# July 2022 SSI Fellows Community Call

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* Wednesday, 27 July 2022 from 16:00 - 17:00 BST ([check your time zone here](https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=SSI+Fellows+Community+Call%3A+July+2022&iso=20220727T16&p1=302&ah=1))
* Link to this document: https://hackmd.io/@ssi-fellows-calls/2022-07
* Fellows' updates recordings: [Diego Alonso Álvarez](https://youtu.be/Mu2fyvdIYEs), [Anna-Maria Sichani](https://youtu.be/FJ_3aMO27xk)
* Previous calls: [https://bit.ly/3eu7NjT](https://bit.ly/3eu7NjT)
* Summary: We heard Fellows’ updates from Diego Alonso Álvarez (2020) and Anna-Maria Sichani (2020). In breakout rooms, we discussed mental health, effective workload management, software documentation for research and RSEs, a flexible curriculum for skills that RSEs need, and had a digital humanities/cultural heritage catch-up.
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[toc]

## Agenda
Times in BST

16:00 - 16:05 Welcome
16:05 - 16:25 Fellows’ updates
16:25 - 16:55 Breakout room discussions
16:55 - 17:00 Closing

## Roll call
_Name / Cohort year / Affiliation / Location / Pronouns / Social media_

* Rachael Ainsworth / 2019 / Software Sustainability Institute, University of Manchester / Manchester / she,her / t: [@rachaelevelyn](https://twitter.com/rachaelevelyn)
* Mario Antonioletti / - / SSI-EPCC-University of Edinburgh/ Edinburgh/ he, him / @marioant
* James Byrne / 2022 / British Antarctic Survey / Somerset / he, him / @jimcircadian
* Alison Clarke / 2021 / Wellcome (previously Durham University) / @alisonrclarke
* James Davenport /2016/University of Bath
* Daniele Procida / 2021 / Canonical / Cardiff, UK / Leiden NL . he/him / @EvilDMP
* Abhishek Dasgupta / 2021 / University of Oxford / he,him / [e-mail]
* Colin Sauze / 2021 / Aberystwyth University / he,him / [e-mail]
* Sarah Gibson / 2020 / 2i2c / London, UK / she,her / t: @drsarahlgibson, gh: @sgibson91
* Max :cat2: / ???? / Sarah's house / cat, cat, his lordship / (Max needs a Twitter...)
* Jez Cope / 2020 / The British Library / he, him / [@[e-mail]](https://scholar.social/@petrichor)
* Sammie Buzzard / 2018 / Cardiff University
* Gemma Turon / 2022 / Ersilia Open Source Initiative / she,her / Twitter: @TuronGemma
* Shoaib Sufi / SSI Staff / University of Manchester / Manchester / twitter: @shoaibsufi (mostly not work)
* Adam Jackson / 2018 / Science and Technology Facilities Council / Didcot, UK / he,him / t: @binarystate gh: @ajjackson
* Diego Alonso Álvarez / Imperial College London / London / he,him / @dalonsoa
* Tom Russell / 2022 / University of Oxford / Oxford, UK / he/they / twitter: @tlrss
* Emma Karoune/ 2021 / The Alan Turing Institute / Portsmouth,UK / twitter: @ekaroune
* Leontien Talboom / 2021 / Cambridge University Libraries / London, UK / she,her / t: @makethecatwise
* Sam Harrison / 2022 / UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology / Lancaster, UK / t/gh: @samharrison7
* Mateusz Malenta / 2021 / Observatory Sciences Ltd / Manchester, UK / GH: mmalenta
* Matthew Bluteau / 2021 / UKAEA / Oxford, UK / he,him / :bird: @mattasdata :octopus: @bielsnohr
* Eli Chadwick / 2021 / STFC / Didcot, UK / he/they / Twitter: @eelichad
* Iain Barrass / 2021 / Glasgow / Salisbury, UK / he,him
* Ben Krikler / 2019 / Unclear right now :p / he, him / t: @benkrikler
* Dave Horsfall / 2021 / Newcastle University / he, him / @dave_horsfall
* Anna-Maria Sichani/2020/ University of London /she, her/ @amsichani
* Meag Doherty/2022/National Institutes of Health, US / she,her / t: @EmDohh
* David Pérez-Suárez / 2016 / RSE / UCL/ he-him-his / 🐙🐱@dpshelio 🐦@dvdgc13 🐘@[e-mail] /
* Jesper Dramsch / 2022 / Scientist for ML / EMCWF / they / @jesperdramsch

### Check-in
_Include your name and answer any of the following prompts: How are you today? What are you working on? Where do you need support?_

* [name=Sarah] About to kick off the JupyterHub Community Strategic Lead role we won funding for nearly a year ago. Feeling quite imposter syndrome-y as a I change focus from infrastructure (as in hardware) to community (or human infrastructure)
* [name=Alison] Getting to grips with my new job at Wellcome
* [name=Daniele] Ran a series of [3 software documentation training workshops in March](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQEZf-uZkDc1dOAWEUMWN1TaWBIQdED1bCcYGrOL4RP1HTw_juX7DgcG63LGRx3aSkTAtBmKtGRCc_r/pub) :+1::smile::smile: Another (on [Diátaxis](https://diataxis.fr)) is planned for PyCon UK in Cardiff, October this year.
- Diátaxis looks so cool, I really need to make time to go through it in more detail... [name=Jez]
* [name=Gemma] Welcoming the first external contributors to our open source platform for AI research / writing a paper on the implementation of the platform in South Africa
* [name=Jez] Getting better at people management stuff and getting back to strategic-level planning
* [name=Abhishek] Working on the first draft of the VS Code course, also working on Global.health platform
* [name=James Davenport] Wrestling with how to build a JupyterHub in Azure to support multiple courses of 300+. Will be teaching MPI on the Cambridge HPC course in September.
* [name=Adam] Today: digging through old papers to make sense of less-old code. Recently: ran a tutorial workshop session and it wasn't a disaster :sweat_smile: :smile:
* [name=Sam Harrison] Today: catching up with emails after being on hols for two weeks. Working on: trying to find time to write code!
* [name=Meag Doherty]I will be hosting a series of UX knowledge share events in London 12-16 September. Let me know if you would like to visit for a 'hello' and/or live workshop!
* [name=Leontien Talboom] Finished a computational access guide for the digital preservation community, which hopefully will be openly accessible by the beginning of August. We are also discussing this guide during a panel at iPres 2022 in September.
* [name=Tom] Today - trying to finish off a "prototype" deliverable for a project.. getting there, trying to ignore all the ideas for how to do things more thoroughly and just finish something demo-able!

## 1. Welcome - 5 min [16:00 - 16:05]

### General Guidance

* 🤝 Please follow the [Code of Conduct](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eQu4EKHKbL-EMCwbwy7F_YGCOFhBcpBbwsET7QAvA1U/edit?usp=sharing), report any issues to [Rachael](mailto:[e-mail]) or [Shoaib](mailto:[e-mail]).
* 📹 The Fellows updates are being recorded and the videos will be made available on the [SSI YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/SoftwareSaved) after the call.
* 📝 This document is for SSI Fellows only, so please do not share the link publicly. Feel free to take notes, ask questions, add friendly comments, +1, etc.
* Outputs such as blog posts or guides may result from the discussions and shared insights. We will not share any personal information, but if you would like to be contacted and included as a contributing author on any outputs, please include your full name as part of any shared insights.

### Goals of these Community Calls
* Facilitate community building and encourage collaboration within the SSI Fellows community.
* Check in with the Fellows and community care - What are the Fellows up to? How can we support them?
* Provide a welcoming and inclusive space for Fellows to share and explore topics of interest and network with others.

### Breakout room discussion topics
_Please add a +1 to the discussion you are interested in joining to help us create the breakout rooms:_

1. Mental health (Dave Horsfall)
2. Effective workload management (James Byrne) +3
3. Documentation for your software: what do you need, or lack? (Daniele Procida) +1
4. Developing potential RSEs (James Davenport)
5. Strategies for dissemination of research software (Gemma Turon Rodrigo)
6. First steps towards a successful Fellows year (Jesper Dramsch)
7. A flexible curriculum for skills that RSEs need (Matthew Bluteau) +3
8. Presenting at RSECon22 (Georgina Al-Badri) +1
9. What should the next REF look like? (Simon Hettrick)
10. Digital humanities/cultural heritage catch-up [name=Jez Cope] +1

## 2. Fellows’ updates - 20 min [16:05 - 16:25]
_This is an opportunity for Fellows to share/show and tell during our community calls. During each call, we can accommodate 2 Fellows who will each have 7 min (+ 3 min Q&A) to introduce themselves and share any updates to the network, such as:_
* _Your Fellowship plans, demos of projects, upcoming events or other activities_
* _Projects for which you are seeking support or collaboration_
* _Life after the Fellowship and how the Fellowship impacted your career_

Timer for speakers: [https://cuckoo.team/ssi-fellows-community-call](https://cuckoo.team/ssi-fellows-community-call)

### Diego Alonso Álvarez (2020) - 7 min + 3 min Q&A
* Recording: https://youtu.be/Mu2fyvdIYEs
* Useful links:
* All the material of the workshop on GUIs for RS, including links to slides and recordings: https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/GUIs-for-RS
* Exemples of using differnt GUI frameworks in Python: https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/python-guis
* `guikit` https://pypi.org/project/guikit
* GUIs for RS (part 1)- https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2021-06-16-guis-research-software-why-are-they-relevant-part-one
* GUIs for RS (part 2)- https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2021-06-17-guis-research-software-why-are-they-relevant-part-two
* Notes:
*
* Questions:
* [name=Ben K]: Struggling to phrase this but what the advantages of a standalone GUI compared to e.g. widgets in a notebook, or a browser-based tool?
* [name=Diego]: I think that complexity. Widgets in a notebook are great for relatively simple things, but for advance stuff, you will struggle. Browser-based solutions, in general, are totally fine, but chances are you will need to learn a new progrraming language altogether (JS/HTML/CSS) to exploit the full power. Unless we are talking about dashboards.
* [name=Tom]: One key thing is to think about who the application is for - a GUI can be something that you can have on a desktop/home screen/app bar, click on and then do something useful with, much easier than learning to install and run a notebook; possibly easier to make available offline or access "native" device capabilities compared to browser-based
* [name=Adam]: Following up on questions about batch/cluster stuff. I've seen a few GUI-based packages claim to have ways of sending things to clusters, and as a cluster user my instinctive response has always been "pah, won't use that" - because academic HPC is generally set up for things that aren't time critical and can wait a few days. How big is the overlap in problems where cluster power is both needed and immediately available for interactive use? Do people book time in advance?
* [name=Diego]: Having GUI as a simplified way of summitting jobs to an HPC makes total sense. That's what OpenOnDemand-like solutions (mentioned in the chat) do, and they are great. But they are often more a simple interface to submit jobs/retrieve data than to run interactive jobs.
* [name=Sarah] I think this is actually a change in how people are using clusters. The Pangeo community for example use Dask in order to create _their own, dedicated cluster_ for them to analyse 10TB of data in 10 mins, and then the cluster disappears (This is a cloud-based cluster, not on-prem ofc.) It also means they can recompute huge datasets into graphs _on the fly_ in a very Jupyter-like way, which is mind-blowing when you see it. And it's kind of the only way you can do data exploration on these huge geoscience datasets.
* [name=Adam] That sounds very convenient but also very expensive. UCL research computing have found the cost ratio between cloud and own-hardware to be rather extreme https://twitter.com/owainkenway/status/1525119383433101314
* [name=Sarah] Of course, but the only sensible way to store Pangeo's data right now is in the cloud, so they have to take their compute there. As 2i2c is now operationalising Pangeo's cloud infrastructure, we are developing methodologies into monitoring, reporting, and controlling cloud expenditure.
* [name=Tom] lots of HPC clusters let you submit interactive jobs, e.g. for software builds, pre/post-processing and visualisation. I think you can do X-forwarding or other remote desktop things to get graphics locally from a program running on the cluster node - I guess there are scientific visualisation applications that like having plenty of RAM and work well in this setup - anyone with experience of this way of working?

### Anna-Maria Sichani (2020) - 7 min + 3 min Q&A
* Recording: https://youtu.be/FJ_3aMO27xk
* Useful links:
*
* Notes:
*
* Questions:
*

## 3. Breakout room discussions - 30 min [16:25 - 16:55]
_Please take notes of your discussion while you are in your breakout rooms in the relevant section below for others to catch up with._

### Breakout Room 1: Mental Health (Dave Horsfall)
* Participants:
* Dave Horsfall
* Emma Karoune
* Sarah Gibson
* Jacalyn Laird
* Notes:
* Mental health first aiders
* National mental health survey for RSEs
* Feedback and outcomes from mental health talks at different institutions.
* It would be good to document best practise in supporting mental health at different institutions, and offer resources

### Breakout Room 2: Effective workload management (James Byrne)
* Participants:
* James, Diego, Sammie, Sam, Ben, Mateusz, Tom, Jesper, Gemma, Eli, Shoaib
*
*
*
* Notes:
* [name=James] Agreeing to stuff and then working out how it applies as a fellowship activity
* [name=Diego] Justifying time spent on a project that fits into existing work
* [name=Shoaib] Working to see how SSI can pitch the fellowship as not being a lot of extra work
* [name=Jesper] It can be a little troublesome without understanding "official" guidance, definitely talk to superiors about it being an official part of work. Adjacent workloads help to spin out beneficial outputs, e.g. "double dipping"
* [name=Shoaib] Meta posts / authoring is a good thing! and "double dipping" is not a bad thing in the Fellowship - in that sense it can be seen as an enhancement of what you were planning/doing (in some way)
* [name=James] How to organise yourselves (tools/strategies)?
* [name=Diego] There wasn't a lot to do to begin with, it increased over time...
* [name=Eli] Carving out time too much of an issue, helps to have items that are mutually beneficial (and have deadlines!). requesting permission helps, carving time out is trickier when projects get busier.
* [name=Jesper] Using project management tooling can help, e.g. Kanban. Swimlanes based on energy... notion.so
* [name=Sam] Seconds notion.so! (There are also other cool tools like Coda.io and Obsidian.md that do similar(ish) things)
* Here are guides for PM: https://www.notion.so/help/guides/category/project-management Thanks Jesper!
* I can recommend some Notion Youtubers too. Thomas Frank Explains, Marie Poulin, and Red Gregory are quite amazing with their content.[name=Jesper]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32226910 if stuck in a rut from [name=Jesper]
* Discussion around the need to have skills utilised within a job. Forgetting skills is frustrating and we all require support from management to be retained in any position
* [Shoaib] I used Microsoft To Do (formerly Wunderlist) and One Note for more reference material / longer notes - it does not have a project/kanban aspect but it's a min system for making sure I don't forget the myriad things - often disparate that I need to do with the different hats I wear / roles.
*

### Breakout Room 3: Software documentation for research and RSEs (Daniele Procida)
* Participants:
* Alison Clarke
* Anna-Maria Sichani
* Adam Jackson
* Daniele Procida
* Notes:
* decision record documentation and product documentation
* Decision records: difficult to structure, difficult to maintain and invalidate
* One solution is to work these decisions into the user documentation, which is likely better-maintained!
* May not work for certain sensitive decisions
* [Diátaxis](https://diataxis.fr/) documentation framework
* "The sprawl" a challenge as various levels of detail / expertise make their way into docs

### Breakout Room 7: A Flexible Curriculum for Skills that RSEs need (Matthew Bluteau)
* Participants:
* Mario Antonioletti
* Abhishek Dasgupta
* Colin Sauze
* Matthew Bluteau
* Meag Doherty
* Iain Barrass
* David Perez-Suarz
* Notes:
* Matthew involved in an intermediate Carpentry course developed by the SSI
* Difficulty in the software architecture design part - need more background to disseminate
* How does one get the training? what is the background material?
* Need to filter the content - give recommendations/paths to gain experience
* Would be good to have this type of content
* Would be good to collect good resources
* Maeg: In UX
* Mario: talk to Stephen Crouch about developing a visual path because he did something similar for the Research Software Camps
* suggestion: people could document their learning path which others could "follow" at least for inspiration
* Maeg: reminded her of Competency Models that she is familiar with: https://blog.briantan.xyz/the-best-resource-for-grading-your-skills-in-product-design-633c169cd8cc?gi=b653408d3580
* Also https://us-rse.org/news/
* How long you have to teach is an issue - this can take a semster in an UG course
* Career length - more self development over a Carpentry-like course

### Breakout Room 10: Digital humanities/cultural heritage catch-up (Jez Cope)
* Participants:
* Jez Cope
* Leontien Talboom
*
*
* Notes:
* Discussion around the different mindset needed to be able to adapt code in practice
* Some courses are just not useful for the humanities field, even if it is catered towards them
*
*

## 4. Closing - 5 min [16:55 - 17:00]

### Next call: week of 26 September 2022
* Doodle poll to determine time: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/er04rrEb
* Sign-up/register your interest to speak on a future call: https://forms.gle/4YpTTAFUNuA2XyZEA

### Upcoming events / calls
_Event name / date, time & venue / website / description_

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### Requests for peer assists, collaboration and/or support

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* [name=Meag] I will be hosting a series of UX knowledge share events in London 12-16 September. Let me know if you would like to visit for a ‘hello’ and/or live workshop!
* [name=Iain] I have an informal collaboration with a researcher looking at chemical speciation in oceans. There's a (big) model here and the project group are now looking at requirements for longer-term sustainability and usability. There's (small) funding available to look at this, and I'm interested to know whether anyone would like to be involved. (Much more detail available.)
* [name=Colin Sauze] I'm hosting a panel at RSECon (Thurs Sept 8th at 11am) on Coding Confessions which started as a Collaborations Workshop 2021 Hackday idea. I'm looking for people who develop/have developed software to talk for 5 minutes about a coding mistake they've made, what impact it had and how others can prevent themselves making the same mistake. Please contact me on [e-mail] or via Slack if you're interested.
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### Other updates, shares and shout-outs
_Please feel free to add any updates or thank-yous that you wish to share with the community._

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### Feedback

* What did you enjoy about this call? What worked well?
* Was good to see everyone and have a chance to talk
* Timing and length of call worked well, nice variety to have a couple of short presentations and the choose-your-own-adventure breakout rooms.
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* What could be improved? What did not work well?
* [name=James] I must admit I forgot I proposed a topic, so might be worth sending a reminder so one can prepare some questions. Everyone filled the discussion in nicely though! :D
* [name=MattB] I would second this, having also been a person who suggested a topic and was a bit surprised to see it appear in the notes :sweat_smile: However, I also appreciate that you want to make the barrier for suggesting topics as minimal as possible. If there was an expectation of "preparing" for one of these breakouts, then it might discourage people from offering topics.
* Discussion sessions could be a bit more focused (guess related to the above!) +1
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* What topics would you like to explore on future calls?
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