# Nordic RSE 2025 Conference

[TOC]

::: warning
Zoom room: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/62426845282
Link to these notes: https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/nordicrse-conference-2025

#### Summary
- Open questions
- Actions
- Decisions
- Planning Time Schedule
- Meetings minutes
- Organization
- Tentative event schedule
:::

## Lessons learned
- You need at least two people to coordinate things locally. More if your room plan is more than two rooms. consider:
- one person makes sure that lunch is ready to be served / restaurant is ready to receive. At the same time one person might need to close the door of the conference room.
- one person leads things in one room, one person in the other
- if local tech needs local sign-up, doubly so! Computers turn off too, so always have a local present to restart sessions.
- if you have a local catering service, trust it. They have experience and you often don't. It's money well spent. And thank them profusely if they offer good service, you likely need to work with them for 2-3 days and want to be on their good side (this includes for example telling them when you are done and leaving the premises, and thank them)
- Don't over-stress: small ouchies tend to fix themselves and there is nothing wrong in asking forgiveness for a mistake. In general, if people have coffee and can eat (good food...), they are happy. People will not remember minor scheduling issues, but they will remember if the food was terrible.
- Include buffers in the schedule. E.g. if you are going to have lunch from 12 to 13, explicitely stop sessions at 11.50 and re-start at 13.15. It will give you time to re-organize people.

## Todo:

- [x] Add organizers and affiliations to the website
- [x] Add a rough schedule on the website
- [ ] Add Matteo's department (GRIDH) as a sponsor on the website
- [x] Invite / Confirm the invited speaker
- [ ] Choose and ask one of the speakers if they want a keynote slot
- [ ] Ask participant that cancelled day before if they want reimbursement for the fee

## Open questions
- Invitation / allowing private sector actors. Do we allow presentations from privates?
- Maybe only if they sponsor the event?
- Should we "hire" some helpers? Master students? Etc. (Matteo's department has none)
- Decision: we are somewhat positive if needed. MT looks for how this can be done.
- Travel grants?
- With money, this is really great to make it accessible
- Could be kept in consideration especially for those years where we travel on the periphery
- Decision: somewhat positive if there is money, but we don't know that yet.
- nice system to record what people think and how much they want to or can commit:
- +2: I am for it and will actively work on it
- +1: good idea but I won't lead it but maybe can do some support
- 0: neutral
- -1: don't think we should do it
- -2: I will actively work on an alternative solution

## Actions
- MT: catering:
- look into catering options for dinner
- get things started to book catering during conference
- LF, RB: websites, add content, fix links, website redirect (RB)
- RD: Draft e-mail of announcement of conference + prepare abstract call

## Decisions
- Matteo's department (GRIDH) has agreed to sanction the event so that it can be considered an internal event at the university
- Matteo got confirmation of rooms at Humanities Department in Gothenburg
~~- Use Indico for call for abstract~~

## Planning time schedule
~~Early November:
~~- confirmation of rooms (and thus dates)~~
~~- website at least with dates~~
~~- e-mail to members to announce~~

~~By Christmas:~~
~~- abstract call opens~~

February:
- have a few keynote talks listed (in other words a reason why people should attend)
- open registration
- remember food requirements!

March:
- 16 March abstract submission deadline
- 28 March abstract submission extension

April:
- (second round talk acceptances, if there is a second round)
- registration deadline
- 30th of April (11.45pm), possible extension to May 7th?

May 1st:
- communicate tentative number of people to feed for catering service

May 12th:
- communicate definite number of people to feed for catering service

May 20-21:
- conference
- ~~Dates decided internally but reservations not confirmed.~~

## Budget

- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YG4xv5ILCmMMgE1MK2Uczw-lmyoAnG6tZMtaBaPsmKc/edit?usp=sharing

### Catering:
Here is a quick and dirty estimate (will copy also on the notes):

per person costs:

- services (plate, glass, fork and knife, cup of coffee): 15 kr pp
- "nice" hands towel: 7 kr
- vegetarian buffé: 255 kr
- drinks: 23 kr per drink for mineral water, but need to see how it would work with alcohol. Bottles look quite expensive (267 kr for a bottle of red...)

**TOTAL with one drink = 300 kr pp**

other costs:
- evening delivery: 800 kr
- waiters: say 1770 kr for 3 waiters (590 kr per waiter, but need to check if they have a minimum or maximum)

**TOTAL = 2570 kr**

If we order for less than 4000 kr (unlikely) there is an extra 600 kr fee. We could ask to get table cloths (again, not sure if mandatory) which are 60 kr - per cloth I assume.

## Meetings minutes

### Meeting 8.5.25

* Panel discussion
* Chairing sessions. (This person can also delegate blocks of time)
* Tuesday: Richard
* Wednesday: Jarno
* Local: Matteo (moves people from place to place)
* Food: Final numbers sent on 12.may
*

### Meeting 10.04.25
Present: JR, RD, LF, MT, RB

- Budget status
- Flipped a sign in the budget that gave us a bit more of a loss. Still not a problem.
- Budget OK
- Local team status
- All on track (food, billing, )
- We don't currently have local helpers, but they can be found later / not a problem.
- Schedule
- Some keynote speaker abstracts will come later.
- What should the intro say:
- What is nordic-rse (not top-down, grassroots)
- History of nrse / nrse conferences
- What we want to come out of this conf
- Community map
- What should career panel say:
- This is something you can do with your life
- This is what you can do to prepare
- Words of comfort (life will be OK if you care about these skills)
- How the work is vs. how people think it is?
- What should the outro say:
- What to do next (yourself)
- What will nordic-rse do next
- Conference next year
- Ideally in another place - maybe ask around.

### Meeting 20.03.25
Present: MT, JR, LF, SW, RD

- Submissions
- -> Highlighted in submission google sheet
- green: accepted
- orange: ask person to choose their favorite
- red: reject
- Discussion: discuss about content to make it super useful
- empty title and abstract: reject
- empty abstract: ask to re-submit
- Changes to submission: open PR to website or e-mail secretary
- parallelism: as much as possible in single track, tutorials in parallels
- Task: reach out to submissions
- one career panel with people from outside academia, Task: RD to reach out
- 2 keynotes from SE via MT
- Poster session in beginning of dinner
- Task: reopen google form with only poster option
- open until registration deadline April 30th
- Task: registration deadline to website

### Meeting 13.03.2025
Present: MT, JR, LF
- MT go ahead and write to both Cecilia Lindhé and IGDORE
- We will extend abstracts extension to March 28th
- Samantha sent all reminders
-

### Meeting 06.03.2025

- MT should contact invited speaker when back (if not already done)
- Sponsors/supporters on the website
- Gothenburg university as sponsor
- A section for supporters, or affiliations of organizers, or organizer list with affiliations.
- Social media post thanking gothenburg university
- Made PR with some practical information - can someone review? MT can add more when back and LF can help with finding the right place on the website.
- RD will contact some of the people for career panels.
- We expect not all will be attending but we can create a panel out of the attendes that do come.

### Meeting 20.02.2025
Presents: MT, JR, RD, TP, LF
- speakers
- Cecilia Lindhé (morning 2, ticket+dinner offered, MT contacts)
- Career path panels
- we have some (ex)members who recently moved on to the private sector (Anne Fouilloux, Radovan Bast, Sunniva Indrehus). It would be super cool to have them host a panel about the parallels and skills between academia and private sector
- Academic career path panel: cecilia, rkdarst, NTNU person (Konstantin Stadler?)
- Have these separate, but both afternoon 1. Then people can talk more during the dinner.
- RD and MT (after 2 weeks) try to coordinate these panels.
-

### Meeting 13.02.2025

Present: JR, RD, SW

- secretary e-mail address needs to be setup correctly
- e-mail to be written:
- conference
- related events
- one ticket type: 900 SEK
- no member benefit (membership paid out of own pocket, while conference paid by org, maybe goodiebag could be the benefit)
- waiver can be applied for
- no default waivers for organizers, but can be actively suggested for people that might have trouble with their organization
- What is included in ticket price?
- access to the wole conference program
- coffee and snacks
- lunch
- dinner (budget apprx 400 SEK / person would be ok)
- Limit: 100 people
- invited speaker?
- Open call for ideas in chat; decision and outreach starting 20.2
- Budget: not really, but SW SSI fellowship could be used for some community person
- https://aial.ie/pages/people/
- SSI person
- Other RSE organization speaker (deRSE, NLRSE, ... )

- note for next time: Save the date ealier, think about sponsorship

### Meeting 06.02.2025
Presents: MT, JR, RD, TP, LF

- created form for registrations
- decisions about deadlines (April-May, see above)
- design of the website: add time table

### Meeting 30.01.25
Presents: MT, JR, TP, LF

- decision: have tickets in SEK instead of EUR to facilitate budget.
- price: 900 SEK (~78€)
-

### Meeting 23.01.25

- Discussion points with some suggestions, please add names to tasks!:
- DL for abstract submission and when they will get to know should be visible on website, influences registration
- Special topic for this years conference? Does not have to be whole conference theme, but maybe a session could have a dedicated theme?
- Abstract submission: Indico? Google forms? <- Let's choose the easiest?
- Name
- Affiliation
- e-mail
- title
- abstract
- Conference registration: Eventbrite? <- since we need payment connected
- Name
- Affiliation
- e-mail
- pronouns
- LF: I wouldn't ask this in the registration form, since it can be a couple of months before and some people may change how they feel by the event. I think it's better to let people write their pronouns on the name badge at the event
- :+1:
- dietary restriction
- in-person/online?
- LF: are we having hybrid? That's a bit of a hassle
- Well having only in person makes things easier :) so all for it.
- LF: Maybe we can record the talks and put them in the youtube channel afterwards, but live-streaming (with good quality) can be a bit of a hassle, I'd vote for in-person only. Good to notice that if we allow remote participation/presenting, in-person attendance may go down quite a bit.
- info on fee waiver (send an e-mail?)
- LF: alternative could be to have a "free ticket" option directly on eventbrite and trust on honour code people will pick it only if truly cannot afford... not sure about this myself though.
- send me more information about becoming a member
- invitation letter need (we are almost too late for that to be valid, but maybe some people need it for the organization to get the cost covered?)
- Website ready to be advertized?
- map needs to be fixed
- LF: yep. Although would be nice to have the link for submission first
- SW: agree, lets start actively once with have the link there

### Meeting 16.01.25
Present: JR, MT, RB, RD, SW (in absentia)

- Radovan will talk to NEIC people later today, and come back to us about the use of Indico
- Either way, we communicate this week that the conference will take place, and announce call for abstracts on Friday 24.01.2025
- sticking point: the website is not yet ready to go public!
- can we update ourselves the website if Luca cannot? Yes. Yes.
-

Samantha's notes (in absentia):
- Conference communication plan will appear here: https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/conference_comms
- Everyone please help filling our conference A-Z with info as things get confirmed: https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/nrsecon25_az
- !!! Participant communication chat channel for the conference: https://coderefinery.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/478806-nordic-rse-2025
- !!! All organizational matters are kept in https://coderefinery.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/459873-nordic-rse-2025-org
- Let SW know as soon as the website is done with basic info and can be shared; and when registration opens

### Meeting 09.01.2025
Present: SW, JR, LF, MT, RD, RB

- Rooms confirmed :)
- every day a different auditorium (220/120 people) in same building
- 2 smaller rooms (28 people) for both days
- does not need to paid(?), we don't ask
- as long as we are there only during normal times, likely no need for extra security
- Budget
- RSESoc can give some small event fund if needed, 1000 (ask SW)
- currently available 5000 Euros
- previous conference expenses: 2200 Euros (850 euros we got in from tickets)
- Sponsors?
- Registration fee: increase to 75 Euros (to get money in, waiver possible if asked)
- Nordic-RSE member benefit?
- 65 Euros for members
- Catering
- Näckrosen restaurant (university cafeteria)
- Matteo will check about dinner possibilities there or elsewhere
- Website
- Source: https://github.com/nordic-rse/nrse2025
- Render: https://nordic-rse.org/nrse2025/
- TODO:
- map, get Google key or replace with OSM
- submission info and link to submission
- redirect https://nordic-rse.org/nordic-rse-2025/ to https://nordic-rse.org/nrse2025/
- https://github.com/nordic-rse/nordic-rse-2025 ? Used? If not -> remove, focus on one place
- https://github.com/nordic-rse/conference_utilities. Use
- Communcation
- Participant communications preparation: https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/nrsecon25_az
- Suggestion: Use Zulip channel #Nordic-rse-2025 for participant communication and move organizing chatter to different channel
- do in parallel with e-mail?
- Sponsoring
- Companies?
- What/How much would we need to keep registration fee low?
- SocRSE events and initiatives fund up to 1000£
- Sponsoring chair contact SW for info from others

### Meeting 28.11.2025
- Present: JR, SW, RD, LF
- Website: https://github.com/nordic-rse/nrse2025
- Render: https://nordic-rse.org/nrse2025/
-

### Meeting 31.10.2024
- Present: RD MT JR
- Went over currently know budget numbers and made a spreadsheet.
- Spreadsheet in Nordic-RSE secretary google account
- Catering menu: https://www.hors.se/assets/cateringmenyer/goteborg-cateringmeny.pdf
- Budget seems OK with current numbers at 75€ registration
- Two full days program (not moring day 1 informal)
- Dinner not budgeted yet
-

### Meeting 24.10.2024

Present: Richard, Matteo, Luca, Samantha

- Tshirts for staff?
- Goodie bag would be nice
- SocRSE has separate pool for that
- Major cost: conference dinner
- could be sponsored
- or on participant cost
- Location
- MT to check for space/tables for demo/poster session
- Format
- demo/poster session?
- not as high priority as talks
- Sponsoring
- no chair yet
- SW can contact RSE organizations:
- contact already SocRSE for event sposoring
- also ask for sponsoring letter and/or brochure
- do ASAP! (SW)
- contact local companies
- contact CSC, RISE, NRIS, NEIC
- sponsor brochure would be great
- demo/poster session? Also including participants
- what possibilities do sponsors have? access to participants by booth in lobby?
- needs to be checked
- Website:
- LF will create draft soon
- make look nice for sponsors right now
- ToDo: add main communicaition events to the timeline
- We now have chairs for each topic penciled in :tada:
- For socials: We could do something similar to "distributed social" on day 1 between conference
- Conferencefee: could be a bit higher
- reduced fee for Nordic-RSE members
- reduced fee for low income countries
- if problem paying: contact us
- different fees for independent/professional? (indpendent is the base fee so we don't have to enforce it).

### Meeting 17.10.2024
Present: Richard, Radovan, Matteo
#### TODO

- [ ] Matteo needs to see how to get master students
- [ ] RB: prepare a website
- with some placeholders and referring to last website and what was presented there
- as separate repo, not under nordic-rse.org github repo
- emphasize community
- encourage registrants to submit talks/demos/posters

### Meeting 10.10.2024
Present: Richard, Matteo

#### TODO
- [ ] Assign all chairs
- [ ] Matteo: contact room booking services
- [ ] ~~Website? -> rewritten up~~
- [ ] Come up with speakers
- [ ] Communication to members about dates

### Meeting 03.10.2024
Present: Jarno, Richard, Aurélie, Matteo

- write down all events that will occur during the conference
- split sub-events into simple tasks to assign at a later stage
- formation of different chairs to deal with organizational needs

## Organization:
Chair: RD
- Keep all the other things going
- provide vision and inspiration for a good program
- Keep an updated budget and be aware of financial impact of other decisions.

Communication chair: SW
- Vision: We need to do good communication because most potential audience members don't know of us yet and may not know why they should attend this conference. We need to be active and make sure things are written from at attendee's perspective. We also want very good communication with attendees.
- Conference Website (RB, LF)
- Understand the current state of the conference and what needs to be communicated
- Deliver punctual information to Nordic RSE members
- Advertises conference to Nordic RSE members
- Coordinates advertisement in internal nodes at all levels
- Coordinates opening of CfC and registrations
- Delivers information to people requesting it
- Delivers punctual information to participants

Program chair: (MT, JR?)
- Vision: We have two full days of program. We have an open call and review of abstracts like a normal conference. We plan for being able to have several tracks if there are enough submissions. We don't try to have the deadlines too early since we don't have a guaranteed audience. Try to make it clear what kind of things we think can be submitted.
- Come up with invited speaker (RD)
- For each invited speaker: communicate with them and handle scheduling
- Review applications for contributions (choral)
- Create final program (MT)
- Finds and preps session chairs (MT)
- Technical subchair: A/V and hybrid (MT?)

Social chair: (LF + someone local)
- Vision: TBD (We want a variety of activities, with facilitation for finding groups. Could be an unconference-type thing for social activities. We are thinking about a conference dinner, but it will be expensive.)
- Day 0 social event (room booking Local chair)
- Day 1 dinner activities?
- Arrival and group activity
- Registration desk
- Goodie bag?

Local chair: MT
- Vision: Rooms are reserved at GU with internal (~0) prices. They will be in some academic building, and we'll try to have spaces for several tracks (we may or may not need them). We try to have space for 100 people. With this number of people food is most likely catered by the meeting rooms. There are social activites around. We'll try for a conference dinner but it will become expensive with this many people. Costs are approved before committing.
- Booking a room / rooms
- Map and information about how to get around
- Guide people on the ground
- Day 1 dinner
- Lunch options
- Coffee catering
- General tourist and visitor information
- Local volunteers:
- Generalist #1:
- Generalist #2:

Code of Conduct commitee: (AV?)
- Vision: Same as last year, use best practices known to community.
- Contact individuals interested in being in the committee
- Review code of conduct (modifies if needed)
- Come up with guidelines to be applied at the conference (emergency contacts, to deal with accidents, etc)

Finance chair: (JR)
- Vision: Approve all costs in this meeting before it's committed. MT and JR should be informed of all expenses and will keep a record somewhere linked below. TBD: should paying members have a reduced fee? What are the registration tiers?
- Budget keeping (MT)
- sponsorship (SW: support with funding from RSE organizations, XX: other funding)
- Sponsor Prospectus
- Financial logistics
- Ticketing

## Tentative event schedule

### Key invited program:
- MT's department ex-director (story of transforming research, challenges and benefits) Cecilia Lindhé
- Something about skills: connect RSEs to in-demand skills and how to develop your career
- Someone from outside academia, how do professional software developers do things
- NeIC someone, who can talk about importance of technical expertise in research.
- .

### Social program ideas
- Write down your worst disasters. Three "best" get a small prize.
- Start a shared documents where we can "check" each other skills (networking)
- Creating/improving a map together of where we are
- RSE dating:
- step 1: all write on a wall things they know how to do and could teach
- step 2: all browse what has been written on the wall and find things they would like to learn
- step 3: match those who wrote with those who liked the words, and have them talk.

### Day 0 (19.05.2025):
Evening social event

### Day 1 (20.05.2025):
- sponsoring
- Communication (including generating excitement about the event)
- Website and static information updates
- Overall chair: keep things going

09:00 - 12:00 Arrival and group activity
- Preparing an activity
- Registration
- Goodie bag?
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch
- Find lunch options and decide where we go
13:00 - 13:10 Introduction
- Write and give intro talk
13:00 - 15:00 Talks
- call for abstracts (open, review, announce)
- preparation of schedule
- Chair the session
15:00 - 15:10 Coffee
- Order catering or find a location
15:00 - 17:00 Talks
- Chair the session

Evening Social Dinner

### Day 2 (21.05.2025):
09:00 - 09:30 Coffee?
- Order catering or find a location (Same as coffee day 1)
09:00 - 12:00 Talks
- Chair the session
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch
- Decide a place from lunch options
13:00 - 15:00 Talks
- Chair the session
15:00 - 15:10 Coffee
- Order catering or find a location (Same as coffee day 1)
15:00 - 16:00 Talks
- Chair the session
16:00 - 17:00 Outro and feedback
- Write and give an outro talk

---

## Funding/Sponsorship

### Advice

Lyndsey Ballantyne (SocRSE):

- "contacting sponsors as early as possible is definitely key. Budgeting and payment processing at a lot of places is lengthy and complex which is one of the main reasons to contact them early (and before they run out of money for their financial year)"
- "accessibility funds (you may find people have different pots of money they can use to sponsor those directly) as well as the fact you can offer a sponsor to directly sponsor a prize/networking event for them to have their name attached to."

Sponsorship package examples:

- Collaborations workshop: https://www.software.ac.uk/cw24-sponsorship-packages
- RSECon: https://rsecon24.society-rse.org/sponsors/sponsorship-opportunities/

### RSE Society event funding application

Website: https://society-rse.org/policy-for-socrse-events-and-initiatives-grant/

Questions in the application form:

- Date of event
- Name of the event
- Event website (if available)
- Event capacity
- Describe briefly the topic and purpose of your event
- Detail briefly the total amount of funding (amount in sterling) that you are requesting
- Please provide an itemised list of how the funding will be spent eg how much on catering, room hire, travel etc.
- How does your event/initiative align with the society and our charity’s Mission statement and Objectives? (No more than 300 words).
- What will be the impact of the requested funding on your event/initiative? Are there any specific or measurable outputs which could be included in the society's annual report?
- Who is the target audience and beneficiaries for your event/initiative? Will the event/initiative reach new sectors or audiences? How will diversity and inclusivity be considered in marketing the event/initiative?
- Please list any conflicts of interest.
- Is there any additional information you'd like to tell us about? This will not be assessed as part of the application process.

# Communication drafts

## Announcement email

The Nordic Research Software Engineer Association is happy to announce its 2025 conference, in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 20-21 May 2025. Registration and abstarct submissions are now open.

A "Research Software Engineer" is a researcher who is more focused on software, computing, and data - an essential part of modern research, but often an afterthought in academic environments. The NRSE2025 conference is the place to come to network with other like-minded people and find your community. The program consists of submitted and invited talks, social activities, and a forum for discussion.

The program is designed both for people who consider themselves RSEs right now, and people who would like to know more and possibly take this as a career path. We welcome talk submissions, especially those focused on software/computing/data practicalities which are not often presented at traditional academic conferences. In short, if any of the above sounds like you, come and find your home.

Read more and register at https://nordic-rse.org/nrse2025/. Registration is open until at least XXX, and talk submissions are open until YYY.