---
# System prepended metadata

title: '2024 Annual Retreat, 2023 Q4 review / 2024 Q1 planning meeting'
tags: [Group planning]

---

# 2024 Annual Retreat, 2023 Q4 review / 2024 Q1 planning meeting

January 17 - 18 at Santa Ritas Florida Station

**See [retreat Google doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/10MGwyhmhmSnYFsPbVe8kOF_6luLmvD2r0puoz-gFClw/edit) for more overall details**

Participants:

* Kristina
* Chris
* Jessica
* Eric
* Renata

## Outcomes

Clear and measurable group goals that align with individual goals
Ideas for new approaches / programming

## Action items

- Group processes meetings
    - Review group procedures book issues
    - Organize Google Drive
- Continue to discuss workshop materials and how they're provided; see [Renata's notes](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CTxUoNZxP9XBkM1N-7PxLmAxu9y42fudm23SOHmCMvc/edit#gid=0)
- Update group website
    - "Funded collaboration"
    - Combine "proposals and funded collaboration"

## Homework

* Review group 2024 OKRs
* Update and score [2023 Q4 OKRs](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10vSrxY7YRZm_b-Cs5jURPOBEZ4qYom_jf_1XoxKMw48/edit#gid=844680069)
* Draft next quarter [2024 Q1 OKRs](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_DR-B6TzRFOEbQBetnN0loZgIY_kv9wjZqxmnyQdO1A/edit#gid=844680069)
* Review [notes from previous quarter(s)](https://osf.io/tzmhp/wiki/OKRs%20%26%20Quarterly%20Reviews/)
* Suggest topics below in **[Parking Lot](#Discussion-Topics--Parking-Lot)**
* Create a presentation
    * [Chris](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Z6PKcB_asJqeb2AulWuOlIXKWLt0L18xjlbb5NLjBZY/edit#slide=id.p)
    * [Renata](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w0dRpv17AAB6j-NtebGYQQ_zcM8WKQpwM-6v0cDHbXo/edit#slide=id.p)
    * Eric - verbal
    * Jessica - verbal


## Agenda

| Day       | Time             | Activity                           |
|-----------|------------------|------------------------------------|
| Wednesday | 6:30 - 7:30 am   | Get car + groceries (Kristina)     |
|           | 7:30 - 8 am      | Pick up at Chris’                  |
|           | 8 - 8:30 am      | Pick up near airport               |
|           | 8:30 - 9:30 am   | Drive to station                   |
|           | 9:30 - 10 am     | Arrive + settle in                 |
|           | 10 am - 12 pm    | Group + individual presentations   |
|           | 12 pm - 1pm      | Lunch                              |
|           | 1 pm - 2 pm      | Topic discussion #1                |
|           | 2 - 2:45 pm      | Network graph activity             |
|           | 2:45 - 3 pm      | Break                              |
|           | 3 - 4 pm         | Topic discussion #2                |
|           | 4 - 5 pm         |                                    |
|           | 5 - 6 pm         | Chill time                         |
|           | 6 - 7 pm         | Dinner                             |
|           | 7 - 9 pm         | Escape room game + campfire        |
| Thursday  | 8 - 9 am         | Breakfast                          |
|           | 9 - 11:15 am        | Making a thing session                |
|                                               |
|           | 11:15 - 11:30 am | Break                              |
|           | 11:30 am - 12 pm | Group + individual photos          |
|           | 12 - 1 pm        | Lunch                              |
|           | 1 - 3 pm         | Toggl review                |
|           | 3 - 3:45 pm      | Hike / chill time        |
|           | 3:45 - 4:30 pm   | Wrap up (summarize + action items) |
|           | 4:30 - 6 pm      | Pack up + return to Tucson         |


## Notes During Meeting
- Started in a timely fashion :100: 
- Professional dev: 
    - Focus more on "soft" skills, e.g., teaching / pedagogy, and networking, less on technical skills bc we can teach ourselves
    - How do we advertise ourselves when attending in person and on Zoom? (T-shirts and Zoom backgrounds?)
- Create a group effort spreadsheet for 2024!
- Consistent project names for GH board, Toggl, GDrive folders, etc. 
- Lab-level trainings
    - Potential audiences: individual lab groups w/ one tech-savvy member, postdocs who will be starting a lab
    - We will be facilitating the training materials, not really teaching
- How to better package workshop / training materials
    - More consistent format for all resources would be easier to use
    - Quarto website? 
    - Contribute to Carpentries lessons (when appropriate)?
- Can we learn how to analyze qualitative data?
- (Kristina & Jessica) talk about how we can contribute to proposals
- Recruiting / hiring advice from Beth
- Change up format of quarterly individual presentations
- DBG gantry infrastructure
- Periodic follow-up with past collaborators when we are no longer working with them
- Stickers for group? 
- "Trainings" for what things? What does this mean?
- Making a thing session
    - We all revised mission and vision and added to new website
    - Eric and Chris made updates to group procedures; should prioritize issues
    - Jessica made proposal slides

## Discussion Topics / Parking Lot
- Making a thing session ideas
    - Revise mission & vision (Kristina)
    - Turning workshop materials into a website
    - [Documenting how we can contribute to proposals](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/186gSxNdunCGibkTpJeuFaSOIO2x1E4nT)
    - Group procedures book improvements




**Mission & vision**

> Our mission is to improve research quality and productivity in ALVSCE and across campus through collaboration and training. We work directly with researchers to help solve unique computational challenges at every stage of the research lifecycle.

> We envision a research ecosystem at the University of Arizona where all researchers are empowered to use the tools of modern data science to achieve transformative and rigorous scientific research. 


mission: is about now and current purpose

*Researchers enjoy working with us collaboratively while appying computation skills to every step of the research lifecycle*


*what makes us different?* one-on-one / custom, apply directly to research, intermediate level
*how to know we're being successful?* lots of good collaborations and projects from those
enjoy

vision: goals, inspirational, timeline
constantly learning new cutting edge things to teach researchers new things as what we currently teach is already known

*how we make the world a better place?* improve accuracy and impact of scientific reserach through improved reproducibility and sharing

We envision a research ecosystem at the University of Arizona where researchers are empowered to use the newest developments in data science, software engineering, and open-source science. [This results] in transformative scientific research that meets the highest standards of rigor, reproducibility, and useability

cutting-edge computational tools to their domain questions to...
[greatly improve] the [impact and accuracy] of scientific research  by sharing the cutting edge of technology and [something] [applications of reproducibility]. 

facilitate
practice

scientific productivity / publishing

every step of the research workflow
enabling researchers to use computational skills in their work


cultivate (like miracle gro) an ecosystem of cutting-edge, reliable, and accessible computational research at UA. 

our dream world: a research ecosystem at UA where researchers can easily find and apply cutting-edge computational tools to their domain questions.  [creative new science visions]
how we contribute: we bridge the gap between domain-specific questions and the cutting edge of data science, software engineering, and scientific reproducibility. we *meet researchers where they are at* and work together to apply the new shiny things to transform their research.

find and apply the newest developments in data science, software engineering, and open-source science to achieve novel scientific quests. 

where researchers are empowered to use the tools of modern data science to conduct transformative scientific research that meets the highest standards of rigor, reproducibility, and useability. 




### Toggl and time tracking

Original purpose was to track time spent on incubator projects
Also useful for populating effort spreadsheet hours

How do people use it now?

Can sync with Google Calendar and GH issues

Use projects for: (similar to effort spreadsheet)
- Incubator projects (one project per)
- Funded collaborations (one project per) OR possible projects in grant-writing phase
- **Individual workshops** (one project per)
- Events (resBaz, WIDS, SORTEE; one per event)
- Group work: this is just one (use meetings tag for sprint planning mtg, outreach hour, standup, etc.)
- Professional development

Use tags for activity *types*:
- Emails
- one-on-one appointments
- meetings
- documentation
- writing code
- workshop pre- and post- work
- teaching
- outreach
- skills development
- conference
- grant writing
- hiring

Use tasks:
- Consistently—they get combined in toggl reports if they have the same name
- 

Leave clients as they are but we aren't officially using them

