More castles, more discussion but less lightning

Following on from my previous post, day two of the CW11 event kicked off with pastries and caffeine to get us ready for the day ahead and more discussion. Once again the agenda was debated and break out session topics were discussed before a presentation by one of the sponsors of the event, DevCSI which has nothing to do with the infamous TV series set in Las Vegas…

I attended the breakout session on the dissemination of “academic” research software results and ended up scribing for the session which was chaired by the NGS Technical Director, David Wallom, who is a hard person to keep up with!

The basis for this session was discussing where software developers could publish their efforts in a peer reviewed, “reference-able” journal. Nature Methods was held up as a great example but in a different field so could we do something similar for software developers so they could contribute to the RAE and improve their standing in the university etc. It was a very interesting discussion with a lot of bridges to cross before anything concrete can happen but watch this space. Hopefully the slides from this session will be available soon.

After coffee we had a lively reporting back session from all the breakout sessions which also included “Research funding 2011: what's available and how to get it?” and “We have data-management plans, should we have software management plans too?”. The slides from these sessions are available now.

After lunch the audience was divided into 3 groups to discuss the same topic – “Ideas for improving Collaborations” and we were asked to report back with our findings after an hour. The discussion group I was in concentrated more on why’s and why not of collaborating rather than the practical means of doing so that I am usually involved in e.g. Access Grid meetings, collaborative technology such as Skype, blogs etc. However it was still a lively and engaging discussion!

This was the last discussion session of the day and all that remained was for Neil Chue Hong to sum up the past 2 days, for many people to be thanked for their great organisations skills (Simon Hettrick!) and for us all to make our way home by plane, train and automobile.

A great two days yet again and I’m already looking forward to the next one. The SSI is certainly going to be busy following up on all the actions from the meeting and I look forward to seeing their outcomes throughout the next 12 months.