Pictured: A COVID-19-compatible “group photo” of most of the workshop
participants.
Organizers: Stephan Druskat (de-RSE), Radovan Bast (Nordic RSE), Ian A.
Cosden (US-RSE), Anne Claire Fouilloux (Nordic RSE), Simon J. Hettrick
(Society of Research Software Engineering, UK), Daniel S. Katz (US-RSE),
Johan Philips (beRSE), Peter van Heusden (African RSSE), Ben van
Werkhoven (NL-RSE), Claire Wyatt (Society of Research Software
Engineering, UK)*
In 2018, the first International RSE Leaders Workshop took place in
London/UK.
Amongst
other
successes,
it saw the foundation of the Nordic RSE community and helped improve
access to software expertise in research. Since then, the international
RSE community has seen a lot of progress, with new
associations being formed,
new national and international RSE conferences (RSEConUK
2019,
deRSE19,
NL-RSE19, Nordic RSE
conference, beRSE Research
Software Developers Day) being run,
and informal international collaboration strongly increasing. These
developments led to an internationally run online replacement for the
RSE conferences that had to be cancelled due to COVID-19: SORSE - the
international Series of Online Research Software
Events.
To provide a discussion and knowledge exchange forum for the new
generation of RSE associations and foster further collaboration between
them, and to help new RSE communities form and establish themselves, we
organized and ran the 2nd International RSE Leaders
Workshop
in September 2020. It was originally planned as an in-person event to
take place in Oslo, Norway, but was moved online due to the COVID-19
pandemic.
This move to an online event meant that informal networking and social
sessions were harder to achieve or run, we had to take time zones into
account, and had to shorten workshop days to avoid “video conference
fatigue”. On the other hand, it also meant that we didn't have to draw
up a budget and involve sponsors for catering, travel bursaries, etc.
Additionally, it allowed us to introduce a two-week break between
workshop days that was dedicated to asynchronous collaboration in
working groups.
The workshop was run over three days on 15, 16 and 30
September.
After some discussion, we decided to run synchronous workshop days that
start around midday in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This allowed
participants from Europe, Africa, and the Americas to take part at more
or less humane times of the day, but it also impeded participation from
Asia, Australia, and western parts of the Americas.
All in all, the workshop had 39 participants from 13 counties on five
continents, and included delegates from eight national or multinational
RSE associations: de-RSE, Society of RSE
(UK), NL-RSE,
US-RSE, Nordic
RSE, African
RSSE,
beRSE, and AUS/NZ
RSE. Even though they do not have formal
RSE associations, individuals from Argentina, Colombia, France, Canada
and Spain also joined the workshop. All participants agreed to follow
the workshop Code of
Conduct.
As we wanted the workshop to focus on the needs of the participants, we
asked them to prepare and share a video in which they introduced
themselves, and named ideas or questions they had around the
establishment or operation of national or multinational RSE initiatives,
or collaboration between them, or a concrete issue they wanted to solve
during the workshop. These videos were discussed in an icebreaker
session at the start of the first workshop day, presented in summary in
the plenary, and then transformed into pitches for groups that would
form to work on the realization of ideas or solutions to issues. After
those pitches were presented we took some time to discuss overlaps and
merge ideas and groups so that no effort would be duplicated.
Before group work commenced on the second workshop day, Neil Chue Hong,
director of the Software Sustainability Institute and Senior Research
Fellow at the EPCC, gave an invited talk entitled
“Does Research
Software Engineering have a diversity crisis, and what can we
do?“
which was well-suited to stop us in our tracks and reconsider the work
ahead. The numbers Neil presented in his talk clearly suggest that, yes,
RSE does have a diversity crisis. At least, thanks to Neil’s work
together with Caroline Jay and Jeremy Cohen on a diversity-focused
analysis of RSE survey data (paper forthcoming), we can measure it. But
more importantly, there are impediments not only to diversity, but also
to inclusivity and equity, that cannot be measured quantitatively: the
demographic data does not speak to, for example, microbarriers that
diminish access and equity. Throughout the talk, participants had the
opportunity to explore these through sharing their respective
experiences. And there is no easy fix for the diversity, inclusivity,
and equity crises in RSE: it’s not a checklist task, and it’s easy to
get wrong. Instead of focusing on “areas of concern” (essentially
framing diversity/inclusivity/equity as a problem to be solved, rather
than a goal to be achieved), or using people as proxies for some
“category” of “other”, we are encouraged to value lived experiences and
“champion exceptional people from all walks of life”, for example in
hiring, but also as communities. In order to avert continuation of the
crises, we should embed diversity, inclusivity and equity as goals
within our communities and projects, continue to listen and learn, and
take action where we can. In this spirit, the working groups were asked
to reflect where these values can be embedded in their work. And a
discussion at the end of the third workshop day seemed to suggest that
there is agreement within the international RSE community as represented
at the workshop that action should be taken to ensure that these values
are an integral part of RSE communities. To dive deeper into the issues
and the things we each can do that were presented in the talk, have a
look at the slides
(https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12955094.v4),
and watch the recorded launch event of SORSE - the Series of Online
Research Software Events with related talks from Drs. Kari Jordan and
Mariann Hardey
(https://sorse.github.io/programme/kickoff/).
The working groups focused on continued organization of international
collaboration between associations and the creation of a common platform
and entry point, gathering data on RSEs and RSE groups, and the creation
of common resources for Research Software Engineering in general, and
individual RSEs, (institutional) RSE groups and new RSE communities in
particular. During the last day of the workshop, all groups presented
their work. A brief summary of the work of each group follows, and the
groups will also publish more detailed blog posts over the next few
weeks, so stay tuned!
Summary of the working groups
Regular meetings of international RSE leaders
This group worked on a proposal for more organized and continuous
collaboration between established RSE associations. As mentioned above,
new national and multinational associations have formed over the last
few years, and there is great value in these organizations talking to
each other regularly, exchanging ideas and knowledge, discussing issues,
solving conflicts, and bringing together efforts. To further foster the
creation of new associations, these meetings will also be open to
champions of nascent RSE communities.
The website researchsoftware.org is a
product of the first International RSE Leaders Workshop in 2018, and it
should become the home for the international RSE community as such. This
group worked on ideas to enrich the content of the website with
structured information on Research Software Engineers and to make it
generally more useful to worldwide RSE communities.
→ Read the detailed blog post!
Find out and learn what it takes to be an RSE
There is no one job description for RSEs; we come in at least as many
flavours as chili sauce or research questions. This makes it hard for
people who are new to Research Software Engineering to get started.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a structured resource to help them
achieve that? There are, in fact, a few general strata along which
information can be organized: technology that RSEs can employ, skills
that are useful to have as RSE, and research-related questions that RSEs
should be able to consider. There already are a vast number of resources
pertaining to this or that aspect out there, so instead of creating yet
another resource for RSEs, this group has worked to provide entry points
and a structure to the available information.
→ Read the detailed blog post!
Who are we ...
You may have come across the international RSE survey, which provides
our communities with necessary data to better understand who/where/what
we are and do, which in turn allows us to model our associations and
communities around the needs (and wants) of the RSEs we bring together,
represent, and advocate for. The invited talk by Neil Chue Hong (see
above) is a clear example of how having these data can help to build
even better communities for the future. This group has issued a call to
all interested parties to help set up the next edition of the survey.
… and what do we know about our places of work?
Now that (at least in some places) institutions are (getting) hip to the
necessity of RSEs’ work, RSE groups grow larger, offer more career
options, or are being newly formed. Because this is often pioneering
work, there may not be an easily accessible role model for running an
RSE group successfully. Yet this knowledge exists, but it is spread over
existing RSE groups. So in a somewhat similar fashion to the group
working on structured information for individual RSEs, this group set
out to gather and provide existing knowledge, and plans to enrich it
through means of a set of interviews and/or a survey.
→ Read the detailed blog post!
Communities at the centre of Research Software Engineering
Some workshop groups have focused on individual RSEs, some on RSE
groups, and some on RSE associations, but we know that the primordial
soup where all of these were born, and the glue that keeps them
together, is the RSE community. RSEs come together in communities of all
kinds and sizes already, but there are still far too many places where
RSE communities simply don’t exist. To change this, we need to know
where to start, how to continue, and who our members may be. Communities
often don’t just exist, they are set up and fostered through activism.
At some point, they may need a structure, or governance, and may benefit
from formalization. And they should help people identify as RSEs and
give them a home. Similar to RSE groups, the knowledge needed to do all
that may already be there, but it needs to be found, enriched,
structured and presented.
“So I’ve had this idea …”
If you couldn’t make it to the workshop, there are still ways to
contribute to the international projects that are under way, or start
new ones: The forthcoming blog posts from the working groups will name
an option to get in touch with the group, and if you have an idea you
want to work on, please join the channel
#international on the
UK RSE community’s Slack chat! Details on how to join the chat can be
found on the website of the Society for Research Software
Engineering.
What has the 2nd International RSE Leaders Workshop 2020 achieved?
We think: quite a lot. Most obviously, there are the results,
preliminary results, and the ongoing work in the working groups. If all
groups finish their work and produce the intended outcomes, the
international RSE community will have won fantastic new resources,
communication channels, and a platform to facilitate both.
Less visibly, the workshop has facilitated growing and consolidating the
international community as such. At an in-person event, this would
probably have happened during lunch breaks, in the coffee queue, and
during a workshop dinner or similar. The solutions we have tried to
simulate those online don’t seem to have made much of a difference,
sometimes due to technical difficulties in Gather.town, sometimes
because meeting someone in a video call is just not the same as chatting
to them over a hot (or cold) drink. Instead, we think that a lot of
networking has happened in the working groups, both during the workshop
days and the asynchronous work phase.
As Peter van Heusden mentioned in the concluding discussion on the last
day of the workshop, the workshop has also implicitly drawn a “state of
the RSE world”. This is still very much incomplete, due to both the
small size of the workshop and the fact that some parts of the world
were excluded due to the choices we had to make when moving online. But
the composition of participants and their experiences and interests show
that things have changed since the first workshop. And it will be
interesting to see the changes that will happen before the next
workshop.
And ast but not least, it is especially exciting that participants from
Argentina, Colombia, France, Canada and Spain want to start new RSE
communities or associations in their respective regions! This has led,
for example, to the creation of a dedicated Slack channel (in the
Society for RSE's Slack team) for the community in Latin America:
#rse_latam. If you
are an RSE from this region, or interested in how Research Software
Engineering works in this part of the world, feel free to join it!
Stay tuned for the forthcoming blog posts from the working groups, and
perhaps see you at the next International RSE Leaders Workshop!
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