Hot off the press…

Released the beginning of June, the new edition of the NGS quarterly newsletter is out now. The June edition features a range of articles including –

• Supporting e-Infrastructure Uptake through Community Champions for Research (SeIUCCR) - a new joint project between the NGS and the SSI
• around up of the successful and engaging Collaborations Workshop held by the SSI earlier this year
• an in-depth look at the new NGS load monitor
• Sysadmins corner tips on using Screen
• an introduction to our new member site - the University of Huddersfield

We are always looking for news items for our newsletter and fortnightly email bulletin so if you have anything you would like to contribute please get in touch! We are particularly keen to hear from our users and their application of e-research. Have you recently presented or published a paper featuring research performed on the NGS? If so then we’d love to hear from you!

Moving pictures

Back in March I attended the SSI Collaborations Workshop up in Edinburgh. I used to attend these events when OMII-UK organised them and they were always enjoyable and productive meetings. I wrote up my thoughts and activities on the 2 day event in the blog here (day 1) and here (day 2).

If you are interested in finding out more about these meetings such as who attends, how it works and what is discussed then you are in luck. The SSI has just released the videos of the report back sessions onto their YouTube channel. Unlike the usual "death by PowerPoint" these videos show discussion group members reporting back on the issues that their group discussed and the actions their group decided upon. The presentations from the report back sessions are on average about 2-3 mins long thanks to strick timekeeping by the conference chairs. Short and to the point!

SSI have also recently released a list of outcomes from the meeting which they are working on over the forthcoming months.

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.

Castles, case studies and lightning

Last week I attended the Software Sustainability Institutes Collaboration Workshop in Edinburgh. As with previous meetings this event was very enjoyable with a great deal of discussion, actions and collaboration taking part.

The organisers had revamped the programme for this year’s event and one of the changes was the inclusion of “lightning talks”. The set up was interesting with each presenter having 5 minutes and one slide which shared the screen with a rather large countdown clock. It certainly kept the presenters on their toes and the attention of the audience! Unfortunately given the nature of the presentations you really had to be there to appreciate the talks but some presenters did manage to get a lot of info on their slides. In particular the slides from Taverna, STFC, software preservation, soundsoftware.ac.uk, e-science central, SPRINT, Hartree Institute and Youshare.ac.uk are worth a look. I have linked to the websites for each project where they exist but for the slides, visit the materials section.

After the a lovely lunch it was time to start what I think is the most enjoyable part of the workshops – the breakout sessions. Before the event, delegates have the opportunity to submit topics that they would like to discuss at the breakout sessions and then at the event people vote on what topics they would like to discuss. The delegates break into groups and disappear off to various parts of the building to discuss the topic. Each group has a chair, a scribe and someone who “volunteers” to report back but quite often people take on two of these roles.

I attended the session on preparing case studies to support cases for funding which was rather apt as I prepare the NGS user case studies. There were about 7 of us from a variety of backgrounds including funding council reps and the discussion covered areas such as different types of case studies, ways that case studies could contribute to REF, how to format case studies and much more. It was a very interesting hour and we did come up with several suggestions for further work for the SSI.

The second breakout session of the day took place after some caffeine had been consumed and this time I attended the session on “measuring the research impact of software”. Unfortunately the notes from this aren’t up on the SSI website yet but when they are I will make sure I update the link!

So that was day 1 at the CW11. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about the conference dinner so I’ll leave that out and write up day 2 very soon!