Virtual events rallying New Zealand's Research Software Engineering community
With many communities turning online to stay connected and share knowledge across their networks, NeSI is excited to be supporting some of the upcoming virtual events planned for the local and global Research Software Engineering (RSE) community.
Research Software Engineers in HPC (RSE-HPC-2020)
NeSI Director Nick Jones is involved in the Programme Committee for an RSE workshop to be held in conjunction with SC20 in November. Featuring a mix of interactive discussions, a keynote address, and several shorter talks to establish context, the workshop will bring together RSEs and allies involved in HPC to discuss the current activities and plans of national RSE organizations, discuss the needs of RSEs and RSE groups, and write a report on ways RSE organizations can help address these.
Call for submissions - deadline 14 August 2020
Prospective participants are encouraged to submit position papers (limit of 2 pages, not counting references; no format prescribed) on topics related to RSE issues, including (but not limited to):
- Career paths: how do RSEs want to be hired, promoted and evaluated?
- Building RSE organizations: how to find RSEs in your country/region and how to motivate them to join the network and engage?
- Supporting RSE organizations: what can be done to help RSEs (and those supporting RSEs) at international, national, regional, and local levels?
- Making the business case for RSEs and RSE groups: evidence, case studies, tactics?
- How do we want funders to support RSE roles and activities?
- Building in RSE requirements as part of wider research infrastructure
- Providing mentoring and training for RSEs
For more information and to submit, visit the RSE-HPC-2020 workshop Call for Submission page.
New Zealand Research Software Engineering Conference 2020
In June 2020, NeSI decided to rebrand its successful Science Coding Conference to be named the NZ Research Software Engineers (RSE) Conference. Motivation for the change was two-fold:
- to include people from all research communities who work on the cusp of technical and research domains
- to more fully align with the goals of the Australia / New Zealand RSE community
NeSI Research Communities Advisors Nooriyah Lohani and Megan Guidry and the NZ RSE Program Committee welcome attendance and contributions from across all Australasia science and research communities. This event is endorsed by the Research Software Engineers (RSE) Association of Australia and New Zealand (RSE-AUNZ).
Key event details:
- What is NZ RSE 2020?
- Keynote speakers
- Dr Denis Bauer, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO
- Dr Hilary Oliver, Senior Research Software Engineer, NIWA
- Program at a glance
- Who should attend?
The Call for Submissions just closed and a draft programme is expected in the next couple of weeks. Registration closes on 03 September. For more information, visit the NZ RSE 2020 website.
International Series of Online Research Software Events (SORSE)
SORSE - a Series of Online Research Software Events - is an international answer to the COVID-19-induced cancellation of many national RSE conferences. NeSI Research Communities Advisor Nooriyah Lohani is among the SORSE Organisers, an international committee of RSEs from various national RSE chapters.
SORSE aims to provide an opportunity for RSEs to develop and grow their skills, build new collaborations, and engage with RSEs worldwide. To populate the series, SORSE has opened a call to all RSEs and anyone involved with research software worldwide, to propose a talk, a workshop, a software demo, a panel or discussion, blog post or poster. They encourage contributions from all time zones and will schedule events on a day and at a time that suits the presenter. After the each event, SORSE will provide an opportunity for networking and informal discussion with other participants in small groups.
The Call for Contributions form will remain open continuously and there will be a rolling deadline at the end of the last day (UTC) of each month, following which all contributions received over the previous month will be sent for review by the Programme Committee.
For more information, visit the SORSE website.
RSE-AUNZ webinar series
RSE-AUNZ, in association with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is planning to run regular online events on topics of interest to the RSE community. They are currently accepting topic suggestions and encouraging community members to vote on the ideas submitted. Click here to view, vote on, and submit suggestions for topics.
At regular intervals, they will select the top voted topic and organise an online event around that subject. The next deadline for submitting / voting is 31 August.
Research Software Engineer Stories
Since 2019, Vanessa Sochat from Stanford has hosted an ‘RSE Stories’ podcast (https://us-rse.org/rse-stories/ ) with new stories published every 2 weeks. Recently, Peter Schmidt from University College London joined RSE Stories to help share stories from research software engineers (RSEs) across continents. RSE Stories' first episode ever from the UK/EU just went live on Thursday 11 June 2020 (https://us-rse.org/rse-stories/2020/richard-fitzjohn/) and featured Richard Fitzjohn from Imperial College London.
Watch this space, as New Zealand RSEs (including NeSI's own Nooriyah Lohani) might be featured on an upcoming episode! To listen to past episodes, visit the RSE Stories website.
Whether you are a scientist, a programmer, or something else, your story is interesting and unique, and RSE Stories wants to hear about it! RSE Stories is keen share stories from across the RSE community, regardless of geographic location. If you have a story you'd like to share or see featured in a future episode, contact the hosts.
