The document discusses the Software Sustainability Institute's community engagement efforts, including its Agents/Super Pals program and Fellows program. It recruits early-career and mid-career researchers to gather intelligence, run workshops, and provide feedback. The Fellows program has grown from 10 Agents in 2011 to 15 Fellows in 2013 across various research domains. The goals are to effectively serve the research community, maximize the Institute's impact, and promote awareness of software sustainability best practices.

1. Engaging the www.software.ac.uk
software in
Partners:
research
community
EGI Community Forum 2013, 8-12 April
2013, Manchester
Shoaib Sufi, Community Manager, Software Funders:
Sustainability Institute
shoaib.sufi@software.ac.uk
Software Sustainability Institute

2. The Software Sustainability Institute
www.software.ac.uk
A national facility for promoting software
in world-class research
•Better software enables better research
•Software reaches boundaries in its
development cycle that prevent
improvement, growth and adoption
•Providing the expertise and services
needed to negotiate to the next stage
•Developing the policy and tools to
support the community developing and
using research software
•Capability building and promoting reproducible research
Software Sustainability Institute Funding courtesy of EPSRC EP/H043160/1

3. Why engage the Software in
Research Community ? www.software.ac.uk
• Serving effectively – guiding what we should do
• Running efficiently – using our resources for
maximum benefit
• Growing awareness – today PhDs are tomorrows
PIs
 “Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast” – Peter Drucker
Software Sustainability Institute

4. How we engage the community
www.software.ac.uk
• By consulting and involving …
 people who use, build, manage, need software to help
or support research
• Openly engaging the wider research community …
 Agents, Super Pals, (Champions), Fellows
• Using cross institutional experience …
 Edinburgh, Southampton, Manchester and Oxford
 Being embedded in projects, networks and research
groups
Software Sustainability Institute

5. Open engagement – the deal www.software.ac.uk
• In exchange for £3000/person expenses, we gain:
 Intelligence reports from conferences
 A broad range of expertise against which we can review
ideas
 New contacts and dissemination routes
 Representation from “insiders” within the selected
research domains
 Running capacity building workshops (e.g. SWC)
 Taking part in policy forums
 Other – unanticipated activities
Software Sustainability Institute

6. Agents/Super Pals 2011/12
www.software.ac.uk
• In 2011, we recruited 10 early-career to gather intelligence
from their research domains and 2 mid career researchers
• Materials chemistry • Semantic web
• Sports science • Software development practice
• Metagenomics • Environmental sustainability
• Coastal Engineering • Glaciology
• Clinical physics • Bioinformatics
SelUCCR champions – SelUCCR partnership between UK NES and SSI
Software Sustainability Institute Super Pals

7. Travel 2011/12
www.software.ac.uk
Software Sustainability Institute

8. Outcomes 2011/12 www.software.ac.uk
• 2-3 Agent reports per month (32 reports in total)
• A proposal submitted to NERC
• An introduction to speak at Royal Statistical Society
• An article in Ariadne
• Many blog posts
• Short-term contacts from Agent reports
• Helpful feedback on ideas (CW, useful resources, where they publish
software, do they use cloud, feedback for Fellow programme, help they need
for funding proposals, authored some guides, most popular blog post IPython)
• New visitors to the website (~1800 unique visitors)
• Recruitment of one of the Agents as Staff member
• Opportunity to talk at PyCon UK
• Promotion of SSI at BGI
• Aiding Agents recruitment
• Identification of a key project where SSI could help (they would like a review of
architecture post release of v2 aka EpiCollect+)
Software Sustainability Institute

9. 2013/14 Fellows programme
www.software.ac.uk
• 123 applicants, 27 shortlisted
 Internal and external reviewers (including at least
one academic)
 Face to face and online selection meetings
• 15 Fellows announced in November 2012
 Passion, time, interesting
research, clarity, understanding SSI were all factors
Software Sustainability Institute

10. Early Early mid
mid Early
mid
www.software.ac.uk
Alex Chartier,
Richard Caitlin Bentley, Mike Croucher, Adam Crymble, Nick Pearce,
ionosphere
Abel, 3D International Mathematical Digital Sociology &
forecasting
imaging development software humanities Anthropology
techniques
Early Early Early Early
mid
James Hetherington,
Cefn Hoile, Kayla Iacovino, Stephan Lautenschlager,
‘Research software Allen Pope,
http://shrimping.it Volcanology virtual paleontology Glaciology
engineer’
mid mid Early
mid
Anna Powell-Smith, Barry Rowlingson, Melody Sandells, snow physics Robin Wilson,
Freelance http://anna.ps. spatial epidemiology Sustainability Institute
Software satellite imaging

11. Fellows Facts
www.software.ac.uk
• Areas covered (imperfect clustering)
 Medical: 3D imaging techniques, Epidemiology
 ICT: physical computing in education
 Environmental: volcanology, virtual
paleontology, glaciology, snow physics, space
weather, satellite imaging
 Computational support: ‘research software developers’ x2
 Information applications: international development, data
visualisation
 Humanities: textual classification, sociology & anthropology
• Career stage (8 early, 7 mid)
• Gender (4F, 11M)
• Reminder: Chosen on commitment and passion over
domain
 Although important domains and interesting domains were
factors Software Sustainability Institute

12. What makes a good recruit
www.software.ac.uk
• Enough time for the win-win; activities beneficial to themselves and
the objectives of the SSI-
• enthusiastic, motivated and wanting to make an impact in their area
• active and engaged in their own area, with a track record of
generating ideas
• a good communicator, able to talk about their work and understand
others work
• a willing advocate of research software best practice
• able to act as a conduit and information source into their community
• Demonstrate some common ground between their works and
interest and those of the Institute
• Important or interesting research domain
Software Sustainability Institute

13. Representative set
www.software.ac.uk
• We don’t
• Go for important/interesting science
• And people with energy
• …. It is a target rich environment – lots of good
people to help and then inspire others
Software Sustainability Institute

14. What does a Fellow do
www.software.ac.uk
• Attend conferences
 What software used in a domain, important software enabled
research in their domains, giving us data on any surveys they
have done, promoting the SSI and it’s message – esp. the themes
(e.g. reproducible research), giving us the specific names of
contacts we can help, blogging about the conference, tweeting
• Running capability building workshop
 Software Carpentry at their sites
 Running training courses in their own software for use in their
domains preparing with SSI best practice (e.g. SES -
http://www.software.ac.uk/online-sustainability-evaluation )
• Policy work
 Attending policy relevant workshops
Software Sustainability Institute

15. Serendipity
www.software.ac.uk
• Attending our advisory board
 Making EPSRC happy
• Attending a Train the Trainers workshop for a new EU wide programme
 Influence for them, expertise for us
• Being able to make existing money go further
 A trip to Oz
• Discussions on feedback useful (catalogue of visualisation tools for
researchers, blogging about how people integrate such tools into their science)
 Even though they cancelled going
• 8 showed a strong interest in authoring a ‘Software in your domain’ to aid insiders
and to give outsiders a view in
 Likely focus of Fellows 6-monthly meeting
• Asking for material to promote SSI at events they normally attend and not funded
by us
• Joining funds together to be able to run a bigger workshop where there is some
domain overlap
Software Sustainability Institute

16. How we ok funds
www.software.ac.uk
• Request (a month before at the latest)
• Review by Fellows Management team
• Either approve, ask for clarification, deny
• Once event completed, report received and
then claim processed.
Software Sustainability Institute

17. Challenges
www.software.ac.uk
• I am out of the country | I have a lecture to train
people going on a field trip; Iwon’t be able to
make the meeting which is part of my terms and
conditions.
• Just getting on the plane … will you pay for my trip
?
• Can you pay for my friend to give a few hours of
training to my team ?
• Can you buy some software for me to help me
with my research ?
• I have to move abroad can I still be a Fellow ?
Software Sustainability Institute

18. Benefits
www.software.ac.uk
• For the Institute:
 Sanity check – are we doing the right thing
 Highlight opportunities; casting the net wider
 Credibility
 Identification of project most likely to benefit with help
 Behavioral change; real benefit others likely to take heed.
For the Fellows:
 Money to attend events
 Arrange events
 Higher profile
 More contacts
 Ideas from their peer group
Software Sustainability Institute

19. Outputs and Outcomes
www.software.ac.uk
Software Sustainability Institute

20. Forever Fellows
www.software.ac.uk
• For successful Fellows
• Something for the CV
• Discount/Free attendance at SSI Events e.g. CW
• Still do work in the name of SSI (with prior
checking)
• Still have their voice heard
• Allow us to pass ideas/leads by them
• 1 or 2 Fellows worth of cash for them to bid into
• Maintain contact in case we would like them to go
to an event
Software Sustainability Institute

21. Recommendations
www.software.ac.uk
• Clear about type of person you want
• Be rigorous but fair at selection
• Magnanimous after that (but polite and firm if needed)
• Clear guidelines and suggestions
• Good rapport
• Chasing expenses for them
• Quick turn around on requests (e.g. we are working on the decisions)
• Get them together early to bond as a group and let them know that ideas
are welcome and give them a forum to discuss (e.g. mailing group)
• Help them with your network
• Ask them to help you with their network
• Don’t be afraid to ask them to do stuff you think they might be interested in
• Manage them as individuals
• Help create a group feeling
Software Sustainability Institute

22. Future Challenges
www.software.ac.uk
• Running the Fellows programme adaptively
• Recruiting new Fellows
• Making best use of Fellows – win-win and not taking up
too much time
• Cross network challenges
• Integrating Fellows Forever
• Maximising outputs from event reports
• Setup takes some effort; running it actively is where the
benefits are realised.
 If they see their contributions helping they will be more
motivated to contribute
Software Sustainability Institute

23. Questions
www.software.ac.uk
• ?
Software Sustainability Institute