Posted by s.hettrick on 21 February 2011 - 12:27pm

The Software Sustainability Institute is looking for new areas of work to take forward in 2011. We're interested in ideas that will improve the long-term sustainability of software by improving its code base, increasing community size or branching established software into new markets.

The Collaborations Workshop 2011 is the perfect environment for us to do this, and we'd like to get you to contribute through two sets of activities at the workshop: lightning talks/posters, and the Ideas Room.

One week to go!

Registration for the Collaborations Workshop closes at midnight on 28 February 2011.

Lightning Talks and Posters

We want to know more! Tell the workshop about the software you use, develop or covet. Introduce yourself and your research. Let us know about the things you've learned or the things that have frustrated you. Pose a question or suggest an answer. Make an appeal for new collaborators. Just do it in five minutes or one sheet of A0 or A1!

This is a chance to share your knowledge and experience with the workshop and perhaps spark ideas in the other attendees - see below for how to suggest a topic you want to present.

Ideas Room

So you've seen the lightning talks, you've perused the posters. Now everyone at the workshop has the chance to dream up their ideal scenario. What would you like to see happen that would make a difference to your work? Brainstorm ideas with other attendees, fine tune them with the SSI team and other experts, discuss them over dinner and drinks.

When you're ready to share them, get those ideas down on paper. On the second day, we'll give everyone the chance to look at the ideas and decide what's most important for them. From this we'll see what are the hot topics in the community that the SSI should be addressing.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for areas where the Software Sustainability Institute can make a difference by working in collaboration with other research or infrastructure groups to improve the stability, usability or extensibility of an important software tool with the ultimate goal of enabling better research. The suggestions should be timely, address well-defined problems and result in added engagement from the community. Our focus is on software sustainability, whether through re-engineering, improved testing, community building, documentation or usability analyses.

Interested in giving a lightning talk or poster?

Email us at info@software.ac.uk with the following information:

• Name of person presenting
• Name of institution
• Title
• A couple of sentences describing what you're going to talk about

The deadline for submission is 28 February 2011.

For more information on the Collaborations Workshop, visit the workshop website.