Radio silence

It's gone a bit quiet over here at the NGS blog lately mainly because I was completely caught up in writing a bid which took over my life for a few weeks.  As it was all I did for a couple of weeks I didn't have much to blog about.  Hopefully the bid will be successful and we'll have some exciting news for you in the near future!

Apart from that I have been working with colleagues at SSI in preparation for their Collaborations Workshop which will take place on the 21st - 22nd of March.  There has been a great response with maximum attendance and a great range of people attending.  One of the purposes of the workshop is to get researchers and software engineers working networking to find where they can help each other out. There aren't many conferences out there where the aim is to get everyone talking to each other all day instead of just a few people doing the talking!

In completely different news I just posted an article to the NGS website from EGI.  The EGI are showcasing their users research much the same as the NGS user case studies do (wonder where they got the idea from...?).  They are doing their case studies in the form of video interviews and the first one focuses on the research of Henry Hocking of the CONCO project who used the grid to analyse naturally occurring molecules in venoms used by marine snails to immobilise their prey.  You never would have guessed that one!

It's that time of year again...

My inbox seems to be full of emails regarding conference calls for papers, early bird registrations, conference deadlines etc.  Yes it's conference preparation season and its in full swing!

I received confirmation today that I'll be giving a paper at the forthcoming EGI Community Forum on our champions networks.  I'll be talking about both our Campus and Community champion networks and how we work with each other to promote e-infrastructure in the UK.  Several other NGS staff have also had papers accepted on topics including "Linking Authenticating and Authorising Infrastructures in the UK NGI (SARoNGS)" (Mike Jones) and "Tweaking the Certificate Lifecycle for the UK eScience CA" (John Kewley).

Also in my inbox this week was an announcement from the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) announcing that registration for their Collaboration Workshop 2012 (CW) is now open.  This is on of my favourite events as, unlike most conferences, you don't sit passively listening.  The CW consists of breakout groups where you discuss topics submitted by the attendees and there's always one of interest to me in every session.  After the discussion a member of the break out group volunteers to report back to the CW as a whole.  This means that you get to hear what all the other break out groups were talking about and you can still feedback on their outcomes as well. 

It's a really lively meeting and you leave after 2 days feeling tired but feeling that you've achieved something worthwhile!  It's also a great place for networking with new people as there are researchers from a wide variety of research areas, IT people, community support people and people like myself who represent national initiatives.  To see some of the topics already suggested for discussion visit the event website.

A tangled web we weave

In the September 2011 edition of NGS News, we published an article by our Technical Director David Wallom which highlighted the networks of champions that exist within the NGS.  To compliment this I also received and published an article on our website from Simon Hettrick from the Software Sustainability Institute about their network of champions which they have thankfully called Agents.  Too many champions spoil the broth and all that...

It got me thinking about how these networks all fit together like a spiders web as some people are members of more than one champions network and some institutions have more than one person involved.  A tangled web indeed!

This has probably come to the forefront of my mind as, due to some staff changes at the NGS, I'll be a lot more involved in the organisation of the Campus and Community Champions here at the NGS.

So what are these Champions and who are they?

The Campus Champions as suggested by the name, promote the NGS and the services we provide on their university campus or in their institution.  They tend to be people involved in research computing or ITS but we also have researchers involved.  All NGS member sites are expected to nominate a Campus Champion but we welcome Campus Champions from any UK university or institution.  Your site doesn't have to be a member to have a Campus Champion!  If you are interested in promoting the NGS at your institution or university (with help and support from the NGS) then please get in touch!

The Community Champions are funded by the EPSRC funded SeIUCCR project and are researchers who actively use e-infrastructure in their research.  They promote to their research community, peers and colleagues from all institutions and universities.  We are looking for more Community Champions from all and every research area so if you are interested in promoting your research and your use of the NGS then please get in touch!

There will be some slight changes to our Champions networks and hopefully you will see a lot more activity from these already active groups.  I want to highlight their activities more and demonstrate their contribution to the NGS and e-infrastructure as a whole.  I'd also like to link them more closely with the SSI Agents.

Lots of plans are afoot so watch this space!

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!

Are you a researcher looking for a partner?

If so then you really should consider coming to the dating event of the year! Well okay it’s not quite a dating event but matchmaking is definitely part of the plan of the Software Sustainability Institutes Collaboration Workshop.

It will be held in Edinburgh at the beginning of March and is described as “the perfect opportunity to meet the researchers, software developers, funders and other software experts that can help you advance your research”.

If you are a researcher who uses software but could do with some help from a computer scientist to make the most of your software, come along and advertise yourself and your situation / problem. You can give a lightning talk or present a poster and then work through the issue with other attendees in small break out groups.

There have already been some break out group discussion topics suggested BUT one of the best things about this meeting is that the agenda constantly changes depending on the interests of the attendees, the emergence of new discussion threads and tangents. There’s never a dull moment!

I’ve attended several of these meetings and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every single one. No death by PowerPoint and plenty of discussion and positive solutions instead! The constantly changing agenda works really well as we report back to the assembled attendees after every session and then decide on the next set of discussion topics. I’ve always met new and interesting people and came away fully enthused.

If you are a developer there are some free places up for grabs but the deadline is this Friday (18th Feb) so don’t delay!

Got a problem with your software?

If so then we know who can help! Todays blog post is courtesy of Simon Hettrick from the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI).

In 2010, a crack developer was asked to join the SSI. This man promptly set up as the Institute’s software architect. Today, still wanted by a number of projects, Steve survives as a developer of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can email him, maybe you can Ask Steve!

At the SSI, whenever we have a software problem we simply ask Steve. He’s our in-house software architect and all-round guru of code. Then we got to thinking: it’s selfish to keep such a valuable resource to ourselves, we should make Steve’s knowledge available to everyone. And that’s when the idea for the Ask Steve! blog was born.

So what is Ask Steve? The idea is that anyone can email Ask Steve! with a software trouble and query. Each week or so, Steve will work on a problem and post his answer to the blog. People can comment, try out the solution or simply get back to Steve with another question. Steve will sort through the questions he is posed and answer the ones that trouble the most people.
Next time you have a software problem, visit the Ask Steve! blog.

And breathe - it's over for another year

So the NGS Innovation Forum is over for another year and, although it seemed to consume most of my time over the last month, I’ll miss it!

This years event was well received by all those who attended according to the feedback I was given both at the event and afterwards by email. Always nice to know we’re doing the right thing!

The event kicked off on Tuesday with a day focused primarily on our users and I’m glad to say there were some present in the audience. Steven Young gave a brief summary of the Campus Champions who are our eyes and ears in institutions – ready to help users and to feedback comments and suggestions to us. We then moved onto a series of talks about user tools. The aim of this session was to talk through some of the tools that we offer in order that users could head home from the event and actually apply them in their research. The tools covered were –

• UI/WMS
• Application hosting environment (AHE)
• Databases
• Working with communities (in particular ccp4)
• NGS Cloud Prototype
• New Certificate Wizard

The day also featured three presentations from users who make a great deal of use of the NGS resources. We had presentations from a variety of research areas to demonstrate just how widely used our resource are. Luke Rendell from St. Andrews University talked about simulating learning strategies, Zhongwei Guan talked about modelling composite structures and Narcis Fernandes-Fuentes talked about using the NGS for early stage drug discovery. A bit of a range of uses!

Day 1 was really good with lots of questions and discussion which continued right the way from the last session through the drinks reception and poster viewing until the end of the event dinner!

Wednesday was aimed primarily at IT staff, sys admins etc so there were a few new faces on this day. In order to bring everyone up to speed, David Wallom re-capped the discussion from findings the day before. We then kicked off with a presentation from the University of Westminster who have been a NGS member for some time before moving onto a discussion session about how the NGS can help to facilitate collaboration between researchers and institutions.

Presentations on two NGS projects followed – accessing the NGS with Shibboleth and updates to the NGS accounting provision. The last session was dedicated to the EU with an update from the EGI Director, Steven Newhouse followed by presentations from two ESFRI projects – CLARIN and ELIXIR.

An exhausting couple of days but well worth it!

From an outreach point of view I’m now busy organising a couple of new roadshow events that people requested during the IF, I’m gathering the presentations from the event to go on the NGS website (watch this space!) and announcing the winner of the best poster at the event.

Congratulations to Jarmila Husby from the School of Pharmacy, University of London whose poster “Molecular Modelling Studies of the STAT3β homodimer:DNA complex” was voted the winner by the delegates. Jarmila won an Amazon voucher which is very handy with Christmas coming up! All the posters from the event will also be on the website soon.

If you missed the event there are a number of ways to catch up – the Twitter posts are available, a blog post from Catherine Gater of EGI, an article on Cloud computing from Simon Hettrick at SSI and photos from the event are available on the NGS Flickr account.

Thank you once again to all those who attended and hopefully we’ll see you all next year!

Who looks after your software when you've gone?

It's a familiar scenario. A PhD student creates a piece of software during their 3 years of research, it's used for their project but then they leave. What happens to the software? Who looks after it? Who maintains it?

EPSRC have also recognised this problem and have recently awarded £4.2 million to establish the UK’s Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). A team of academics and software engineers based at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science, the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and led by EPCC at the University of Edinburgh will work together to tackle these issues.

Together with the research community they will work to manage software beyond the lifetime of its original funding, so that it is strengthened, adapted and customised to maximise its value to future generations of researchers.

The establishment of the SSI obviously has implications for the NGS as there are many pieces of software out there which could be used by the wider community on the NGS - they just need a bit of TLC!