---
# System prepended metadata

title: Nordic RSE 2021 unconference
tags: [unconference]

---

---
tags: unconference
title: Nordic RSE 2021 unconference
---

# Nordic RSE 2021 unconference

:::info
This is the public shared document. Everybody visiting this page can edit.

- Link too this page: https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/unconference
- Zoom room: 625 7785 6126, passcode: 2021-06-29 (if you found this info without registering, please do [register](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/) also, it takes 2 minutes)
- [Event page](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/)
- [Code of conduct](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/code-of-conduct/)
- You can create a separate HackMD for your session but please reference it from this document and please make it editable by everyone
- [How we do an unconference](https://hackmd.io/ue-yci-sSMKx458ChZab0w?view)
- If you have difficulties moving to a breakout room, please send message to Zoom chat ("can you please move me to room N?")
:::


## Day 1: 2021-06-29

(all times in CEST, [convert to your timezone](https://arewemeetingyet.com/Stockholm/2021-06-29/13:00))

Notes for day 1: https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/rJEwuct2O

- 13:00 : [Welcome and Intro to the unconference format (HackMD, proposing sessions, scheduling)](https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/unconference_intro_goodbye) (Richard Darst, Samantha Wittke)
- 13:15 : Invited talks, reminder that its recorded until 14.50 (chair: Samantha Wittke)
    - 13:15 : [Shahnawaz Ahmed](http://sahmed.in/) (Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology) _Keep your code alive - lessons from the QuTiP project_ ([abstract](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/keep-your-code-alive/)). HackMD discussion: (See below)
    - 13:35 : [Kristoffer Carlsson](https://github.com/KristofferC/) (JuliaComputing) _Julia for research software engineers_ ([abstract](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/julia-for-rse/)) ([link to slides](https://bit.ly/3iQ3Mfn ))
    - 13:55 : Break
    - 14:05 : Q&A (if too many questions: unconference part, BOR 1)
    - ~~[Athanasia Monika Mowinckel](https://drmowinckels.io/about/) (University of Oslo) _Developing and distributing in-house R-packages_ ([abstract](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/in-house-r-packages/))~~ *(due to unforseen circumstances, this talk will not be presented during this event and we will try to reschedule at a later stage as a regular RSE seminar)*
- 14:20 : [Introduction to Nordic-RSE](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RfxCZVmcstocxEDPnACzxmMexEtZrc3ZDW-eU2JMmBw) (Patric Holmvall)
- 14:30 : [Anne Fouilloux](https://github.com/annefou) (Nordic-RSE) _Myths and misconceptions about research software development in Academia"_ ([abstract](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/rse-myths-and-misconceptions/))
- 14:50 : Unconference scheduling  (facilitator: Richard Darst)
- 15:00 : Break
- 15:10 : Unconference scheduling  (facilitator: Richard Darst)
- 15:15 : Session 1 (facilitator: Richard Darst)
    - Room 1: Getting funding for software projects ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@tpfau/Funding))
    - Room 2: How to be a good git evangelist ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/IYmEkTNKT02nz3ZVwHUaEw?both#Discussion-Git-evangelist), [Slides](https://github.com/sunnivin/git-evangelist/blob/main/290621_git-evangelist.pdf))
    - Room 3: What is "R".  What is "S".  What is "E" ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/jDxqhg13T8ebeWOnGohbeg))
- 16:00 : [Summary of day 1](https://hackmd.io/LM2cZlVyTZWaJ9JjOXb6tw) (Patric Holmvall)
- 16:10 : Breakout rooms open again for continued discussion
- 18:00 : Close breakout rooms and Zoom call


## Day 2: 2021-06-30

(all times in CEST, [convert to your timezone](https://arewemeetingyet.com/Stockholm/2021-06-30/13:00))

- 13:00 : Introduction to the day and unconference scheduling (Jarno Rantaharju)
- 13:15 : Session 2 (chair: Jarno Rantaharju)
    - Room 1: Julia for research science: ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@KKvQPlvXTzyagfiFKWO7mA/rJ7LERFn_), [Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VGK5QsY0pSy5A8fEOeULBRi6BJbBJzgD0DnTylhWHJ8/edit)) [session closed]
    - Room 2: Development frameworks for Research Software ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@harivyasi/H14lUYu2d))
- 14:20 : Break
- 14:30 : Unconference scheduling  (Jarno Rantaharju)
- 14:40 : Session 3 (chair: Jarno Rantaharju)
    - Room 3: Update from Aalto RSE + How to make Research Software Hour more visible and useful ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/Mr0SCWUlRTeMvEGzCxe-Kg?view))
    - Room 4: Developing the Nordic RSE + How to define Research Software Engineers ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@jarno/ry3fRCFnO))
    - Room 5: Publishing software papers ([HackMD](https://hackmd.io/QNJEArwsTMi1-flzs8sfoQ))
- 15:50 : [Conclusion and follow-up](https://hackmd.io/LM2cZlVyTZWaJ9JjOXb6tw) (Patric Holmvall)
- 16:00 : Close

---

## Proposed sessions

:::info
Break for 10 minutes, please view and vote on these proposals.  Breakout rooms will be announced after the break.
:::

Please vote for a session if you would like to attend it. We will avoid overlapping sessions that have a lot of votes. So we won't use the votes to find out whether something happens or not but to avoid scheduling very popular contributions at the same time.

Vote like this:
- suggestion
  Votes: oooooooo
- another suggestion:
  Votes: ooo



### Proposed for day 2

Anyone may add a session ideas here. If possible, please indicate the duration (up to 70 min = full Session). Please describe it in a sentence or two like this:


- **Pitch session**: Allow people time to pitch their ideas and see if someone does it.


- **Lightning talks**. Maybe we can have a lot of small talks?  Please write your name and topic below if you are interested
  - name1, topic1
  - name2, topic2


- **Developing the Nordic RSE** (up to 70 minutes) (Jarno): In this workshop we will come up with practical ideas for what the Nordic RSE can do for its members and RSEs in general. We will write a page on the nordic-rse.org website with a roadmap for the next year. Each item in the roadmap should have a responsible person.
  - Votes: ooooooo
  -HackMD

- Scrumming as an RSE? **Development frameworks for Research Software** (up to 70 minutes) (Shashank): Industrial scale software development relies heavily on development frameworks/methodologies such as Agile and Scrum. What are some in-house approaches/good-practices that RSEs have developed along the same lines? Can these be documented and formalized for wider dissemination (e.g. inducting new RSEs) and can they be tested for effectiveness? Some wider/alternative points of discussion include: 1) How RSE teams can use a single workflow to eliminate the lottery/bus factor 2) Is formalization of workflow necessary (after all the Researcher component of an RSE loves freedom provided by the academic setting) 3) A day in the life of a typical RSE (whatever typical is): how you manage software development workflow (If someone who has worked in industry can bring their perspective e.g. pros and cons of using Agile/Scrum etc., that can greatly increase the scope and utility of this discussion.)
  - [HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@harivyasi/H14lUYu2d)
  - Votes: oooooooo


- **Update from Aalto RSE** (10 minute talk + 20 minute Q&A, or shorter): We will give a short discussion of the [Aalto RSE service](https://scicomp.aalto.fi/rse/), following up on what we presented in December. If there is interest, we could expand this into a longer discussion explaining what we have done at a level of detail that others could use to repeat it.
  - Votes: ooo
  - HackMD

- **How to make Research Software Hour more visible and useful** (30 minutes) (Radovan): With Anne and Richard and soon hopefully others we are running the [Research Software Hour](https://researchsoftwarehour.github.io/) Twitch stream. This is fun and I believe we have a number of very useful recordings but we would like to make it more useful to the community and also reach a wider community, both as watchers but also as contributors. In this discussion session we could collect ideas on what to improve in format and announcement and also discuss how we can involve more people to contribute, share, and discuss on stream with us.
  - Votes: ooo
  - [HackMD](https://hackmd.io/Mr0SCWUlRTeMvEGzCxe-Kg?view)


- **Julia for research science** (45 minutes): Discussion about different ways of using Julia for research science. Sharing demos, experiences, useful packages, tips and tricks etc.
  - Votes: oooooooo
  - Volunteer to chair: Kristoffer Carlsson
  - [HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@KKvQPlvXTzyagfiFKWO7mA/rJ7LERFn_)


- **Publishing software papers** (up to 70 minutes) (Luca): Publications are the currency for researchers and number and distribution of publications can often be a tie-breaker for getting fundings, so let's talk about where to publish research software papers.
  - [HackMD](https://hackmd.io/QNJEArwsTMi1-flzs8sfoQ)
  - Votes: ooooo


- (Waiting for a chair) **How to define Research Software Engineers?** (related to what Anne presented) what are they and what are they not
  - Votes: ooooo
  - Volunteer to chair: Shashank (as long as no overlap) Samantha can chair if there is overlap :) :+1:
  - HackMD

---

## Update from Aalto RSE

[Presentation slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15XF93b5pdZ3quW-GsfuiY7cOBsFO2MqbSQdTmN374B8/edit)

The slides are not available, docs says "Access denied"

- SciComp "garage" sessions (like office hours) every day where people can connect and ask questions
- It might be cheaper to hire people to optimize codes instead of buying new/more hardware

- I would like to hear Richard's take on the lack of senior people as technical staff. 
    - Where do you find these? WHat is a "senior" and a "junior" task? 

- This is very interesting to hear about since, in many ways, Aalto's unit sounds a lot like the team I (Thomas Arildsen) am part of at Aalborg University (CLAAUDIA).
  - Thanks, good to know we have companions in Denmark!

- The Aalto group is not part of the IT services, but rather anchored at a department. Richard thinks it is very good for their team not to be part of central IT services.

- Richard; what do you see as the drawbacks of being part of your university's IT services (if you were organised like that)?
  - IT services source services from outside and do not do internal development. Would entail professional corporate management instead of academic-like management.


- How do you approach a support project where researchers come to your team with several hundred lines of code without tests? Do you set aside some hours to first add tests to their code and achieve a x% of code coverage before you proceed with the requested task? As a RSE myself and part of a team that offer similar services to the researchers, I'd like to learn about how you go about this.
  - Yes, we would do that.

- Coming to what you said: Why can't you take money for projects?
   - +1, how do you solve this then?
   - Some of our major project funders (Academy of Finland and EU) don't allow internal invoicing
   - Finance doesn't want to do internal invoicing for small amounts
   - Also requires coordination between {HR, finance} × {our department, sending department}
   - In the end we agreed "pay with basic funding for now and we can use this information to improve it later."



- Is there a concept of FTE (Full time equivalent) in Finland? Here in UK, systems are built so that a personnel's salary can be a sum of FTEs being sponsored from different projects. So a project can pay 0.5 FTE, another 0.3 FTE and maybe 0.2 FTE from core funding. This also makes part-time working a lot more feasible. 
  - Yes, many people are like this, including many of our existing staff.  This is how we would have to pay people from projects, but adds a lot more HR and project management headaches.


- Do you also help with design choices (i.e. a PhD student adding a new class to existing code) or is this to general? 
  - Yes!  This is one of the most valuable parts of our garage.

- Is the scope of Aalto RSE beyond Sciences? For instance Digital Humanities? Any plans for that
    - limited because of funding source at present, school A's money shouldn't be used to support school B that much.
    - need for expansion is foreseen, we will work on it in the next year.

- I can share experiences from how we are organised at Aalborg University if interested?
    - pillars
        - data management
        - data science
        - infrastructure
    - day to day there is a bit of overlap between the pillars


---

## General Questions

- @all : what is your favorite 'terminal setup' for daily work? Share your screenshots/descriptions :)
  - alacritty terminal with i3 tiling window manager, fish shell, custom prompt

- 


## Feedback

* one thing that went well
    - The discussion where really interesting for me and I learnt a few things about how to connect with other RSE +1
    - Engaging discussions
    - The sessions in general where interesting, both discussions and presentations
    -  ...

* one thing that could be improved in the future
    - Selection of Sessions and session distribution (felt a bit chaotic :) )
    - Using hackMD the way we did made it a bit hard to follow. Maybe it's good to pre-prepare a bunch of pages for the different activites in advance.
    - More last minute contributions would have been nice +1



## Summary of the day

### Julia for research science

### Development frameworks for Research Software 


### Update from Aalto RSE + How to make Research Software Hour more visible and useful

### Developing the Nordic RSE + How to define Research Software Engineers

- Gather success stories, make a case for RSE teams
- Offer guidance for new and aspiring RSEs
- Provide a community / network 

- 2.9 at 14:00 - 16:00 CEST: First Nordic RSE annual meeting ([public calendar](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=8li6hjcjm95g76pgte1p5pi05c%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe%2FStockholm), [public iCal feed](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/8li6hjcjm95g76pgte1p5pi05c%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics))

### Publishing software papers



## Conclusions

### Nordic-RSE
- Join Nordic-RSE ([membership form](https://forms.gle/qCVVRGXPi3Hq7inW6)). This enables us to organize events such as this one, and in the long run makes it easier for us to support and advocate for you.
- Follow us on twitter: [@nordic_rse](https://twitter.com/nordic_rse)
- Join our [Zulip chat](https://coderefinery.zulipchat.com/) to network and keep up-to-date with news and activities.
- Tune in to the next episode of [Research Software Hour](https://researchsoftwarehour.github.io/) (in September).

### Follow-up
- We will post recordings of the talks.
- We want to write and publish blog-posts about the discussion sessions.
    - Please let us know if you can help out.

### What do you want to see in the seminar series?

- Modern fortran examples! 

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*always write at the bottom*