January Newsletter 2023
=======================

Happy 2023! We hope you're all having a wonderful start to the year!  It's been a busy January for AutSPACEs, with lots of progress made on the platform and a great first meet-up session with a lot of community members attending to share our work with and discuss next steps. We'd love to invite you to the next meet-up!

Date: Thursday 2nd February

Time: 12:00-13:30  

Location     

   Online via. Zoom: [https://turing-uk.zoom.us/j/92231923469?pwd=TXFCNFZISzJjajFoaUpIOG1MTURKdz09](https://turing-uk.zoom.us/j/92231923469?pwd=TXFCNFZISzJjajFoaUpIOG1MTURKdz09)

Join us for an exciting agenda including a run-through of the platform and upcoming opportunities. Email [Sophia](mailto:[e-mail]) or [Georgia](mailto:[e-mail]) to let us know if you want to get involved or don't know where to start, and feel free to share this newsletter to anyone who you think would be interested in joining us. They can sign up by following this link: [https://tinyletter.com/AutisticaTuringCitizenScience](https://tinyletter.com/AutisticaTuringCitizenScience).

Best wishes for everyone!

Project News
------------

### AI UK 2023

AutSPACEs has been selected to be presented for the [AI UK 2023 showcase](https://ai-uk.turing.ac.uk/). The event will take place on March 21/22 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, and will include keynotes, lightning talks, workshop area and an exciting exhibition.

AutSPACEs will be part of the exhibition space and feature interactive experiences as well as a platform demo. During our February meetup session we will be discussing and planning our exhibit space. We also have a limited number of tickets to give to community members. If you are interested to help or attend, please email [Sophia](mailto:[e-mail]) or [Georgia](mailto:[e-mail]) to let us know, with a few sentences on what you hope to gain from the event.

### Podcast

Susanna, Georgia, and Bastian were interviewed about AutSPACEs for the [Sustain Open Source Design](https://sosdesign.sustainoss.org/) [Podcast](https://sosdesign.sustainoss.org/)! The podcast episode is set to go live on Tuesday 24th January.

### Upcoming Seminar

Otis, Helen, Georgia, and Bastian will be sharing our work on AutSPACEs for an online seminar on **'Public Space, Play, and Neurodiversity"**. The seminar will take place online on **Thursday 24 January 2023 at 10am**. There will be a range of excting research projects shared and time for Q&A. All of you are invited! You can [register for the seminar online](https://symposium.uoc.edu/93279/detail/international-online-seminar\-lpublic-space-play-and-neurodiversityr.html). Please register by 9:30am to join.

### Platform

Callum and Helen have made amazing progress developing the autism platform, and we'd love to show you there work in the next meet-up!

You can also see design work as well as steps taken to create the design in [the platform design folder of our GitHub repository](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutisticaCitizenScience/blob/master/platform-designs/wireframes/platform-prototype-21-02-2022.md). We are also working on the platform development through issues and pull requests on GitHub. If you're interested in helping develop the platform or giving feedback please [check out our issues on GitHub](github.com/alan-turing-institute/autSPACEs/issues).

We'll also soon be looking to gather feedback from the AutSPACEs community on the platform via. user testing sessions. If you are interested in being involved in this, please email [Sophia](mailto:[e-mail]) or [Georgia](mailto:[e-mail]) to let us know.

### Moderation

Susanna, James, Bastian and Georgia are currently turning the work on moderation into an academic paper to share the insights from the AutSPACEs community and our solutions and strategies with other researchers. We are also always eager for feedback on our code of conduct and moderation processes. If you are interested in being involved in this, please email [Georgia](mailto:[e-mail]) to let us know.

### Software Sustainability Institute

Georgia has been selected as a [Software Sustainability Institute](https://www.software.ac.uk/) fellow for 2023, with a focus on neurodiversity and community. If you have any priorities or ideas you would like Georgia to bring to the SSI, please email [Georgia](mailto:[e-mail]).

Get involved
------------

Our project consists of many different areas where we would love people to contribute and give us their thoughts and ideas. It is really important we hear the voices and perspective of all of our community members.

Last year, we identified the following areas where we need your help:

* Communication, Engagement and Promotion
* Platform development
* Accessibility and Inclusion
* Moderation

We'll talk again about the different areas and routes to involvement in our meet-up session on the 2nd February, so please do join in so we can **make AutSPACEs work for you**.

If you want to get stuck in ASAP and know how to use GitHub, you can visit our main repository: [https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutSPACEs](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutSPACEs) If you look at the issues list in each of these, you can see a list of tasks that need to be completed, and we welcome anyone to contribute and get involved. We also invite you to take part (or start up) discussions on GitHub. You can do this by going to the repository and clicking on the "discussion" tab, where you can share your views:

[https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutSPACEs/discussions](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutSPACEs/discussions)

If you're not too sure about GitHub but would like to know more, _The Turing Way Book_ has a whole section on how to get started for successful collaboration and involvement. I highly recommend this book also for anyone who is interested in Open Source Research and Reproducibility! Follow this link on Getting Started with GitHub: https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/collaboration/github-novice.html

### Connect with us

* [About the project](https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/AutisticaCitizenScience/)
* [GitHub repository](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutisticaCitizenScience)
* [Github repository](https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/AutSPACEs)
* [Join us on Slack](https://slackin.openhumans.org/)
* [Follow us on Twitter](https://twitter.com/AutSpaces)

You are also welcome to email [Sophia](mailto:[e-mail]) or [Georgia](mailto:[e-mail]) and we will support you to be involved or answer any questions you might have.

A huge thank you is due to everyone in the community for all of your ongoing efforts and wonderful contributions. You are making a big difference in creating research which can benefit autistic people and their families.

Very best wishes,

Georgia, Sophia, Bastian