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# System prepended metadata

title: December 2021 RSE Leaders meeting

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# December 2021 RSE Leaders meeting
Wed 15 Dec 2021: 13:00-17:00
 - Zoom meeting link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81872136539?pwd=MXZ6UFNIQWdCVWNKOHYreWVod1RQZz09
 - Meeting ID: 818 7213 6539
 - Passcode: 875445

## Attendees
- Martin O'Reilly (The Alan Turing Institute)
- Mark Turner (Newcastle)
- Chris Edsall (Cambridge)
- Leila Muresan (Cambridge)
- Robin Long (Lancaster)
- Steve Ranford (Warwick)
- Iain Barrass (Queen Mary University of London)
- Paul Heaton (Reading University)
- James Graham (Southampton)
- Maria Broadbridge (Reading)
- James Allen (Exeter)
- Jeremy Cohen (Imperial)
- Matt Machin (Manchester)
- Jonathan Cooper (UCL) - in part!
- Eilis Hannon (Exeter)
- Ed Ruck-Keene (Durham)
- Oliver Henrich (Strathclyde)
- Arianna Ciula (King's Digital Lab, King's College London)
- Cath Roderick (Cardiff/Supercomputing Wales)
- Diego Alonso Álvarez (Imperial College London)
- John Robinson (Southampton)


### RSEcon 22 Survey
I need to get some feedback from other leaders about the format of the next conference. I'd appreciate any responses to this short form while people are joining this leaders meeting. Thanks, Mark Turner.

https://forms.gle/zgKucbRn1SZ8xts19

# Agenda
- 13:00-13:15: Welcome and final selection of topics by attendees
- 13:15-13:45: Session 1 discussion
- 13:45-14:00: Session 1 report back
- 14:00-14:30: Session 2 discussion
- 14:30-14:45: Session 2 report back
- 14:45-15:00: Break
- 15:00-15:35: Session 3 discussion
- 15:35-15:50: Session 3 report back
- 15:50-16:20: Session 4 discussion
- 16:20-16:35: Session 4 report back
- 16:35-16:50: Wrap up and next meeting
- 16:50-18:00: Post event social

| Session | Time | Topic 1 | Topic 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13:15- 14:00 | Team structure | Cost recovery models  |
| 2 | 14:00-14:45 | (Involvement in) Regional RSE Groups | Collaborating across RSE groups | 
| 3 | 15:05 - 15:50 | Shapes of RSE role | Career ladders |
| 4 | 15:50-16:35 | Team growth (incl recruitment) | Hybrid |


# Structure of the day
The plan is to have 4 sessions in break out groups, with the number of parallel groups per session determined by people's choice of topics. Each sessions will be 30 minutes discussion in a break out room followed by 15 minutes feedback to the wider group.

There will be a break halfway through the afternoon and the those who wish to stay on after the close to catch up socially are very welcome to.

# Wrap up and next steps

### Taking things forward
- Continue work on these topic on a GitHub repo (maybe extend the existing ScoRSE evidence base one)

### Future meetings
- It was a long meeting and 30 mins was only enough to scratch the surface
- Shorter (a couple of hours), potentially picking a single topic
- More frequent, but shorter meetings
- Proposal: Every two months for 2 hours with single topic. Could do "what do we want to discuss" bit asynchronously beforehand and have information exchange and questions answered beforehand, leaving synchronous time for focussed.
- When these were in person we did a whole day and the host team had quite a bit of time to present an update
- Updates from groups could be another topic area for focussed or general meetings
- An ideas session like today also good. Maybe less frequent and good as in person ones?
- Schedule for core hours (10am-3pm) 
- Two ideation / networking ones each year, with a bias to in person/hybrid/outdoor
- Claire will email in new year once the GitHub repo has been organised and remind people to pick up topics they were interested in continuing the conversation on.
- Next meeting will be a focussed one in March, which gives time for asynchronous work on today's topics.
- Focus meetings will be on topics where someone volunteers to lead and co-ordinate the asynchronous pre-work

# Potential topics
Please put your name under the 4 topics you would most like to discuss. Please feel free to add any additional topics you would like to discuss if they are not already listed.

## 1. Starting a new RSE group
- Name

## 2. Cost recovery models
- Jonathan Cooper
- Simon Hettrick
- Leila Muresan
- Eilis Hannon
- John Robinson
- Steve Ranford
- Oliver Henrich
- Kim Martin
- Iain Barrass
- Ed Bennett
- Arianna Ciula


## Session 1: Cost Recovery

JA gave overview of Exeter set up. Current model is RSEs work on two project simultaneously idealy 50:50. Keep time sheets to track, then reconcel against staff costs. Challenge to convert hours worked to % FTE. Looks like at 80% costs recover which is target.
Qs surround handling overheads such as admin, meetings etc which bring down cost recovery. Want to be in a similar place as a 100% FTE post-doc.
Team is 5 RSEs; 6/7 projects, some projects have 2 RSEs. All projects from engineering, maths, physics colleges - although variety within this. 
Cost against a certain grade. 
Some groups do hybrid of grades (i.e. 80% lower grade: 20% higher grade) to account for management time, but do it at a day rate. 
Proposals costed at average grade, but when work starts charge actual grade. 
Would like to better understand time spent on non-recoverable activities (e.g. admin, training etc).

IB - describe Queen Mary's approach very different. Free at the point of use, currently 0 cost recovery, but budget where donations can be made (central IT budget)! No growth as no funds to recruit utill grants come off. Moving towards cost recovery system, standard centralised cost  that covers admin rather than %FTE RSE; or alternative just provide advice including overhead costing. 
3 RSEs (inc manager).

AC - Kings Digital Lab. Large teams need more overheads. 
Daily rate. 
To mitigate overruns use of project managers, pre grant analysis, workload planning.
Currently 12.5%FTE RSE (14 persons)

Ideal model is institution underwrite contracts (ideally permanent) then grants buy out time and recover costs.

Should we be thinking of RSEs as post docs? 



## Session 1 Topic 1: Team structure
### People
- Martin O'Reilly
- Alys Brett
- Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran
- Mark Turner
- James Graham
- Chris Edsall
- Rich FitzJohn
- Maria Broadbridge
- John Robinson
- Rich Gilham
- Heather Turner

### Notes

- Key themes to discuss / questions
    - Team size - how big is too big? 
        - See below
    - Ratio of RSE to senior RSE
        - See below 
    - Choosing senior RSEs as managers
        - sub teams vs multiple generalist teams. Divide by tech areas? Random?
        - Several people raise this
    - Seniority without line management?
    - Roles - development / devops / etc
    - Boundaries of who to recruit in central group
    - Core group + friends (hybrid structure),interaction with embedded RSEs
        - System at Birmingham: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/it/teams/infrastructure/research/bear/rsg/funded-engagements.aspx


- **Team size**
    - Large team sizes currently are: ~31
        - Turing: 31, looking to grow to 45 in next 12 months. No specialist sub teams, except research computing support team
        - EPCC: ?? 100ish? 
        - Manchester: ??

    - Medium
        - STFC Data and Software Engineering Group - 17 looking to grow to at least 20
        - Newcastle - 15 and expanding by 3 or 4 next year
        - UKAEA - 17.5, likely to be 20+ this year
        - Digital Health Software - Embedded team at Manchester: 13
    - Small
      - Cambridge (RCS) 6 (expanding to +6 RSE & 1 PM Exascale and +7 climate centre)
      - Reading : 2 RSEs plus ~10 affiliate academics
      - Imperial central: 4 RSEs, part of wider research computing unit
      - RESIDE (Imperial College, embedded) 7-10 (varies due to grants!)
      - Southampton: 9 people (2 directors, 1 Software architect, 2 senior RSEs, 4 RSEs) 
      - Warwick: 2 RSEs in Scientific Computing group + 3 RSEs in Information and Digital group, otherwise embedded
      - Met Office: ~125 SSEs total (across 5 grades). Approx 2/3 are in two ‘core’ strategic areas with the remainder embedded in other teams. Each strategic areas is split into ~4 teams, with a line manger for each. Personally manage a larger team- me, 7 permanent staff and 2 contractors. How we silo projects is complicated…


- **Collecting + Sharing information**
    - Used to have a survey of groups - need to bring this back
    - Key issue is who it's shared with - mostly confident to share this with other RSE leaders
    - Existing Google Sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTd_AgELhvKd4FXDyAWI8L2WWNtAqxPElo334KZLEZWA4Ze5yOKDtwA2DE5crwNsCu8s7Cd8oAsgr5s/pubhtml linked from https://society-rse.org/community/rse-groups/
    - Use GitHub repo with pull requests https://github.com/RSE-leaders/evidence-bank (that is public though...)


- **Division of groups**
    - Large groups can be matrix managed but results in a lot of decisions going up to the top
        - Is this a recommendation against?
            - No - but it's important you have good processes
            - Delivery / portfolio manager / coordinator may be an important role
                - UCL introducing this as full time role
                - EPCC has a couple of full-time project managers
                - Met Office use a mixture of professional Project/Programme managers and getting Science/RSE managers do it. Choice is outcome rather than process driven (hopefully)
        - Can still have subteams around specific platforms / technologies
            - Subteams can be very porous
        - Seniors may be leads on projects
    - How to handle context switching?
        - Turing: People 50-50 on two projects (charged at 50% FTE each but transparent that 5a 50% allocation is 2 days per week) + 20% time (10% personal/professional development + 10% volunteering for a team/institute services area - e.g. comms, recruitment, research computing, training ets). Larger service areas managed as "projects" (e.g. research computing, training)
            - Work on project 2 days a week - charged at 2.5 days
            - Many RSEs like the variety
            
        - Newcastle: Also 50% projects. Lessar commitments handled at 50% for shorter periods. SUb teams by tech area (mobile apps vs everythign else)
            - At larger group size need to split up meetings as most people don't know the project
    - Does 50:50 work in practice?
        - Mostly - though internal work (e.g. services, recruitment) can add up and act as another project if it's time sensitive
        - For 100% projects get two people rather than one person at 100%. Can feel like person is "lost" from the group if they're dedicated to project full-time. 
        - Rather than 100% allocations for a person, try to put them on 2 closely related projects.


    - **Ratio of RSE to senior RSE**
        - Turing: 1 Principal : 3-4 Seniors : 3-4 Standard/Junior 
        - Cambridge: 1 Senior : 6 Standard





## 4. Team growth
- Martin O'Reilly
- Mark Turner
- Matt Machin
- Jonathan Cooper
- Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran
- Maria Broadbridge
- Simon Hettrick
- Paul Heaton
- Leila Muresan
- Eilis Hannon
- Chris Edsall
- Richard Gilham
- James Graham
- Alys Brett
- Steve Ranford
- Oliver Henrich
- Iain Barrass
- Heather Turner
- Anders Markvardsen
- Ed Bennett
- Arianna Ciula

### Notes

- Topics / questions
    - How much overlap between this and 'Team Structure' - about how to structure growing teams
    - Really difficult to recruit / retain staff against industry and e.g. NHS
        - Pay, stability (length of contract)
    - Persuading institution to allow recruitment
        - Try to get RSEs before or after grants
- In faculties
    - Can be difficulties in getting finance accross from other faculties
    - May require staff to formally be seconded to other
- Funding to support RSE groups
    - Money from CDTs - Bristol got 9 CDTs at 0.1 FTE to fund training
        - Provided menu of courses to CDTs plus some bespoke parts
        - Went into taught curriculum as a proper module
    - Software for Research Communities
        - A lot of applications in - hopefully will run again
    - RSEs more expensive than TAs
        - Use as loss leader?
    - HPC posts
        - e.g. Supercomputing Wales pooled RSEs at some institutions to make central teams
            - EU structural funding applied constraints on structure
            - Have to recruit in specific ways as agreed - not part of general pool applications
- How to do a big recruitment round?
    - Diversity of roles means you're not 'fishing in the same pond'
    - Everyone was already known to the PIs already
        - This fits the experience of some of us, but not all
        - Could be because we're a new field
- Supercomputing Wales was unusual - shows need for RSEs but same issues with sustainability and underwriting going forward
    - "We don't need to convince our universities that they need HR staff"
- CIUK
    - Had a session on recruitment and retention - included someone from BBSRC and an external recruiter
        - You can't compete on salary - don't try - focus on what makes RSE special
            - Cutting edge software, meaningful work
            - Stay for a few years, go somewhere else for more money and no extra responsibility
    - May have people moving for ethical reasons - similar skillset but something they believe in
    - Round of recruitment for data scientists had good applicants who said it was because:
        - Not profit driven
        - Work-life balance
- Recruitment may be looking for researchers who will be RSEs vs trying to get established 
- Recruitment from people you already know is going to be bad for diversity
- Difficulty getting senior people
    - Poaching from other RSE groups?
    - Have had this difficulty outside of RSE as well - just a hard problem perhaps
- Chat discussion - where do we advertise?
    - LinkedIn for international candidates
    - jobs.ac.uk
    - IT job sites
    - HiPEAC
    - Women in HPC (for HPC roles)
    - Discipline-specific job boards
    - ResearchGate
    - RSE Society (website and Slack)
    - Twitter

## 5. Hybrid working
- Martin O'Reilly
- Mark Turner
- Paul Richmond
- Rich FitzJohn
- Kim Martin
- Heather Turner
- John Robinson
- Paul Heaton

### Notes
- Frustrations / challenges with remote / hybrid work
    - Remote work requires efforts to sustain team dynamics... experiences of losing existing tight team dynamics when people persist in remote work
        - 'Coffee mornings' tend to die - not everyone joins... difficult to mandate
    - Existing remote work platforms (Zoom!) are unsatisfying
        - Possibly a function of Zoom meetings 'targeted' nature... energy-sapping cf more natural, relaxed interactions
    - Mixed in-person + remote teams bring additional challenges
        - remote people could be 'second class citizens'
        - catering to remote people could make the in-person experience so 'crappy' as to make remote a better option
    - Works for some: twice-daily optional stand-ups, plus hour meeting on Fridays. Miss pub meetups though.
    - No work-life separation
- Realities on the ground
    - Frustration with organizations failure to fairly assess the effectiveness of remote working
    - Remote work operating on a "don't ask, don't tell" footing. Has anyone had success in recruiting fully remote positions (officially remote)?
    - Team meetings used as 'enforcement' to push people to spend time at work
    - University pushing for 100% in-person... team members pushing for 100% remote
    - Hybrid demands: some required to come in 3 days a week by university
- Benefits of in-person work
    - Some people have unproductive home environments - work environment can have benefits
        - can be more conducive to working
        - adds social aspect
    - People who don't ask for help can 'drown' when allowed to work remotely (when in the office, 'stuckness' is easier to identify)
- Benefits of remote / hybrid work
    - Some work benefits from being done remotely ('Deep Work'?)
    - Time-efficient wrt jumping rapidly between different meetings
- Solutions / compromises
    - Is this going to be a problem... or will people/orgs just adapt?
    - Better / alternative online platforms?
        - Bring psychology to bear... identify how to make remote interactions more natural?
    - Arrange Away Day
        - get everyone together
        - discuss how to go forward - block out time
        - beneficial on a regular basis (few times a year)?
        - good for strategic team thinking/work
        - Gather Town a reasonable substitute for in-person
    - Can take lessons from other contexts (e.g. industries / settings where effective remote interactions / collaboration has already been the norm)?
    - Tell people to turn their cameras on!
- Additional notes
    - Different impacts of remote work depending on personal traits (e.g. Introvert vs Extrovert)... different outcomes (relatively better or worse than in-person)  
    - Can we learn something from other contexts where people collaborate remotely really well (e.g. other industries, or even gaming communities)
 
## 6. Shapes of RSE role
- Andy Turner
- Jeremy Cohen
- Matt Machin
- Marion Weinzierl
- Maria Broadbridge
- Paul Heaton
- Leila Muresan
- Eilis Hannon
- Louise Brown
- Richard Gilham
- Alys Brett
- Rich FitzJohn
- Steve Ranford
- Oliver Henrich
- Kim Martin
- Iain Barrass
- Diego Alonso

### Notes

- How to define "Shape of the role"
    - Research
    - Infrastructure
    - Generalist
- A lot of RSEs still trying to define their job descriptions
- Does it depend on how you come into the role?
    - Most RSEs seem to come in from research?
        - Maybe
        - In some groups many coming in from SE industry
        - Motivation is often that they like research
- Some roles benefit more from 'computational' background perhaps?
    - UX people
- Some groups have a role for new graduates coming in (from undergrad)
    - Train them in SE and/or research
    - How do you find good people?
        - Formalise a training scheme
        - Summer projects hard to do well - not enough time
        - 1 year posts can work quite well for undergrad placements
    - Some places can't hire anyone below postdoc level
- How to interact with RSEs hired outside our groups
    - Can have open sessions for them to join
    - Hard to actually define what an embedded RSE is
    - There are a lot of people esp. in physics who are hired as postdocs but do an RSE role
    - A lot of these don't want to identify as RSEs
    - Not always much overlap between central RSE group and other RSE / researcher developers at the same university
- Specialist / domain specific groups have other requirements
    - e.g. to be colocated with equipment
- Embedded RSEs best suited to cases where expert domain knowledge is required
    - To do in a central team would require a really strong relationship with the research team
    - RSEs often have expertiese in the team to draw on though
- Central RSEs allow access to skills for groups without funding to hire one exclusively
    - Flexibility
    - Support for the RSE if the department wouldn't be able to properly support them as embedded
- Not all RSE groups want to collect the embedded RSEs
    - Natural that the largest groups will drive these discussions
    - Long tail of universities with smaller scale of RSE activity
- How best to support embedded RSEs


## 7. Career ladders
- Martin O'Reilly
- Jeremy Cohen
- Matt Machin
- Marion Weinzierl
- Paul Richmond
- Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran
- Eilis Hannon
- John Robinson
- Ed Bennett
- Arianna Ciula
- James Allen
- Mark Turner
- Heather Turner
- Chris Edsall
- Ed Ruck-Keene
- Anders Markvardsen
- James Allen

### Notes

- PR: Professional services don't have clear route for promotion unlike academic staff. Anyone have a progression route outside of the traditional one?
    - [Example of the Acadmic Career Pathway at Sheffield](https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.788873!/file/AcademicCareerPathwaysFramework.pdf)
- MO'R: What are the natural levels and what should they be? While growing fewer issues, but when steady, 'dead man's shoes'
- JR: Being considered for promotion from SRSE to principal RSE (assoc prof level). Rigid criteria for promotion: fullfill certain criteria e.g. independence. Jump through the hoops & 'game the system' for promotion.
- EH: Alternative roles rather than just HoRSE as top of ladder?
- JC: Challenge is there isn't a career progression process that doesn't involve traditional research metrics, e.g. papers, IF, citations. Not interested in e.g. 'X SWC workshops'.
- MM: Similar issue to JC. More traditional academic institutions seem to be very strongly split into academic vs professional services. Hard if you sit between research and professional services.
- AC: RSE SOC & Leaders help to define criteria. Is there a template from Southampton? Diversify what high quality output for an RSE is, and move away from existing modes.
- JA:
- MM: Ratios within teams?
- JR: Role for RSE Soc to lobby to get these roles recognised
- EH: Tackle this as a group and be aligned on the levels of roles
- MM, MOC: agreed
- PR: VCs one set of people to lobby. Does anyone have a promotion pathway?
    - JR: Career path through Enterprise
- PR: Any success engaging with HR? PR partly has, but also struggles
    - MO: Had freedom due to cost recovery model, but responsibility to ensure it remains true and maintains the existing ratio. 
    - PR/MO: Inifinite growth vs sustaining group: split into two, like research groups would?
- JC: More scope in profressional services to make new roles. Academic side very fixed structure. Interest in engaging, but maybe not evidence of enough demand to convince people?
- MT: (In response to PR). Some success with HR for big picture stuff. E.g. 'plan for next 3 years'. Two senior RSEs now, but already planned for 3-4.

- Top 3 things:
    - Understand different grades / roles
        - MOR, JA 
    - Routes for progression between grades - perhaps different depending on family RSEs live in
        - PR, MOR, JA
    - Sharing within group what is working currently
        - MOR 

AC: Make sure growth of team is not only way to progress, and so works for small & large teams. (Two things I shared during the breakout: [KDL RSE roles definition](https://zenodo.org/record/2564790) and [blog post with continuum illustration by James Smithies](https://kdl.kcl.ac.uk/blog/rse-career-development/))

- **Current levels and ratios**
    - Turing: Junior, Standard, Senior, Principal, Director. Ratio is 1 Principal : 3-4 Senior : 3-4 Standard/Junior (i.e. same number of Senior and Standard/Junior). All posts except Junior are permanent, with Junior being a 2-year training contract with guarantee to progress to standard through promotion in place whenever they hit standard level.
    - Exeter: 1 Senior RSE, 4-5 RSEs, 1 HoRSE
    - Cambridge: 1 Senior RSE, 5 RSEs, 1 HoRSE (Exascale Lab in recruitment now will involve a Principal above the senior)

## 8. (Involvement in) Regional RSE Groups
- Marion Weinzierl
- Maria Broadbridge
- Paul Heaton
- Louise Brown
- Kim Martin
- Jeremy Cohen
- Heather Turner
- James Graham

### Notes

- Why are we here?
    - Paul and Maria at Reading trying to launch the regional community in the South
    - SocRSE regional networks
        - About half of us were at the SeptembRSE launch event
    - How do existing groups work? What events do you do?
    - What do people want from regional groups?
        - Do you have a local community?
        - What support are you missing?
- Some institutions e.g. Imperial have an existing good community
- Benefits of RSLondon
    - Some things wanted to do required more resources
    - Some institutions (esp. specialist) don't have critical mass to have own community
- Why not reach out to the whole RSE community?
    - Local network building
    - Physical events easier to get to
- Difference between community of RSEs and community of RSE
    - Can be a lot of RSEs who don't have much involvement with the community - local group can be on-ramp
    - Most groups are broader than just RSEs
    - N8 CIR is mostly RSEs from groups + RSE fellows - trying to broaden but struggling to get even embedded RSEs
        - Difficult to reach people who aren't already involved in the community
- Geographical constraints on in-person events
    - Smaller events across the country should make this easier
    - RSLondon originally focussed on London but for bigger events had people from further away
- Where would you find out about one of these groups?
    - From SocRSE - https://society-rse.org/community/regional-groups/
- Regional groups are a level removed from SocRSE so may be more approachable for people who don't identify as RSE
- What do people look for in an event?
    - Exchange of ideas
        - Lightning talks
        - Networking
        - Discussion groups
    - Balance between technical and non-technical topics?
    - Lightning networking
        - Questions like "favourite programming language", "next career step"
    - Software people in research often don't have the experience of conferences, so can be a replacement for that
- Collaboration between groups
    - RSE brokerage
    - Collaboration agreements difficult
    - Turing has built agreements with many universities to allow this
- At national level SocRSE has been able to get enough effort to do this
    - Is a legal entity and can hold money
    - Regional groups more difficult to find this effort
    - Royal Statistical Society has local groups, each groups sets up its own bank account - can do this as a society independent from the university (like a sports club), don't need formal legal entity. RSS gives grants to local groups each year, also provides some infrastructure, e.g. event calendar, mailing list. https://rss.org.uk/membership/rss-groups-and-committees/groups/
    - Example accounts through Lloyds: https://www.lloydsbank.com/business/business-accounts/community-accounts.html, Barclays: https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/business/accounts/clubs-charities-assoc/

## 9. Guide to RSE event planning
- Paul Heaton


## 10. Recruitment and Retention
(should this be under Team Growth above?)
- Chris Edsall
- Ed Bennett

## 11. Collaborating across RSE groups
- Alys Brett
- Iain Barrass
- Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran
- Arianna Ciula
- Paul Richmond
- John Robinson
- Steve Ranford
- Martin O'Reilly
- Rich Gilham
- Mark Turner







### Collaborating - session notes
At Turing Inst - how do we learn together? Can secondments help as a way of structuring working together?

Simon H - how can we ensure we get teh right courses, Masters etc across universities

Paul R- who is doing this already? Lack of standard chargng model. Two models 1/charge RSE into grant, could be secondment. RSEs - being put out into a project means detached from home team. 

Mark T - good relations with ATI. When Turing published projects, we alrady have ppl with skills to address needs so can get funding. Secondments onto projects problematic - like somoeone leaves core group for a while. N8 group - cost recovery models hard. At Newcastle RSEs are tech services staff (no overheads) but at Durham RSEs do attract overheads - makes secondments difficult. RSEs not in same job family across unis. 

Eilis H - intersted in sharing expertise, resources. Collaborating as RSEs but not projects but eg training, development plans 

Diego A - 4 RSEs in team. How reeach those who work in isolation? How support their work? Are trying collaboration on eg reviewing each other's code

Rich F - who has managed successful collabs between RSE groups? How stop embedded groups reinventing same things/duplication

Arianna C - lot s of collabs on training, ATI interaction, recruitment but not so muchon projects. With UCL RSE team - they needed help on something - replicated project staffing model but without staff moving institution. 

Simon H  - getting better at working together - IT based staff and new hires. 

Alys B - similar situation of RSE group and Advanced Computing group in different parts of the organisation. An RSE team leader moving to a senior project role may be able to lead on closer collaboration. 

--

Training across groups may be an easy win - just coordinating topic and time slot. 
What are RSE key needs in terms of training? 
Proactive knowledge sharing is good e.g. I've just done something cool. Come along at Xday at X o'clock and find out. 

Recruitment of RSEs - what to ask for in person spec and at interview. 
RSE Soc Slac k sometimes has chat on this. 

RSE handbook for researchers who hire a RSE - ie how to get the best out of this talented person! What does it mean to have an RSE in your team? Would also help with grant proposal preparation. 

RSE-slant feedback on generic training e.g. how to apply project management training to the RSE context/role

King's Dig Lab have a FAQs for researchers working on project with them 





# Constraints

- Andy Turner: Cannot join until 1400. Need to leave at 1600.
- Louise Brown: Cannot join until 1500.
- Maria Broadbridge: Will be joining from 2 devices for hearing purposes, can both please be added to same breakout rooms
- Marion: Might need to leave at some point, depending on chaos in the house (both kids home with Covid)
- Heather: Will join a little late, hopefully in time for first discussion.
- Anders: Need to leave at 1500
- Chris E.: Have another meeting during session 2 14:00 - 15:00
- Arianna Ciula: down with COVID so limited contribution
- Robin needs to leave at 17:00
- Diego Alonso nneeds to leave at 16:00


