Venue
CW19 took place at Loughborough University in the West Park Teaching Hub, Loughborough. Please see the CW19 Map and Venue for suggestions on how to get to Loughborough. Additionally, please see the CW19 Accommodation page for suggestions of where to stay.
Registration
Registration has now closed but you can find out who attended the workshop.
Programme
CW19 brought together a diverse group of people, creating a dynamic space for various activities. For a comprehensive overview, explore the complete agenda.
Check the Highlights from Collaborations Workshop 2019 and the videos on better and sustainable research software.
CW19 Themes
Why Interoperability
Interoperability of data on the first version of Unix was "limited" to standard output and plain text. At that time, if you wanted to write a program that would collaborate with another one that was part of the Unix system, your program needed to support standard input and plain text. Today, we have too many formats—some, like XML, are standards established by international organisations, while others, like Markdown, are governed by single individuals or companies. Specialised formats help researchers on their day-to-day job but, like in the case of legacy format, can also slow down their investigations. What researchers and research software engineers can do to promote better interoperability between tools and for tools that are running in the cloud?
Read more on our blog post about interoperability at CW19.
Why Documentation
21% of researchers have no training in software development (S.J. Hettrick et al, UK Research Software Survey 2014), and 83% of developers learn on their own from official documentation (Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2018). These figures show that documentation plays an important role when spreading best practices, but for that dissemination to happen effectively the documentation must be above average. What are best practices when documenting your project? What can researchers learn from tech writers?
Read more on our blog post about documentation at CW19.
Why Training
Many organisations, including us, are teaching computational and data skills, to researchers and other professionals. Trainers empower their learners by providing a positive learning environment and act as facilitators in the learner’s discovery of new skills. What can trainers learn from educational psychology? How can trainers benefit from a community of practices?
Read more on our blog post about training at CW19.
More about Collaborations Workshop 2019
The Software Sustainability Institute invites all members of the research software community to explore and discuss the themes described above and other related issues at CW19.
CW19 attendees will gain insight into the topics of Interoperability, Documentation, Training and Sustainability and how these impact and will impact on research. It is also an ideal opportunity to form collaborations (on average, attendees of CW start two new collaborations by attending) and to discuss topics proposed by attendees. CW19 is a great place to network and participants will meet many of the new and existing Software Sustainability Institute Fellows – key ambassadors in varied research domains.
Some aspects around interoperability, documentation, training and sustainability that will be covered in the workshop are:
- Interoperability and documentation in research software
- Training in the research environment
- Best practices when connecting research software
- Best practices on documentation and training
- Tools to help code software that will send data to and from other software
- Tools to help write documentation for end-users and developers
- Tools to make training sessions more productive for learners
- Benefits of sustainability
Organisation
The Collaborations Workshop is organised by the Software Sustainability Institute's CW18 organisation and events teams with the help of the steering committee and generous support from our partner organisations and sponsors.
Code of Conduct
Please read our Code of Conduct.
Additional information
Previous events in the series.
