Community Engagement (Presentations, Workshops, etc.)

[jakirkham]

Raised in issue ( https://github.com/zarr-developers/zarr/issues/291 ), the topic is how can we engage with others about Zarr (in-person). This ranges from how do we teach people about Zarr to how do we engage with our userbase (particularly in high bandwidth situations). Examples might be giving a talks at large or small conferences or even local Meetups or perhaps workshops in similar situations. Are there common materials we could use for this (e.g. slide deck, figures, etc.) and could we collect these somewhere? Any marketing material that we might want to have (e.g. stickers, mugs, etc.)? How do we report back what we have learned and share with others?

[aparamon]

Hi @jakirkham, all Zarr devs and hackers!

I believe one path/direction Zarr might approach potential users is to present Zarr implementation benefits for organizations already employing similar scientific data model. One example is Allotrope Foundation that is based on HDF5 and is targeting at large-scale, high-throughput chemical analysis. They are holding a meeting soon:
https://www.signmeup.com/site/online-event-registration/127677

One idea that shall attract/interest many users (esp. big companies) is Zarr in place of HDF5 for ADF data, which (theoretically) couples powerful higher-level ADF format with Zarr distributed and highly-concurrent access to analytical data. The latter is of pronounced demand, esp. for big and rich Allotrope Foundation members.

What about converting the data to Zarr, accompanying it with general Zarr description and vision, and somehow presenting to Allotrope members?
Allotrope Data Format example files are currently available in private GitLab:
https://gitlab.com/allotrope-review/lc-uv/tree/master/test%20data
but should be publicly released soon (or, can be readily provided by Allotrope members if demanded).

[alimanfoo]

Hi all, I just wanted to say that I am more than happy for others to give talks on zarr at conferences/meetups/workshops. I submitted an abstract to scipy 2019 but otherwise I was not planning to submit abstracts to any other conferences this year.

If you would like to submit an abstract to talk about zarr, I'd suggest posting a comment here first, just to check if anyone else intends to submit to the same conference. If no-one objects within a couple of days, feel free to go ahead with the submission. Also feel free to re-use any material from the scipy 2019 submission.

cc @jeromekelleher

[alimanfoo]

Cross-posting a couple of previous zarr talks here in case useful to anyone...

• Webinar for the ESIP Federation tech dive series
• @rabernat's talk at the AGU Fall Meeting 2018

[jeromekelleher]

Thanks for the update @alimanfoo! I was thinking of submitting a talk for the Research Software Engineers conference; I was at the conference last year, and I'm sure there will be people interested in zarr there. If anyone else is going and would prefer to talk instead, I'd be happy to defer though!

[jeromekelleher]

Just to update, I've submitted for a talk at the RSE conference. I'll report back here with any further news.