (I'm on holiday!) but there will be a special edition of the eResearch Newsletter summarising some highlights from eRA18. So if anyone has time to pull together 100 words on the RSE stuff by CoB tomorrow (Wed) please send them through to editor, myself, or loretta at aero.edu.au

I'm happy to take 9. Postcard(s) since we'll be producing a number of them anyway. Will ask Loretta to come up with a few examples for the committee to pick form

[rowlandm]

99 words:

There was plenty of discussion in the RSE pre conference workshop: Recognition and Career Development for Researchers who Code. There was even more at the BoF the next day.
These discussions resulted in two realisations. The first one was that while our main focus is helping researchers who code get recognised, we also need to do the same for ‘generalists’, people who bring communities together and can engage with both researchers and technical staff.
The second realisation was that we are still in an embryonic phase and we need to get more people involved to get a critical mass.

[rowlandm]

I'll email this to Loretta this afternoon so anyone can suggest improvements.

[rowlandm]

Sent to Loretta.