Dr Joseph Parker from the STFC Scientific Computing Department (SCD) and project lead for Collaborative Computational Project (CCP) Plasma, represented CoSeC at the workshop, which was held at the University of Cardiff at the end of March. He gave a lightning talk about CoSeC and the work he does for CCP-Plasma, as well as taking part in a panel discussion on 'Sustainable Software Practice'.
Joseph said, "It was interesting to engage with new communities as people from a varierty of academic backgrounds, not just the more traditional computing subjects, were present."
This workshop, or 'un-conference' as the organisers called it, involved a lot of participation from the attendees. There were speed-blogging sessions on various topics, discussion sessions and hands-on demonstrations of software. On the penultimate evening a number of projects were agreed for a 'hack day' and, over the next 18 hours, small hack day groups worked collaboratively on coding projects and documentation hacks, finishing with presentations to a judging panel.
Joseph's group had a 'Citation File Format' project. "We discussed the best way for software to be
cited, what files should be distributed with software to make this possible,
and developed some tools to make it easy for researchers create and share
citation files," he said.
SCD's Catherine Jones was one of the five hackday judges (alongside Raquel Alegre (UCL) Nikoleta Glynatsi (Cardiff University) Raniere Silva and Steve Crouch (both from SSI). The groups and ideas were judged on novelty, usefulness, transparency of working and ultimately how successful they had been.
"All in all, a very hectic, worthwhile, enjoyable and successful workshop bringing people together to share knowledge, problems and ideas," said Joseph.
More information:
Software Sustainability Institute
CCP-Plasma
