Announcements I am Cross-Posting this Month

• The Turing Way Book Dash, call for application for the upcoming event from 08 to 12 November 2021 is open until 1 October 2021. Apply here. Thanks to the Book Dash planning committee members, Arielle Bennett, Batool Almarzouq, Brigitta Sipőcz, Carlos Martinez, Emma Karoune and Esther Plomp for helping finalise dates and all the documents for this call.

• The Turing Way Themed Community Calls will help us involve members beyond contribution via GitHub. Please respond to this form to share your interest and ideas. The deadline is 6 September 2021. Thanks to Emmy Tsang for adding her valuable input on cross-community calls! Really looking forward to exploring this further.

• Tools, Practices and Systems (TPS) call to join the leadership team (volunteer-based roles) is open. This is an opportunity to help shape the future of open infrastructure in data science, building on the success of programme projects such as The Turing Way. Please read more details here and apply! The TPS research programme is led by Kirstie Whitaker. Arielle Bennett has worked hard to shape the TPS leadership project.

• I will be hosting a SpetmberRSE panel “Missing narratives in discussions around diversity and inclusion in research”. Please suggest a panellist by responding to this form before 8 September 2021. Thanks to Rowland Mosbergen for joining the organising team and adding really valuable elements to this panel proposal. Thanks to Jeremy Cohen for supporting the logistics. The panel will take place on 28 September 2021.

• For the same conference, the Coding confessions team is looking for panellists who are happy to share some of their software development mistakes. In addition to their gratitude and credit, panellist will receive vouchers for an online shop such as Redbubble (value £20-25). Contact Patricia Herterich for more info. The panel will take place on 17 September 2021.

• We have launched the call for the next round of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation Event Fellowship. Please send your application before 1 October 2021 - apply here. This fellowship supports individual applicants’ participation in an event/workshop related to open science and bioinformatics.

• Code for Science & Society launched the Digital Infrastructure Incubator to help build community pathways to sustainability for open source projects in the service of the public interest. The review will be conducted on a rolling basis and each fellow will be awarded $5000 to recompense for their time. I highly recommend this for key contributors of community-led projects (like The Turing Way and Open Life Science). This project is led by Rayya El Zein.

• Frictionless Data Fellowship call for application is open until 31 August. Read more about the programme and apply here. A stipend of $5000 will be offered to each fellow for their engagement in this nine-month programme. This project is led by wonderful Lilly Winfree.

• Last week to apply to express your interest to join The Carpentries Code of Conduct committee. You can read more about the committee and this call in this post and this video. New members will join me, Karen Cranston, Karin Lagesen, Masami Yamaguchi and Francois Michonneau.

What I am thinking about

This month, I am working on a few projects and ideas that I welcome you to check out and/or comment on:

• The Turing Way Governance Plan - I am working on creating a call for a ‘Governance Taskforce’ for The Turing Way project. You can read the plans on the GitHub Pull Request and directly comment there to share your feedback. Thanks to Kirstie for having an in-person chat about this.
• Introduction to Data Science for Biomedical Scientists: Turing-Crick Partnership Project - I created the project charter for this short-term project (see here). This project aims to provide data science learning resources for experimental biologists and biomedical research communities. To avoid redundancy, and work in collaboration with other experts in this area, we will develop this project openly. Please reply under this GitHub issue to let me know who else I should reach out to.
• Open Life Science Cohort 4 Launch - With the help of our mentors, we have finished the selection process for the fourth cohort of Open Life Science. The team is going on a break till September - and then some exciting new work will start. Thanks to my lovely colleagues Yo Yehudi, Bérénice Batut and Emmy Tsang for another round of rewarding collaboration.
• Batool Almarzouq and Anelda van der Walt are carrying out massive video editing and translation work to make Open Life Science resources accessible for the arabic speaking audience. Under the title “How can Open Educational Video Resources be made more Accessible for Remixing & Translation Beyond Posting on YouTube?”, they will present their incredible effort carried out in collaboration with Open Life Science at the Creative Commons Global Summit. See Anelda’s tweet for details.

Stuff that I am reading and researching about

• In preparation for an “Open Science Community” themed talk, I am reading Nadia Eghbal’s Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, and thinking about different ‘human’ roles in open science.
• I have always been very interested in “design thinking” as a way to be more intentional when developing a project or community space. In that context, I enjoyed reading Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock. I recently came across this Tweet by @RCA_Digital, that shared Lily Irani’s article from 2018, “Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies. This gave me many points that I had not considered. It was a good reminder to evaluate any arbitrary standards created within academic/technical fields before glorifying them.
• I am drafting my application to the ‘Diversifying Leadership Programme’ and thinking about how diverse leadership (or lack thereof) has impacted me and others in my network.
• I am interested in pursuing a community-led effort to demand investment towards enhancing the usability of research/technical products. A better UX/UI ensures accessibility as well as effective uptake/adoption of resources that we develop. Useful and truly empowering technical products are achieved when everyone finds interacting with the product intuitive and easy (and your support team never gets an email for help). This was something I was considering for a grant proposal, but I have put this on the back burner till I have some more capacity to take on new projects.

Finally, last weekend I was thinking about dancing (particularly, adivasi folk dance from Ranchi, Jharkhand - my hometown) that teaches us the value of ‘step-by-step’ and hand-held guide to doing anything that you may not have considered to do alone. Through ‘Karma Naach’, my childhood friends (from indigenous communities of Jharkhand) taught me how communal dancing is more about enjoying something together, rather than perfecting the dance moves. A lesson I have carried with me in many ‘other things communities’ in my life.

This video shows an adivasi folk dance (‘Karma Naach’) performed to celebrate Karma.

Cover photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash.