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minutes-2015-09-17.md

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Agenda:

  • Follow-up from last week
  1. Research methods talk series (Ricardo/Yuliya/Daniel) - David is presenting at the Research Education Rounds, could participate or advertise? - Ricardo has sent a list of dates to solicit speakers
  2. Research Orientation - Meeting with research orientation team to possibly include mandatory skills training (or just including additional offerigs during orientation week)
  3. SciNet Courses - Reached out to IMS, School of Graduate Studies, School of Continuing Studies and SciNet.
  4. Survey - Natalia has prepared a survey based on the few questions generated last meeting (can be added to and disseminated)
  • Discuss group aims/projects

A summary of our brainstorming, and a proposal

Issues/solutions clusters

  1. Managing lab digital assets: software versions, data, ongoing and completed analyses
  • Addressed by: wiki, version control (e.g github/gitlab), sharing of best practices
  1. Poor computational literacy of researchers
  • Addressed by: training, face-to-face support personnel, informal/formal meetings and talk series, wiki/forum
  1. Maintaining and sharing know-how (organisational memory)
  • Addressed by: wiki, meetings and talks, training
  1. Making better use of computing resources
  • Addressed by: training, face-to-face support personnel, access to Compute Canada resources
  1. Brute technical hinderances (e.g. wifi access to the SCC, journal access)
  • Addressed by: communication with Research IT
  1. Discovering unmet needs of researchers
  • Addressed by: lab survey, meetings and talk series, forum, face-to-face support personnel

Possible group aims

  1. Organise social and academic events to catalyse discussion and sharing of know-how (peer-support)
  • Talk series, workshops, office hours, invited speakers/training
  1. Advocate for institutional/structural changes to improve scientific computing support
  • Make the case for money for more support staff in labs, a computing support service, etc..
  • Get software and computing on the research agenda of CAMH, and into PI grants, etc..
  • Request software/infrastructure: e.g. hosted version control
  1. Advisory board of researchers to offer guidance and ideas for research IT directions
  • Act as an informed group of researchers (and perhaps a conduit for other researchers) to help guide Research IT in purchasing and staffing decisions
  • Help review and shape computing purchasing decisions from labs and institutions
  1. Build/adapt the software needed for CAMH specific research, and support the researchers
  • Hold hackathons and or advocate for 20% time for computing experts to devote to in-house development projects
  • Work alongside researchers to learn about methods, and improve coding/packaging/publish good code

Group vision/mission

The Software Sustainability Institute cultivates better, more sustainable, research software to enable world-class research.

We help people build better software, and we work with researchers, developers, funders and infrastructure providers to identify key issues and best practice in scientific software.

The Software Carpentry Foundation (SCF) is [...] devoted to improving basic computing skills among researchers in science, engineering, medicine, and other disciplines.

  • software-carpentry.org

Next steps

  1. Wiki-survey (review next week)
  2. Talk series (schedule)
  3. Workshop series (room availability)
  4. Obtain legitimacy :D
  • Demonstrate one successful case where we've helped (Yuliya, Brice!)
  • Letter to request our status as an advisory board?
  • One-on-one interviews with Damien/Bruce/Catherine about our group aims