Research Bazaar 2016
The Research Bazaar, or ResBaz, is a researcher digital literacy & skills training and community building event that the University of Melbourne pioneered this year. The idea is to bring together a diverse cohort of early career researchers (or more senior researchers), offer them skills training on contemporary software development tools to support their research, and do so in an atmosphere so memorable and inspiring as to build strong affiliations and linkages that would survive during their careers.
ResBaz leapt into life at the University of Melbourne in February this year, and is going global for 2016. Nine people from New Zealand attended instructor training prior to the event, and many stayed on as instructors during the event to train the 150+ ResBaz attendees - all came away very impressed!
See a write up of the event here.
Experiencing first-hand the impact of the event, those NZ attendees are now keen to see the event take off in NZ. A ResBaz Organising Committee has been established to share insights gained from Melbourne and ensure guidance is available for the community to reproduce their success – the committee is supported by David Flanders of the Melbourne ResBaz team, Bill Mills of Mozilla Science Labs, and co-chaired by Peter Sefton and Nick Jones. A key early output is the ResBaz Cookbook, which in Flanders’ words ‘assures that everyone is separate but equal in being able to get on with their own version of ResBaz (all content creative commons).'
ResBaz is also calling for interest from institutions that might sponsor, participate in, and host a ResBaz for their city – ResBaz is highly collaborative and led by researchers, supported by institutions and other organisations such as the Software Carpentry Foundation and Mozilla Science Lab. Running a ResBaz in 2016 can support researchers across disciplines and institutions to build their confidence in software scripting and data analysis, essential skills for contemporary research. As the initiative moves from Melbourne to the world, ResBaz is looking to grow the community. If any institution wants to pick up on ResBaz, the approach is developed in the open and available to all. Those who attended are also happy to share insights from this year's event and talk with anyone interested about the goals of the ResBaz community and how they might get started.
An approach is being explored by several people in NZ, suggesting several ResBaz ‘lite’ events operate in a handful of locations - operating at a smaller scale allows local communities to take first steps and grow as confidence builds and demand increases. Universities are key hosts and sponsors as they already know and support the research communities that will gain value from the event, and are also where instructors will come from.
As an outcome of the Instructor training preceding this year's ResBaz, NZ also has certified instructors gaining the experience needed to work with others on NZ ResBaz events. NeSI is now partnering with institutions across NZ to run the smaller-scale Software Carpentry workshops which see 30 to 40 researchers trained – two workshops were run in February in Auckland and Christchurch immediately following the Melbourne event, and five more are either already scheduled or in the early stages of planning.
With nine NZ instructors trained in Melbourne, NZ is already setting off at a great pace. NeSI’s team is open to helping institutions prepare for ResBaz, and is offering to guide and mentor instructors so they can lead future events on their own.
For more information on ResBaz see: https://github.com/resbaz/cookbook/wiki
Say hi to the ResBazarods for a full 24 hrs on the last Thursday of each month: http://melbourne.resbaz.edu.au
To contact NeSI email events@nesi.org.nz or email John Rugis or Sung Bae.
